Worm towers
Darren pointed me toward worm
towers, which are a
way of integrating small-scale worm bins into your garden. As Milkwood explains, "Essentially a
worm tower is an in-garden worm farm that allows the
worms and their nutrients to interact directly with the surrounding
garden bed."
Simply take a two foot
long, 6" diameter PVC pipe, drill a bunch of holes around it for
aeration, bury it a foot deep in the soil of your garden, and fill it
with worms and bedding. Top the worm tower with a cap (like an
upturned flower pot) to protect the worms from the sun and then toss in
your food scraps and extra bedding just as you could in a normal worm
bin.
The innovative part is
that the plant roots and microorganisms in the surrounding soil can
also interact with the worm bin, sucking up worm tea and eating
castings as they appear. The worms can migrate down into the
below-ground portion of the worm tower when cold weather strikes, which
makes 
this small-scale worm bin
much more able to deal with outdoor winter temperatures than the
typical household-size worm bin.
I'm enthralled by the
idea and am suddenly envisioning a worm tower in each of our garden
beds, fed each week with cafeteria scraps and paper waste from the
local school. I guess the sticking point would be Lucy --- would
she dig up the worm tower to get to those rotting hamburgers?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Jerry over at http://blacksoldierflyblog.com/ has spent a lot of time designing a container that anyone can build and use black soldier flies to compost food. I built a basic model this last summer but it turns out that the flies don't do well in my area.
I would bet that you could take some ideas from Jerry's container and bury it in the ground so that you don't have to build a drain like he has. Using a five gallon bucket with a lid might help with dogs that like to dig.
I have five bins of red wrigglers going around my house and have been doing alot of experimentation with using household containers to make vermicomposting work indoors. I'm intrigued by these worm towers -- are they meant to house the eisenia worms or regular (outdoor) earthworms?
Given how expensive they are, I don't know if I want to put my eisenia worms outdoors -- I'm in zone 4b in Ontario, Canada -- I don't think they'd last the winter in there.
Also, just wondering, have you heard of Hot Spots (is that the right word) -- it's where you put kitchen waste into holes in the garden and then cover it and let it go? Earthworms naturally come to this spot once the microbial mix is right, and would do the work of passing nutrients into the soil, without needing the tower?
I'm loving all this stuff on worms -- thanks Anna and guest contributer. I really would love to hear back re: my questions. Thank you:-)
David --- We've been very interested in black soldier flies for a while, and I think we're far enough south that we might have good luck with them. So far, we'd been held back by lack of copious food scraps, but if we can get cafeteria waste, we'll definitely start experimenting with them and post all about it! I'm curious to hear where you're located?
J --- The worm towers are meant to house red wrigglers, although I wouldn't be too surprised if common earthworms came up and visited now and then. I suspect you're right, though, that it's too cold in zone 4b to use worm towers through the winter, but you might have luck with one of the large-scale worm bins that I've been posting about this week (if you can find enough food for them.) The heat of decomposition will keep your worms active all winter if you fill your bin with enough mass. Alternatively, you could probably build worm towers for the summer, then harvest the worms to bring in for the winter.
I hadn't heard the term Hot Spots, but I had heard of pit composting, especially in areas where you plan to plant potatoes, squash, or other hearty crops.
Thanks! Maybe I should experiment and see if I can keep an insulated bin going outdoors this winter. I have access to lots of food waste -- not many people around here compost -- so I could probably get enough going to keep them plugging through the winter.
I wonder if a plastic bin, with old towels and wool blankets, inside a cardboard box would work? Because of the crazy, ambidextrous, man-eating raccoons in this city, worms have to stay in a protected area. I think I'm getting inspired to try outdoors...THANKS!!!
I think worm towers is a great idea. You won't need to harvest vermicompost anymore since the worms will spread them for you.
I am trying this to a limited degree. I'm using a clay flower pot half b buried in the garden. Strangely though, although I put in the basic bedding, food and moisture, the worms keep disappearing. Makes me think they're not so fond of that spot.
I wonder if the same thing would happen with worm towers.
J --- I don't think that just insulating the boxes will be enough to protect your bins over the winter unless you upgrade to a much larger size. I think that Binet Payne's 8X4 boxes are a good size to strive for if you want to overwinter them, but of course, that means finding loads of scraps!
Chris --- I've noticed that if worms don't like their bin, they leave, but if you get all of the factors right, they stick around. That's what the worm tower authors say about their bins too --- if you get it right, the worms will prefer the high food environment inside the tower. Without seeing your bins, I couldn't say what might be going wrong, but you should check out my post about setting up a new worm bin (http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Setting_up_a_new_worm_bin/) and see if anything jumps out at you. Good luck!
I think the clay pot could be the problem. How many holes do you have in the pot? Different worms like different depths. Just one hole at the bottom could be a problem. Try a PVC pipe, or even a plant pot, but put some holes in the side. And if you're using red wrigglers, they prefer a more moist environment. Vege scraps are perfect. The clay pot may be absorbing the moisture out of the scraps and making the environment dryer than the worms like. Also keep it covered or the worms will move out.