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Vermicomposting – Shovel In, Lift Off, Scoop Out

Saturday, September 03, 2011

(This bin is diarized in Vermicomposting – Bin V003 ).

It’s time to do something with that string-bag that held onions not so long ago.

All great ideas start with pencil-and-paper.

I envisage a string bag suspended in a 25-liter pail.

• Shovel composting mud into the bag.

• Let the worms wriggle soil and castings out of the bag to collect in the pail.

• Lift the bag out of the pail.

• Scoop castings out of the pail.

I can’t afford an electric trommel .

You will need one onion bag, about 10-litre capacity; one pair pliers; one 25-litre pail; one hanger.

If you find that you have a hanger-on instead of a hanger, send him off to make a cup of tea. You deserve one.

Here’s the string bag (it’s a plastic material) with a coat-hanger bent roughly into a loop.

I made two bends, one at each end, so the wire loop can close in a monkey-clasp.

I straightened out one end and began threading it through the open end of the mesh; two under, two above.

Almost makes me wish I were doing this on a subway train during peak hour.

I shortened the coat hanger wire and made a fresh clasp at the newly-cut end.

Here’s how it looks held at arm’s length.

Not pretty, eh?

Still, no-one is going to see it when it’s at work for me.

With the trimmed length of coat-hanger wire I made three S-hooks.

The abrupt ends (left-hand ends) will hook onto my ring of wire.

The right-angled ends will hook over the rim of the 25-litre pail.

And here we are, the three S-hooks doing their job perfectly.

Here I have scooped by rubber-gloved hand, enough vermicompost mud to fill the bag.

I have not tamped it down.

I expect the mass to settle over the next few days, even if none escapes the mesh.

Here for the record is a close-up shot of the base of the pail.

My theory is that I can just keep shoveling mass into the top of the bag, and scooping castings out of the pail on a periodic basis.

P.S. Did you notice how long it took me to make and implement the separator?

Next Time

The next time I do this I’ll

1: Measure and cut the length of coat-hanger wire to be the circumference (twice the width at the neck!) of the string bag; that saves having an extra foot of wire trying to enter my right eye while I’m threading

2: Wait until the threading is complete before bending the monkey-clasps in the ends of the wire.

3: Try for a suspension method other than three S-hooks. In my original pencil-and-paper plan I thought of wooden battens so that I could lift the bag off, like a stretcher; unhooking a half-filled bag of soil is going to be tricky.

Sunday, September 04, 2011

Of course, this morning I expected to see all the castings in the bottom of the pail, detritus in the sack, and the worms all huddled together.

There doesn’t seem to be much change ....

Monday, September 05, 2011

Sigh!

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