After months of use, I am very happy with this bathtub worm bin.
It’s a fertilizer-making machine! We throw in kitchen scraps, and we get rich leachate that the gardens love
Check out my new video on it right here.
Here’s the build video from almost exactly a year ago:
It’s so simple!
I got the idea from Geoff Lawton. He presents his here:
In the past I have kept worms in an old fridge, in a broken dishwasher and in a dual-stacked homemade Rubbermaid worm bin. This method is my favorite so far.
Lots and lots of good worm juice for the garden!
You can have greener thumbs by this weekend!
8 comments
Hi, David! I just finished “Grow Or Die,” and even though I’ve been gardening for over a decade, I learned a lot of new, good info (where was this book ten yrs ago, lol). Thanks for that!
I have one question. Your neighbor who spaces his beds 3 ft apart and depends on “the Good Lord” to water them – does he also space the individual plants farther apart than what is typically recommended? An off-the-water-grid reader wants to know! Thanks a lot, and keep sharing your journey. :)
I believe the corn was a foot apart inside the rows.
Thanks! A quick search reveals that’s about typical. Have a productive growing day today. ;)
Good morning David,
Joshua here again, I just finished reading Steve Solomon’s Intelligent Gardener, absolutely fascinating subject. I’m getting ready to send off some soil samples and see how abysmal my native Florida/construction grade fill sand is. I’ll probably do 3 samples, 1. My native soil (un-ammended areas) down to 6 inches, 2. My native subsoil (un-ammended areas) down to 18 inches. and 3. My amended garden areas where I’ve put 6+ inches of compost/potting soil down over the last 2 years.
I know from your previous posts that I should probably add some Bentonite Clay and BioChar to up my soil’s TCEC. Do you have any recommendations on application rates for each for say a 100 sqft bed? My initial gut instinct for clay was to spread maybe 2x 50lb bags of kitty clay on each 100 sqft bed (currently has 5 inches of compost/potting soil on it) and mix it in. But that’s just a guess.
As far as biochar is concerned, I really have no clue. Is there a metric for how much needs to be added per 100sqft to adequately raise your TCEC?
Hope these questions help someone else as well.
Thanks again,
Joshua M.
I’m curious about how much biochar to use myself.
Hey David! Got my hands on a free tub from a friend who just redid her bathroom, if I can’t find safe horse or cow manure can I use compost from my bin or black Kow?
Hey David,
So I’ve been worm composting for a little over half a decade now and have been using diluted worm lechate without any issue. I’ve been seeing a major debate recently over whether lechate should or shouldn’t be used in the garden due to toxins in the lechate.
I’m aware that you have not only used worm lechate in the garden, but have taken it a step further with anerobic liquid fertilizer. What is your opinion of all the scientific studies that have lead many prominent YouTuber Gardeners to promote not using worm lechate?
Could you please write and article and/or make a video sharing your thoughts and reasoning on this whole lechate debacle? It makes no sense to me that well to-do online gardeners and researchers are encouraging us to get rid of lechate all together.
Thank you for your writings and videos David. I thank God for you and appreciate you as a fellow gardener, human, and Christ follower.
After reading his South Florida Gardening book and watching his Youtube videos on Terra Preta soil, it seems like the more the merrier. In those videos he dug down 3 feet and then alternated with biochar, clay slurry, compost, clay shards, bones, and then his native soil. So I’ll probably just do something like add a 5 gallon bucket’s worth to each bed once or twice a year when I flip for the season and ammend the beds.
David, do you think that in mixing the clay and charcoal into the top 6 inches, it will eventually sink down into the sandy subsoil? I guess as I broad fork it each season, it will inevitably slowly mix at least down into the 12 inch range.
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