Anything from advice for beginning vermicomposters with the Vermicomposting 101 Series or interviews with experts, the Urban Worm Blog has you covered!
Winter Vermicomposting: How to Keep a Worm Bin Warm When It's Cold
With the approach of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, the single most common question I get is "I live in (name a state that gets cold in winter). How do I keep my worms alive?" My first answer is "Move them indoors or move to San Diego and we don't have to...
Why Worms Won't Help Lifeless, Compacted Soil
Without fail, we take at least one weekly inquiry from a potential customer who wants earthworms to help rehabilitate their soil. The assumption that introducing worms will bring aeration and life to compacted, lifeless soil is both reasonable and intuitive. It's also...
Why Are Worms Crawling Up The Walls of My Bin? Are They Escaping?
Nothing concerns a new worm bin owner more than when they see worms crawling up the sides of the worm bin, leaving them to wonder what they did wrong to cause this. Unzipping the lid of your Urban Worm Bag or opening the top of your Hungry Bin to see what appears to...
Urban Worm Guide to Coconut Coir: How is It Used and Why?
The Urban Worm Company is pleased to announce the arrival of Urban Worm Coco Coir, a sustainable, low-salt, pH neutral alternative to peat moss. Coconut coir is often used as a worm and reptile bedding and the Urban Worm Company has used coco coir as the base layer...
How to Prevent and Eliminate Fruit Flies in the Worm Bin
The risk of fruit flies in the worm bin is pretty much a fact of life for anyone who wants to get started with vermicomposting. The bigger risk - to me anyways - is that someone will encounter fruit flies and give up vermicomposting forever. In an effort to prevent...
Water Content of Fruits and Vegetables: Vermicomposting 101
Knowing the water content of fruits and vegetables can be a handy tool in helping us keep a reasonable moisture percentage in our worm composting bins. As you likely know, a good moisture level in a worm bin is about 70%, or enough to yield a single drop of water if...
Aerated Static Pile Composting: An Introduction to ASP
Vermicomposting is a wonderful way to mitigate our impact on the waste stream. But hot composting using the aerated static pile method is the most effective means to stabilize large quantities of organic matter, especially in a smaller space. This article is an...
Vermicomposting: The Ultimate Guide for the Beginner and Beyond
Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Getting Started with Vermicomposting! I aim to make this page the internet’s top resource on taking you from complete ignorance about vermicomposting to being able to: Understand vermicomposting and how it works Explain the benefits of...
How to Measure Moisture Content in Compost and Vermicompost
I just stumbled across two ways to measure the moisture content in compost and vermicompost. Granted, these methods, especially the first one, would measure the moisture in nearly ANY material, but I am super thrilled that I found this information. I have been on the...
The Worm Farmer's Handbook: A Must-Read Book for Operating at Scale
The Worm Farmer's Handbook is a must-have book for anyone wanting to engage in mid-scale or larger vermicomposting or vermiculture for profit or non-profit purposes. This review will give a quick overview of the book, describe the structure of the chapters, and should...
Vermicomposting 101: Freezing Food Waste for the Worm Bin. Is It Necessary?
Freezing food waste is a really interesting technique for managing both the quantity and the quality of the food source you are feeding your worm bin. This short article looks into 3 reasons why you should freeze food waste for vermicomposting and 1 reason why you...
Vermicomposting 101: What Happens In A Worm Bin?
New vermicomposters worry that their two-week old bin isn't producing castings and that they may be doing it wrong. Things look fine and smell fine, but the worms aren't "destroying" the food like we think they should. If most beginners think of vermicomposting the...