How to Prepare Vermicompost

Questions and Answers

Composting is an excellent option for reducing your environmental

impact and preparing a natural, beneficial soil additive. However,
many people who live in an apartment or condominium don't have
access to an outdoor space where they can manage a traditional
compost heap. There is, however, an alternative that allows for an
indoor composting operation with minimal space considerations:
composting with worms. This type of composting, called
vermicompost, is a matter of building a worm bin, filling it with bedding,
and simply discarding your food scraps into the bin for the worms to
break down. By following the steps below, you can quickly learn how
to prepare vermicompost.

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Steps

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Build or purchase a worm bin. The worm bin is the enclosure in which the worms
will live; it holds in the bedding and food scraps, regulates the amount of moisture in
the bedding, and blocks light (which is harmful to worms). Many gardening or organic
supply stores sell pre-assembled worm bins, but it is cheap and easy to improvise one
as well.

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  Your worm bin can consist of a large plastic storage bin with a lid. The bin
should be opaque to block light, and only about a foot (30 cm) deep, as worms
prefer to live just under the soil's surface. A typical family of 2 will need a bin
with 4 square feet (.37 sq. m) of surface area; a family of 4 will need 8 square
feet (.74 sq. m) of surface area.
 Drill several small holes in the sides of the bin for air flow. The worms won't
leave through these holes because of their aversion to light, but you can cover
the holes with wire screen or mesh if desired.

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Purchase worms for your vermicompost bin. The best types of worms to use in a
vermicomposting operation are red wigglers (scientific name Eisenia Foetida). The
earthworms that are typically found in outdoor soil don't break down materials
aggressively enough for indoor composting. The worms can be ordered from any
number of organic gardening stores; they will come shipped in a mass of peat. Order a
pound (.45 kg) of worms to begin your bin. They will reproduce quickly.

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Prepare the worm bedding. The bedding is the material that the worms will live in. It
can be made from any carbon-rich organic matter (such as paper or cardboard), but
newspaper works the best. Tear the newspaper into long, 1 inch (25 mm) wide strips.
You will need enough to fill the bin when packed loosely.

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Moisten the bedding. Worms can only live in a moist environment, so you need to
make sure the bedding is sufficiently moist. Begin by placing the newspaper strips into
the worm bin. Pour in some water directly from your sink tap (bottled, dechlorinated
water is better for the worms if available), and work it into the newspaper with your

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 hands. When finished, the bedding should feel like a wrung-out sponge - if you
squeeze it in your hands, no more than a drop or 2 of water should fall out.

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 Add a handful of soil to the bedding. In addition to the bedding, add a handful of
soil from outdoors. The soil provides "grit" for the worms, which helps them digest
your food scraps. It also introduces microorganisms into the worm bin that aid in
decomposition.

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 Add the worms to the vermicompost bin. Add the worms by scattering them onto
the bedding. Close the lid to block any light. Give the worms about a day without
adding food scraps to work their way into the bedding.

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 Add food scraps to the bin. To begin composting, simply toss your food scraps into
the worm bin and then reseal the lid. It helps to bury the scraps under a bit of bedding
to prevent fruit flies from appearing. At first, you want to avoid overwhelming your
worms with scraps. As time progresses, you can add more and more scraps.

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 Remove the worms when the compost is done. As the worms digest your food
scraps, they produce what are called "castings." These castings, which look like dark
black threads, make up your completed vermicompost. When plenty of castings are
present, you are ready to harvest the vermicompost. Remove your worms either by
hand, or by removing the bedding a bit at a time and letting the worms all move to the
bottom of the bin in a clump to escape the light.

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Harvest the vermicompost. After removing the worms, you can remove the
completed compost and store it for later use. Don't worry if there is a bit of undigested
bedding left in the compost, as it will break down fairly quickly.

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 10
Replace the bedding and re-introduce the worms. As the worms will have digested
much of the bedding, it's best to provide them with fresh bedding after harvesting the
compost. Prepare the bin as before, and repeat the process

A Step-by-Step Guide to Vermicomposting

All you need to know to start composting with worms, including constructing a wooden worm
bin, adding worms, compost bin maintenance, and using vermicompost.
By Mary Appelhof
July/August 1983
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Red wigglers are added to the bin.

PHOTO: MARY FRANCES FENTON
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My kitchen trash used to smell awful! Coffee grounds, banana peels, lettuce leaves,
onion trimmings, orange peels, and plate scrapings all joined with an accumulation of
papers, cans, plastic wraps, jars, and bottle caps to produce an unpleasant—and
unusable—collection of refuse. Although I emptied the trash can frequently to reduce
the odor in the kitchen, I had to hold my breath when I did!

