OmniaSubSole

Worm Tubes: Vermicomposting boon or bane?

I garden like mad.  Veggies and flowers.  They need a lot of nutrients and I am not a fan of blue or green fertilizers.  It is never a miracle that things grow, just curious that they get as big as they do.  Not a curiosity I’m willing to ingest.

So how do I keep the garden growing?  I have a compost tumbler that I use regularly and because we cook from scratch, we have a lot of veggie scraps, egg shells, and coffee grounds.  I will break the composter if I put any more in it!  So what to do?

There’s many times that I will dig holes and bury extra food waste around the garden, but I want something that is less of a surprise when gardening.  It’s not a fun time when I forget where I buried food scraps!  So I’ve researched options and ran across vermicomposting or ‘worm’ tubes.

The idea is to sink PVC tubes a couple feet into the earth and fill them with food scraps.  The worms will wriggle in through holes cut into the sides, eat the yummy food scraps and venture out into the garden with their highly fertile worm poo.  Genius, right?

Well, some say yes and some are not convinced that it will work.  In particular, I found a very well written post from Urban Worm Farm that identified the possible pitfalls while being open to some very good dialogue through the comments.  worm tube materials

Being a woman of science, it is time for my own experimentation.  I got my PVC tube, grabbed some grates to cover each end and began to sink them.  I put my first load of scraps in today.  I can’t wait to see the results.

I’ll keep ya posted!

Marie Wheeler