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I need to point out that the coffee compost we made hadn ' t been turned regularly so the compost wasn ' t processed uniformly and this may have been the cause of the allelopathic chemical persisting . The vermicompost produced from feedstock that included UCG hasn ' t caused any problems when used in veggie gardens .
Collecting around 150kg of UCG per week from six cafes proved to be unsustainable for me so I happily now only collect UCG from one cafe . As for the lofty aim of diverting 90 % Lorne ' s cafe organics for landfill ... I ' ve let that one drop !
I had a bit of a look at marketing my vermicompost and decided that waste minimisation and worm husbandry were my strengths so I donate most of the vermicompost I produce to an organisation called FareShare which prepares 25 000 meals per week for the needy - mainly from rescued supermarket food but also from a couple of market gardens .
Worm ’ ag : What ' s the main reason you ' ve kept doing it until now ?
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Colin : I ' ve diverted around 20 t of organics that otherwise would be producing greenhouse gases in the Anglesea landfill and I ' ve turned it into a garden ameliorant that ' s supporting an organic garden . That ' s pretty satisfying ... but then there ' s the love of worm husbandry !
Worm ’ ag : Do you have a cool anecdotal story to share with us ?
Colin : I collect clean salad scraps from an up-market hamburger cafe and one of the chefs from the classy restaurant next door couldn ' t believe that all of those cos lettuce hearts were going to my worms : that ' s the best part of the lettuce he claimed !
Worm ’ ag : I sometimes see photos of worms eating better food than us lol . Why did you join the WFA ?
Colin : I had gotten a lot of benefit from Red Worm Composting and felt that WFA would help me with handling commercial quantities . Initially , I was quite disappointed because the promised eBook wasn ' t really a book at all and it was about breeding worms which
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I wasn ' t drawn to . Additionally the Forum was moribund and painful to research . But the breakthrough came with the secret WFA Facebook group which has become a wonderful source of indepth information about worm farming and the use of vermicompost . And it ' s really entertaining and I feel part of a secret society which I ' ve always longed for ( that ' s a joke !). There are many extremely knowledgeable contributors who are passionate and at times humorous . It ' s gold ! |