But no longer! I've now solved my problem entirely with the help of Eisenia foetida,
the common red wiggler (or brandling) worm. That's right, worms eat my garbage!
What's more, they convert it to black, earthy-smelling, nutrient-rich humus that I use
to grow delicious garden vegetables and beautiful houseplants. Operating an indoor
worm-powered waste converter is easy, convenient, environmentally sound, and
inexpensive. It's fun, too. Anyone can do it, and here's how.

Basics of Vermicomposting

The essential components of a home vermicomposting unit ("vermi" = worm) are an

aerated container, some moist bedding, and a few thousand red worms. Because
you'll be working with a dynamic process, you'll need to carry out certain
maintenance procedures both to keep the worm population healthy and to obtain and
utilize the end product. These tasks are scarcely demanding: Set your vegetable
waste aside in a small container when preparing meals or cleaning up afterward, feed
it to the worms once or twice a week, and every few months or so, remove the
vermicompost and put the worms in fresh bedding.

To determine the size of your worm bin, keep track of the amount of kitchen waste
you throw away for a couple of weeks. Use a small bucket or can, and collect such
discards as potato peels, citrus rinds, greens, leftover vegetables, eggshells, and
bread, just about any non meat food residues from your kitchen. Weigh your
container to get the average number of pounds per week, then size the
vermicomposter accordingly. Your worm bin should provide approximately one

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square foot of surface for every pound of garbage you'll bury each week. For
example, the 8" × 2' × 2' box described here will handle about 4 pounds per week.
This bin will be adequate for many one- or two-person households. Another common
size is a 1' × 2' × 3' box, which will accommodate about 6 to 6-1/2 pounds of garbage.
Aeration is important, and since red worms tend to be surface feeders rather than
deep burrowers, a shallow bin with a large surface area is preferable to one that's tall
and deep.

Build a Worm Bin

For an 8" × 2' × 2' bin servicing a two-person household, you'll need the following
materials: four 8" × 23 3/8" pieces of 5/8" CDX plywood, one 24" × 24" piece of 5/8"
CDX plywood, a hammer, a drill with a 1/2" bit, and thirty-six 6d flooring or pallet
nails. (These nails have spiraled flutes on their shanks that increase their holding
power, a particularly important quality for wood that'll be both damp and dry.)

Alternate the overlap on the sides, and put the box together with three or four nails
per side. Hammer the bottom on, then drill nine 1/2" holes in the base for aeration
and drainage, and set the bin on blocks, legs, or casters to allow air to circulate
underneath. Although the worms rarely crawl out of the holes, small amounts of
bedding or worm casts will drop out, so you'll probably want to place a sheet of
plastic or a tray underneath the box when it's in its final location.

If you decide you'd like to make a fancy bin, constructed from a more attractive wood,
just be sure that you use exterior-grade lumber, since the box will be damp most of
the time. Also, avoid pressure-treated or highly aromatic woods such as cedar or
redwood, since they may be harmful to the worms.

Used continuously, an unfinished bin should last two to three years. You can
increase its longevity by letting it dry out for several days between setups, or by using
a rotation system with two boxes. Sealing all surfaces with a good finish such as
polyurethane, epoxy, or another waterproofing material will extend the box life
considerably.

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Vermicompost Bedding

Shredded corrugated cardboard, machine-ripped newsprint or computer printouts,

hand-torn newsprint, leaf mold, and animal manures all make satisfactory bedding for
the worm bin. Whatever materials are used, they must be able to hold moisture, allow
air exchange, and provide a safe medium uncontaminated by harmful chemicals—in
which the wigglers can work. Because they're light, fluffy, and easy to dampen to the
proper moisture content, shredded corrugated cartons are among the best materials
to use, but they may be difficult for the average worm-raiser to obtain. The least
costly bedding is hand-shredded newsprint. To make it, simply open a section of
newspaper, tear it in half, tear the halves in two, and so on, until you have a pile of
strips about one to three inches wide.

The native habitats of red worms are decaying leaves, manure, and leaf mold, so any
of these can serve as bedding, or as amendments to other beddings. Peat moss
added to shredded paper aids in water retention and helps prevent the paper strips
from matting, but don't use peat moss alone, as it's too acid for the worms.

Choosing the Right Worms: Type, Size, and Amount

There are earthworms and earthworms: Some are better for vermicomposting than
others. In my experience, red wigglers such as Eisenia foetida or Lumbricus rubellus
are the most satisfactory for several reasons. They process large amounts of organic
material, reproduce quickly and in confinement, and are easily obtained. (Sufficient
markets exist to encourage people to cultivate red worms on a full- or part-time basis,
so you can buy them by mail during almost any season. Look for advertisements in
gardening and fishing magazines.)

