Making Worm Compost Tea - Back to the Homestead



Throw out all your chemical fertilizers and start making your own compost tea. Not to mention you'll find an avenue to dispose of your food scraps. Think about it: You've just finished your meal and have scraps left from when you were cooking your meal, your 8-year-old didn't finish all his and you're left with the task of either throwing the food in the garbage or composting it.
An idea is to feed the scraps to worms! Worms? Why worms?

Making Worm Compost Tea



Supplies needed:

30+ gallon container with a lid
Two Port Aquarium Air Pump
Two Aquarium Air stones
5 Gallon Paint Strainer
1 Bottle of Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed 1 Quart (or equivalent)
1 Bottle of Alaska Fish Fertilizer 5-1-1 Concentrate 1 Quart (or equivalent)
Roughly 30-35oz of unsulphured molasses (the kind you can eat or the horticulture molasses (avoid the feed molasses))
2-3 Gallons of Worm Castings (either home-grown or purchased (use compost or garden soil if worm castings are not available))

Here are some links to the equipment we used in the video:
 

The Bathtub Wormbin

The Bathtub Worm Bin

November 23, 2013

We’re getting down to business.

These videos serve a dual purpose. They serve to both give back and to work as a mutually beneficial learning tool.

Giving Back

There are three ethics in permaculture:

Care for the earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply. This is the first principle, because without a healthy earth, humans cannot flourish.

Care for the people: Provision for people to access those resources necessary for their existence.

Return of surplus: Reinvesting surpluses back into the system to provide for the first two ethics. This includes returning waste back into the system to recycle into usefulness.

The “Return of Surplus” ethic is not all about giving your homegrown goodies away. It’s about taking what you have gained from your efforts and putting the surplus back (“back” is where you feel it should be) to promote a sustainable system. It does not only deal with the “extra” tomatoes that you give all your neighbors. Giving back from your sustainability can come from your gardening efforts, your home efforts, your hobby efforts, your energy efforts and even your learning efforts. I have learned so much from others (You Tube videos, Blogs, Web Sites, Magazines, Books, Podcasts); it only makes “permaculture sense” to take what I have learned and give that back.

The Mutually Beneficial Learning Tool

Am I a professional permaculture designer? No! Not even close. I am just getting started on my permaculture adventure. However, I feel that if I learn something from someone and then teach it to another, I have solidified that information in my mind. Making these videos helps me organize the lessons I have learned, repeat the information while practicing the fundamentals of the lessons learned and to offer an avenue of motivation and criticism (I need all I can get of both) from you the viewer.

By nature, we humans want to share what we know. How many times have you been in a conversation and all the while the other is speaking you’re thinking about what you want to say? You Tube is a great avenue for others to tell the world what they know. But also for the “others” to comment back and say, “Dude! That’s not right at all.” OR “Have you considered ‘this’ or ‘that’?” The comments I receive from you, the viewer, help me learn more and more about the information I present.

This week we are making a worm bin out of a bathtub. I filmed this video concurrently with the last video I made but have been holding onto it for the past month. There will be a follow-up video very soon showing the progress of the worm bin and how it’s holding up.