How to do worm composting in your house is our main topic. Rick has almost zero waste in his house by using worms to compost his kitchen scraps. Rick tell us how to make your own worm composting bins and where to get composting worms, aka red wigglers. You can also use night crawlers for worm composting.
Rick shreds paper, be it junkmail or newspapers for bedding material and mixes this with the food scraps from the kitchen into his worm composter. He tells about how to make your own worm composter and where to locate the composter in your home. And how to aerate your worm compost bin with a home made rig.
Fruit flies are easily controlled with the shredded paper and keeping the worm bin not too wet.
How to build an aquaponics system is next, Rick tell us how to make your own aquaponics or aquaculture system. If you have an aquarium, you have half the the parts to an aquaponics system. Balancing the pH of the system of a challenge. Right now Rick is using goldfish to fine tune his system, he is growing tomatoes, lettuce, peppers with his aquaculture system.
You can read some of Ricks aquaponics how-to posts here.
photo by Kahanaboy
Eric J.
Hey everyone! I thought I'd provide a little further info about vermicomposting (composting with worms).
Urban Worm Girl is a great resource to use
http://www.urbanwormgirl.com/
She provides a worm menu of this to feed the worms, and things to stay away from. http://www.urbanwormgirl.com/worm-menu/
Eric, she would be a great person to have on the show to provide better, and more accurate information (sorry Rick) about vermicomposting.
Eric J.
Eric J.
Hey everyone! Just thought I'd add a bit to Rick's talk on vermicomposting.
A great source of information is Urban Worm Girl: http://www.urbanwormgirl.com/
She provides a 'worm menu' for your worms: http://www.urbanwormgirl.com/worm-menu/
Rick mentioned that you can use night crawlers for vermicomposting. Night Crawlers aren't the best worms to use, as they are the worms that Rick mentioned at the end of the podcast that like to dig down and stay deep in the soil. They also aren't as productive as the Red Wrigglers.
You can get Red Wrigglers here: http://unclejimswormfarm.com/
I bought 500 worms from these guys, and probable have roughly three times that now.
I keep my worm bin under my kitchen sink, and no, there is no odor at all.
Eric, I think that the Urban Worm Girl would be a great resource to have on the show. She is full of information and very passionate about what she does.
Eric J.
Kevin
I've been listening for awhile and enjoy the show and greatly varied subjects you've covered. However, one thing has bothered me a bit. It sounds like you are putting an extra syllable in the word "propolis" (prop-o-lis). It sounds like you are saying propopolis (pro-pop-o-lis).
@rhkennerly
Might be the influence of the Greek Debt Crisis, Kevin.
OTOH, as a native born son of the South, I've studied English as a Second Language all my life.