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nygardener

Outdoor heap + indoor bin?

20 years ago

Is there any reason to have both an outdoor compost pile and an indoor worm bin? I have a compost pile outdoors but am thinking of having a worm bin too, to compost during the winter and for things that might attract critters outdoors. Is this creating extra work for no good reason? Does anyone have both?

Comments (2)

  • 20 years ago

    I just started a worm bin. Partially for fun, partially for use in winter, and partially for super soil amendment. I also produce about 10 yards of compost a year. You would need a pretty big set of bins to compost that much stuff. I also hot-compost a lot of yard debris that may contain seeds, as well as meats, cheese, oils, pest animals. I wouldn't put those in an indoor vermi-bin :)

  • 20 years ago

    Having an indoor worm bin and outdoor regular compost bin is the way to go and better than having only one or the other.

    Worm bins can't produce the output of regular compost bins. If you're like pablo producing 10 yards a year of compost that's not something realistically you'd send to worms. Compost works best in batches, and can break down things worms can not (like wood chips). Regular composts can also handle unlimited volumes unlike worm bins. So, regular composting is a better use of your lawn, wood, leaf clippings, and because it works best in batches like yard work produces isn't a particularly good choice for kitchen scraps (storing it until you have a batch... yuck). Regular compost isn't a particularly good use of cardboard & paper either. Since compost "recycles" nutrients and card board and paper have little in them to begin with, they don't contribute much to the end product when composted.

    Enter the worms. Worms create nutrients. Remember the paper & cardboard with little nutrients? Well, sent through a worm it transforms it physically and chemically into fertilizer! Paper and card board are perfect in a worm bin (bedding), and better than leaves because they don't matt and work great with kitchen scraps, because you don't have to store them until they're yuck you just put them in.

    I like to think of the two going hand in hand. All the products of a household (paper, card board, kitchen scraps, lint, hair, dust bunnies, eggshells, spoiled foods) are better in a worm bin because most are low in nutrients and add little to a regular compost, but in a worm gets transformed into the richest organic fertilizer known to mankind. All those products are also something you have to deal with year round which a worm bin is a year round deal.

    Compost is recycled nutrients, which is why your yard wastes (grass clippings, leaves, wood chips) which are high in nutrition should be composted and then placed in the garden because it will then feed your worm population out there, as your garden worms & microbial life turn it into nutrients, aerates your soil, fixes moisture, etc.

    Anyway, I like to think of regular compost as feeding the microbial life and worms in my garden which keep my garden soil healthy, aerated, and moist and like to think of the results of my worm bins as organic fertilizer and keep my plants happy. Better to have both, they perform different main functions in your yard, and originate from different aspects of your house (one from yard waste, one from household waste). Neither better without the other.

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