You'll want a worm-to-garbage ratio of 2:1. For example, if you bury an average of
one pound of garbage per day, you'll need two pounds of worms to consume it. I
normally put about half a pound of organic waste a day into my 8" × 2' × 2' bin, so I
use one pound of worms in my setup. Most ads price worms by the thousands. To
calculate your needs, just figure about 1,000 wigglers per pound (because unsorted
pit-run worms come in all sizes, there could be many more than 1,000 of them in a
pound).

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Bait-size, or breeder, worms are quite large and fat, and have a swollen band, or
clitellum, around the middle that indicates they're sexually mature. These grown
crawlers lay cocoons—egg capsules from which baby worms will hatch—more
quickly than pit-run worms do, and thus rapidly increase your bin's population, but
breeders usually cost more to begin with because of the extra labor required to sort
them. In addition, since breeders are relatively large, there may be only 700 to 800 of
them in a pound. (How did I find out the number of worms per pound? Well, the first
season that I marketed some of my own worms, I sold them for bait and counted out
50,000 creatures one by one. Count 50,000 of anything one by one, and you'll soon
figure out another way to go! I now sell by the pound.)

Whichever type you start with, pit-run or breeders, their population will eventually
stabilize at the number that can best be supported by the amount of food available
and the condition of their environment.

Setting Up a Home Vermicomposting System

Your home vermicomposting system will require a worm bin, some bedding, one or
two handfuls of soil, a sheet of black plastic to cover the surface of the filled bin, a
bathroom or utility scale, a gallon jug, a large plastic or metal garbage can (for mixing
the fresh bedding), and, of course, the worms.

Once you have your materials, you'll need to prepare the bedding by adding the
proper amount of moisture. A worm's body consists of 75% to 90% water, and its
surface must be damp in order for the animal to breathe. If you prepare the bedding
with approximately the same moisture content as the worm's body, then, you'll
alleviate any stress caused by a too-wet or too-dry environment.

It's easy to get 75% moisture with any dry bedding: Weigh the material, put it in the
clean garbage can for mixing, and add three times as many pounds of water as there
are pounds of dry bedding. It took 5 1/3 pounds of dry bedding to set up the 8" × 2' ×
2' box shown, so this required 16 pounds of water. (Since the old saying "a pint's a
pound the world around" is close to accurate, this weight is roughly equal to 2
gallons.) Once you've watered your medium, add one or two handfuls of soil to it to
provide grit for the worms' gizzards. Then mix the whole thing until the water and soil

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are well distributed throughout the bedding, and toss the entire contents into your
worm bin

Next, dump the worms on top of their freshly prepared home and gently spread them
around on the surface. Worms are photosensitive, so they'll gradually move down
into the bedding to avoid the light. Once they're "gone," dig a hole in the bedding
large enough to hold the amount of garbage you want to bury. Drop the leftovers into
the opening, spread about an inch of bedding over it, and then place a sheet of black
plastic on top of the surface to retain moisture and to keep out light. From then on,
rotate burial spots around the bin whenever you add more garbage (I bury mine
about twice a week).

What Not to Compost

Adding large quantities of meat and bones may present problems in a worm bin
because such substances are likely to create a good bit of odor, which is not only
disagreeable, but apt to draw rodents to the box. However, small amounts (plate
scrapings, for example) can be incorporated without fear. Be sure, of course, to keep
out anything nonbiodegradable, such as plastic bags, bottle caps, rubber bands, foil,
glass, or sponges. And if you have cats, set a screen or other shielding device on top
of your "wormstead" to prevent the felines from using the bin as a litter box!

Active worm bins have little or no noticeable odor. The light, fluffy bedding, the
aeration holes, and the presence of earthworms all help to make oxygen available to
the decomposer organisms that assist the worms in breaking down the organic waste
into humus. However, if conditions occur to prevent oxygen from circulating, other
(anaerobic) organisms take over, and their end products smell quite unpleasant. If
this happens, add more bedding, try to increase air availability, and don't put in any
more waste for a while. Assuming that the worms survive the trauma, the situation
should, given time, correct itself.

Worm Care

Basically, worm care consists of providing the wigglers with the proper environment,
checking them occasionally, and—other than that—leaving them alone! Daily care is
unnecessary: The less you disturb your industrious helpers, the better off they are.

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About six weeks after you start the bin, you'll notice changes in the bedding. It will get
darker, and you'll be able to identify individual castings (worm manure). What's more,
despite the regular addition of food waste, the volume of matter in the bin will slowly
diminish. As the proportion of castings thus increases, the quality of the environment
for the worms decreases. After a few months, you'll have to remove the worms and
the usable compost, and prepare a batch of fresh bedding.

