Filling the Worm Condo

Finally today I did some work on the GP outside garden. One of the first things I did was drill a few more holes in the bottom of the worm condo to replace the ones that were plugged up. As regular readers of the this diary know one of the essential ingredients of a GP Home Model Garden is a Worm Condo. It is the place where worms can eat all the finely cooked compost they desire and leave the condo, when they are finished, full of the black gold of worm castings. After drilling the holes, I started to fill the box with leaves and some coffee grounds.

An outside worm condo like this one would normally go empty in the winter. The worms are outside in the worm depository, where it is warm and cozy or inside the GP box in the sunroom. However, I discovered last winter that if I fill the worm condo in fall with leaves and add some coffee grounds and table waste, that by spring, when the weather is warm, the compost is cooked and ready for worms to do their thing.

As I noted before, worm castings are valuable. They can be used directly in the garden or to make “tea”. In an organic food store castings sell for about $20-$30 a pound, and a five gallon bucket goes at Growing Power for $50-$75. As you can see, this worm condo, when the worms are ready to move on, has a very valuable content.

Also today I started another soil pile from the contents of the containers and buckets that I used to grow in. This worm-enriched soil falls somewhere in between good compost and castings. However, it is valuable to top the mounds in the garden next year and some of it I will keep in the garage for winter use in the sunroom or in the house for potting soil. Mixed with some coir for air it makes an excellent planting soil.

My personal strong belief is that every community garden should have a worm condo. They are easy to make or cheap for someone to make for you.

Tonight at a wedding reception in the Madison area I was talking with an old friend who was having trouble selling his house. The price of housing in Madison area, like everywhere in the country, is dropping. As the price of housing drops the value of worm condos full of castings is on the rise. Maybe we should add a worm condo to every house with a backyard. This small investment may enrich the sale of the house as it enriches the soil for growing.

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