Wormgineering Waste Food into Humus for Urban Gardens

Blue sky, green grass, bright red butterfly in the middle

This entire site was written before I decided to try to develop my own worm bins. It is basically two pages in one: The upper portion and its menu is about a thought experiment I conducted and documented here, namely "how to divert a large chunk of Portland's food waste to vermiculture." This plan was never more than a wild idea. But then I realized there was a need in the marketplace for an affordable "do it for me" worm bin based on the popular but not always successful plastic bin design.

This should be the easy part. If we can actually make this plan work, there is going to be a LOT of beautiful organic fertilizer available.

All we have to do is find pots and plots to put it in, and then stand back and watch the plant jump out of the soil, right?

OK, maybe it won't be that easy, but it sure seems like a case of having too much of a good thing. The plan is not going to try to be too specific on the distribution of castings, at least not in these early stages.

Waste

Worms

Humus

Large Scale Vermicycling Enables Large Scale Greening

Vegetables, Flowers, Lawns, Habitat Restoration Projects

Can we have too much Vermicompost?

One reason this plan focuses on garbage disposal is that the possibility exists that a glut of Vermicompost will be created. On the open market, this would cause a low price and undermine any independent operation which depends on revenue from castings.

In the big picture, having an abundance of ability to turn marginal soil into rich productive soil seems like a very good thing.

Concern should be given, however, to other Vermipractice operations. The last thing I would want to happen is to undermine a local worm farmer from making income from castings. This leads me to think that it is imperative that this plan does not sell the castings to the general public. If you want castings, you can host a hatchery, but we wont just sell castings to you.

Envision having "instant humus" available to countless Community Gardens, Green Roof Projects, Farmers Market Growers, lawn care companies and of course window boxes and container gardens in Apartments and Homes everywhere. Anyone who hosts a hatchery, subscribes to worm bin service or becomes a Professional Vermicycler would have access to castings, and the central organization would have the ability to stockpile it and provide large quantities to worthy projects at very low prices. This would hopefully not undercut independent vermipractice operations.

Of course, the thing is that we can grow massive quantities of fresh vegetables for the extended community around this vermicycling operation. That's what this page is all about.

Show us your garden!

Shirley kneeling on her rooftop garden in Hollywood, CA

Look at this nice lady and her rooftop garden in Hollywood, CA.
(Photo used with permission from Shirley at Shirley's Wellness Cafe, from this page. Thank You Shirley!

That's a nice looking garden. There's only one thing wrong with it: it's not in Portland. SoCal may have lots more sunshine than we do, but we've got worms on our side. :-) By this fall I hope to have a collection of photos from my fellow Portland worm pioneers of their fabulous gardens. If you're in L.A.? Or anywhere else, for that matter? Go ahead, "steal" my ideas, I don't mind. Superquestering can work anywhere.

This is another thing to work on: a photo gallery attached to this page. But they are easy these days, so it should be ready by the time garden photos start showing up. If you want to send in early-stage pictures, that would be very way totally awesomely cool: we can watch your garden's progress over the summer. If that happens I'll for sure get the gallery going sooner than later.