Geoff Lawton worm tower

Thought this video was good.  Short and informative.

Bury a 5 gallon bucket between 2 fruit trees(or in your garden). The bucket has no bottom and has holes drilled in the side.  Fill it with manure and food scraps, water it in, add worms, and put the lid on. I liked his multi functions-add water to the lid for a mini bird bath and use that lid as a flat spot (and slightly elevated) for a sprinkler.

Watch "Compost Worm Tower" on YouTube

I wonder what he means by "compost worms" in this context?

I understood it as not the regular earthworms in your soil.  Red wrigglers being an example of a compost worm. It may be this next video where he talked about it. Something like " our earthworms eat the castings of the compost worms (red wrigglers)."

In this one he uses a bathtub. He covers the drainage,  capturing the "tea" and sorting the worms to one side to start a new pile(with them) so the rest of the castings can be used.


Watch "Compost Worm Farming" on YouTube

Upon reflection, I don't think he's doing anything all that different than my rat digester.  But it would be nice to know what kind of worms he's seeding his decomp container with.  My digester just relies on whatever comes along.

I don't know if red wrigglers exist in my location.  I've never seen anything that matches that description.  But I am color vision deprived and I may have just assumed that every worm I ever saw was an earthworm...

I agree. I take the lazy approach with most things. Earthworms show up in organic rich soils, or burying scraps.... Same with mushrooms. Both are there or come if you don't poison the grounds. It is pretty simple.

The bucket thing seemed lazier though. Once done, the hole is dug for several weeks or longer. I liked the idea. Easy enough where the wife can do it also. Remove lid, dump it in, reattach lid.

I switched from my normal mega compost piles to applying spent hay/manure straight to the ground with a manure spreader. I am trying to keep the ground mulched that was tore up during earthworks. The lack of a compost pile has me dealing with how to integrate the kitchen scraps. This solves it brilliantly and lazily.

In my area red wrigglers are sold as fish bait. A couple of small tubs should populate the bucket, then build up from there.

I made one today. Pretty straight forward. Just make sure the side holes are below grade. Used fish worms that were marked "red".

Found this to be a good description:
Red Wigglers vs Earthworms
"An earthworm eats soil. It gets it's nutritional needs from the living things in the soil (fungi, protozoa, bacteria, etc)."...."..a red wiggler eats decaying matter. Red wigglers like manure, vegetable matter, rotten fruit, etc."...."A red wiggler worm is segmented just like a nightcrawler, but it is smaller (which is why you generally do not find it in a bait shop)."

It looks to me that you have earthworms Wayne. Probably not going to very effective at breaking the contents of your bin down for you.

Thanks gerry. I also noticed i called them "wrigglers". My brother has the correct ones. Has had a bin going for years.  Time for a phone call.

My red wigglers came in. A placed a pot over one bucket for shade, and set some leafy twigs over the other one. It just seems hot in there from direct sun. I am sure its fine a few inches down.