Jane
Tunks, a novice gardener, is using The Chronicle’s rooftop garden as
her classroom, with Fred Bové and Kevin Bayuk from the San Francisco
Permaculture Guild as her teachers. Here is another of her lessons.
Read other stories in the series at
sfgate.com/columns/chroniclegarden/archive

Worms
can be a gardener’s best friends – that’s just the latest nugget of
wisdom from permaculture experts Fred Bové and Kevin Bayuk.

About a week after they told me this, Bayuk dropped by The
Chronicle’s rooftop garden with a small cardboard box labeled “worms”
and a lesson in vermicomposting.

Vermicomposting or “worm composting” turns out to be a very
convenient way for the landless gardener to create a rich soil
amendment. A worm bin takes up very little space and can fit on a fire
escape or under the kitchen sink.

But instead of shelling out more than $100 for a manufactured worm
bin, you can make your own for less than $30 (see “Make your own worm
bin,” L2).

Worms break down food scraps into a nutrient-rich compost that
restore life to depleted soil, especially the worn-out dirt of the
containers on The Chronicle’s rooftop. Healthy soil is the most
important component of any garden, and after six years, the dirt in our
containers was looking pretty bad. The soil in container gardens can be
quickly depleted, as watering causes nutrients to be leached from the
soil.

But these are no ordinary worms. Unlike earthworms, which burrow in
garden soil, red wigglers (Eisenia fetida) are happiest crawling
through kitchen leftovers. Red wigglers eat their own weight in food
every day and their bacteria-rich castings (or poop) are full of
nutrients that benefit garden soil.

The best source of red wigglers is someone else’s vermicomposting
bin – the worms reproduce quickly and soon will be hard at work
composting your kitchen scraps. If you don’t have a friend or
acquaintance who can share their worms, you can buy red wigglers at
some garden stores or online at bayworms.org and www.sonomavalleyworms.com.

The Chronicle’s worms feast on the scraps from the Food & Wine test kitchen, as well as leftovers from my kitchen at home.

With a diet that includes Yirgacheffe coffee grounds, Flavor King
pluots and Brandywine tomatoes, these just might be the most well-fed
worms in San Francisco.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/30/HOJV199OT5.DTL#ixzz0PyGV5AOR

Make your own worm bin

You
can build a worm bin in less than an hour by following these steps.
You’ll need two 20-gallon plastic storage bins with lids, a permanent
marker, a Sunday edition of The Chronicle, a drill with 1/4-inch and
1/8-inch bits, red wiggler worms (Eisenia fetida), kitchen scraps and
two 1-gallon plastic pots. When your worm bin is complete, store it in
a cool, shaded spot either indoors or
outdoors.

1. With a
permanent marker, draw 10-15 evenly spaced dots on the lid of one
storage bin.

2. Drill
through the dots using the 1/4-inch drill
bit.

3. On the sides of
the same bin, about 1 inch from the top, draw one row of dots 2 inches
apart.

4. Drill through
the dots using the 1/8-inch drill
bit.

5. On the bottom of
the same storage bin, draw 10-15 evenly spaced
dots.

6. Drill through
the dots using the 1/4-inch drill
bit.

7. Tear newspaper
lengthwise in 2-inch-wide strips and put in the storage bin until it’s
about two-thirds
full.

8. With a garden
hose, spray water on the shredded
newspaper until it’s just wet and turn until it’s evenly coated with
water. Once wet, the newspaper should fill the bin about halfway. Add
more wet newspaper as
needed.

9. Place red
wigglers on top of the wet newspaper,
along with kitchen scraps – we gave them overly ripe heirloom tomatoes
from The Chronicle’s test kitchen. (Do not give the worms any citrus,
spicy food, or dairy or animal
products.)

10. Tuck the
worms into their new home by placing more wet newspaper on top of them
and their food.

11.
Place two empty 1-gallon plastic pots at the
bottom of the second storage bin (they will act as risers), and put the
bin with the worms and the airholes on top of
it.

12. Put the lid of
the second storage bin
underneath both bins; it will act as a sort of coaster, to catch any
excess moisture from the
bin.

13. To feed worms,
lift up top layer of newspaper
and add more food, then nestle newspaper back in its place. Put food on
one side of the bin at a time.

14.
To harvest vermicompost, put new food on the
other side of the bin. The worms will move toward the new food, leaving
their castings behind. Pull up the top layer of the newspaper, remove
the castings. Replace the top layer of the newspaper and use the
castings in your garden as
needed.