Woo's Worms
General Composting
Woo's Method
First of all I would like to mention I am not a scientist, biologist, professional gardener or a farmer. I am a retired resident of Orleans Massachusetts who enjoys gardening and fishing. I have been doing some sort of gardening most of my life. I have gone through stages where I concentrated on trees and shrubs, Vegetables, and flowers.
After moving from NJ to Cape Cod, I found the quality of the soil at my house on the cape was poor being mostly sand with little organic matter. I decided to replace or refurbish the soil in all the gardens and build a number of new raised bed gardens for vegetables.
Step 1 - I expanded the existing compost area behind my house to have a pile compost brought in from the Orleans dump, a pile of horse manure from a local resident who has horses, a pile of sandy soil removed from some of the gardens, and the existing pile of leaves, grass clippings, seaweed, etc. I also have a pile of heavy compost materials such a sticks, wood, and heavy brush. This is out of the way since it is a long term composting situation not currently being used. The compost from the dump and the horse manure piles are replenished at least on a yearly basis as they become depleted. The others are added to from waste around the yard. See Picture below:
Step 2 - Most of my gardens are contained with some sort of untreated wood to raise the beds where possible. If the soil is very poor in a garden, I remove it and use it for fill or save some to be mixed later on with compost and horse manure. Once the garden is dug out to at least 8 inches I refill it with a screened mixture of old soil, compost from my compost pile, compost from the dump, and composted horse manure. This is a slow process since I sift the mix of materials into a wheel barrow. When the garden I filled up, I mix it well and then add a bale or so of peat moss depending on the garden size. The end result is very nice rich soil with no rocks since the sifter I use has a 1/2" mesh. Turning over the soil is very easily done every year.
Step 3 - Since I am into growing worms, I use worm castings fertilizer when I do my planting. This addition greatly enhances the soil. No chemicals are used in the gardens. Worms are also added to the compost pile to speed up the decomposition process. See Open Compost Piles page for a short video of the worm seeding process I use.
Step 4 - In the fall sometimes I give the older gardens some additional horse manure or compost from the compost pile. Some of the gardens get mulched with chopped leaves and grass clipping which is turned under in the early spring.
Step 5 - On occasion I have replace the soil in gardens that seem to have soil born diseases.
Step 6 - Soil for for the green house plantings are sifted from the best materials in the composting area.
Step 7 - Since worm compost is a key element in my soil mix, I have a number of outside containers where I grow my worms for compost. I have 3 large wooden boxes and a large black plastic barrel which are set up with a shredded newspaper bedding for the red wigglers. So far the red wigglers have survived freezing temperatures in these containers. I do no special insulation, but last winter they did survive. I have over 30 smaller worm composting containers in the house which do not have to endure freezing temperatures. Having red wigglers in containers outside is not recommended in freezing temperatures, so maybe I have just been lucky. Peridically I add red wigglers to my compost piles to help speed up the composting process.
My method is very labor intensive since I do it all personally by hand, but now that most of my gardens are built maintenance won't be too bad.
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Compost from
the dump
sandy soil removed from gardens
Compost from
the dump
Compost pile of leaves, grass, weeds etc.
Heavy compost materials
New Horse
manure pile
Old Horse
manure pile
