Colin Leitch, AU
Colin Leitch, AU
The third and last guess, Colin from Melbourne( VIC) has been exposed to composting quite a while ago and is still doing it as a hobby that has grown along the year.
Worm’ ag: When and what got you into vermicomposting?
Colin: It was accidental actually Huy! About 20 years ago I discovered that the family compost bin( an open-bottomed one) was teaming with worms, which I attributed to the wet nature of our kitchen waste. From then on, it was pretty basic worm bin management: dump the kitchen organics and garden weeds in each week, fluff the bin if it gets smelly and harvest every six months or so. No dramas...
My vermicomposting took a big step up two years ago when I set up an organic waste collection project at the Community House in Lorne( 1000 permanent residents and up to 25 000 holiday makers in summer). That ' s when I had to learn about worm husbandry!
Worm’ ag: What difficulties have you encountered along the way and how have you resolved them?
Colin: The initial aim of the project was to divert 90 % of Lorne ' s cafe wastes from landfill. I started collecting from one cafe in May 2015 and by the end of the year was collecting around 300 kg of wastes per week. The key elements to stepping up from household quantities to commercial quantities without buying any worms nor spending significant amounts on infrastructure were:
I divided up my original worm farm population and established five large wheelie bins as worm nurseries; and flattened a mature compost heap containing some worms to form a 5 sq m worm bed to handle large quantities of waste
I used the courses available on Bentley ' s Red Worm Composting site to get an understanding of how to optimise worm production. In particular, I utilised the concept of living bedding by combining the sloppy juice pulp I was collecting with rotted woodchips that I poached from neighbouring land. This overcame the problem of embarrassing odours in the Community House carpark when the juice pulp went off!
I quickly discovered that worms steered clear of large quantities of used coffee grounds( UCG) fresh from the barista. So I cadged a truckload of shredded garden trimmings and hot composted it by adding around 30 % UCG. Once the coffee compost had cooled, it became attractive worm food as well as providing a new source of living bedding to mix with the juice pulp.
In the first six months we made around 9 cu m of coffee compost( containing some 3 t of UCG!) which was way more than the worms needed so a number of us at the Community House used the coffee compost in potting mixes and directly in our gardens. It took an article about UCG being allelopathic to realise that this was the likely cause of our collective gardening failures: seeds that hadn ' t germinated, tube stock that had died, stunted growth of veggie seedlings and defoliation of vines!!
Worm bed managed as a wedge 30