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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 12:38 pm 
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Hello,

I manage a vegetarian bed and breakfast in southern california. We fill the equivalent of a 3 gallon bucket in fruit scraps, veggie scraps in about 4 to 7 days. Breakdown is mostly banana peels, orange peels, apple rinds, lots of coffee grinds with filters and veggies.
I have a lot of land at my disposal so can absolutely put a system in place on the land.
There are bears and potential for rodents here so I was thinking of using a barrel type set up that spins but have no idea if that would be sufficient.

Added bonus we use all compostable cups and plates. These could be excellent for the compost if we could find an efficient way of shredding them before composting them. (any ideas regarding this are most welcome)

I have a worm bin that works quite well but it is too small for our volume.

I would love some help and advice from the experts here.

Thank you!


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 4:47 pm 
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Joined: Wed Jul 02, 2003 8:09 pm
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Location: Fort Worth,TEXAS
I have a friend who took a bunch of industrial 55+ gallon plastic barrels I wasn't using and drilled holes in them for drainage and uses them for compost. He puts the food and weeds in and rolls the bins regularly, and probably adds water. I haven't seen these, just heard his description. I think this is practical for him for the same reason - lots of hungry wildlife.

You'll be surprised how quickly the volume from that 3 gallon bucket reduces to a handful as the peelings dry. I'd started with one large barrel (one you can remove the lid from easily to add material) and add more if needed.

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 11:27 pm 
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Joined: Mon Mar 15, 2004 11:48 pm
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Location: California, San Joaquin Valley - home of 105* summers, foggy winters.
This is an old message, but a good question.

If you already have worm bins going, and you have plenty of organic material to provide, what you need to do is scale up.

When you get one bin with lots of worms in them, start another bin by dividing the contents into two bins, and let them reproduce again. Then when the worm population in those bins looks good, do it again. Now you have 4 bins. Keep doing that until you have enough bins to keep up with your organic material output. The worms will multiply up to whatever your output is.

The only problem is, you can't rush it. If you try to make 5 pounds of worms consume what would feed 20 pounds of worms, you'll end up with a mess. So, take your 5 pounds of worms, split them to 2.5 pounds each, and feed a little more than what 2.5 pounds of worms can eat, say, what 3 pounds of worms can eat. You are processing an extra pound of organic material, and in a few weeks or so, you'll have 3 pounds of worms per bins and you can then put in enough to feed 3.25 or 3.5 pounds of worms. By keeping just barely ahead of the population growth, you can process a little bit more and soon, you will meet your processing needs.

This might take a year or two.

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