Sorting Worms

Every four months or so, then, plan to spend a couple of hours sorting worms. It's
easy to do, and even fun when your family or friends help. Begin by gathering a 6-
foot-square sheet of heavy plastic, a light source (such as a lamp with a 100-watt
bulb), a plastic dishpan for the worms, a garbage can or heavy duty plastic bag to
hold the vermicompost, and some fresh bedding. Spread the plastic sheet on the
floor or on a large table, and overturn the entire contents of the worm bin onto it.
Make about nine cone-shaped piles out of this material. You should see worms all
over the place, but if the light is bright enough, they'll quickly move away from it
toward the center of each mound.

Now, go read a book or do something else for five or ten minutes. When you return,
you won't see any worms. Gently remove the surface of each pile. As you do so, the
newly exposed worms will again retreat into the mound. By following this procedure
one heap at a time, you'll find that when you come back to the first pile, its worms will
have disappeared again, and you can remove a second layer from each heap.

Eventually, the creatures will congregate in a mass at the bottom of each pile. Put
them in the dishpan, clean off any castings or compost, and weigh the worms. If you
haven't let the box go undivided for too long, you should have at least as many as
you started out with, perhaps more! (If you change the bedding every two to three
months instead of every four months, you'll harvest even more worms. As their
environment decreases in quality, the worms gradually die off and are composted
themselves.) After weighing them, put the worms in fresh bedding and let them "do
their thing", as before. Meanwhile, you can deal with the buckets of rich, lovely
vermicompost you scooped out in the sorting process.

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Your compost will vary in consistency, depending on how long the bin has been in
operation, how much and what kind of garbage was buried, and how much
decomposition has occurred. Some of the most recently buried food waste can go
right back into the fresh bedding. The rest of the vermicompost can be stored in a
plastic bag, garbage can, or corrugated carton, where it will continue to break down.
As it dries it can be used on your garden or houseplants.

During the sorting procedure, you're likely to encounter many earth-living creatures
you hadn't noticed before, including springtails, white "pot worms" or enchytraeids,
sow bugs, mites, and even a centipede or two. Except for the centipedes, which may
attack worms, most of these organisms help in the process of converting your
garbage to compost, so consider them friends.

Using Vermicompost

Vermicompost is a rich mixture of humus, wormcasts, and decomposing matter, so

use it selectively and sparingly! Sprinkle it into seed rows, or throw a double handful
into the hole in which you're transplanting cole crops or tomatoes. Later in the
season, top-dress the soil around the base of the mature plants to give them an
added shot of nutrients prior to harvest. Don't worry if worms or their egg capsules
are present in the compost. While the creatures live, they'll aerate the soil, produce
castings, add nitrogen from their mucus, and do all those other good things that
worms do for soil. Just don't expect them to thrive in your garden: Red worms aren't
normally soil-dwelling creatures, and they require great quantities of organic matter to
live.

Wormcasts are much more homogeneous, highly processed, and packed with
nutrients than vermicompost. In fact, by itself, this manure might contain high enough
concentrations of salts to inhibit plant growth. The solution is simply to use castings
sparingly or to dilute them with other potting materials such as peat moss, sand,
garden soil, vermiculite, or perlite. Different plants will respond differently, but a
mixture of 1/3 wormcasts, 1/3 perlite, and 1/3 woody peat is good for African violets.
The addition of a 1/4" layer of wormcasts alone to the surface of your houseplants'
soil should also produce positive results in a fairly short time.

A home vermicomposting system saves resources and reduces your waste-disposal costs.
With worms handling the organic materials, other refuse such as cans and bottles stay cleaner

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and become much easier to recycle. Offensive odors are minimized, nutritional values are
utilized, and the end product of the system is a valuable soil amendment and fertilizer, plus—
if you choose—bait for fishing.

The worm may be a lowly creature, but there's no doubt that it's high on the list of useful
ones!

IMPROVING LIVELIHOODS THROUGH VERMICOMPOSTING

1. Daniel, Joshua, Dhar, Sucharita and Desai, Jyoti, 2005. Improving livelihoods through
vermicomposting. LEISA. Magazine on Low External Input and Sustainable
Agriculture. September, Vol. 21 (3), Amersfoort, the Netherlands: 12-13.

2. Daniel, Joshua, Dhar, Sucharita and Desai, Jyoti, 2005. Improving livelihoods through
vermicomposting. LEISA India. Magazine on Low External Input Sustainable
Agriculture. , Vol. 7 (3), September. Bangalore: 19-20.

Human livelihood opportunities are often closely linked to soil fertility conditions in dry
tropical regions of India. Notwithstanding a common social background and possessing
almost similar natural resources, farmers of a locality exhibit surprisingly drastic dissimilarity
in their economic status. In such situations, more often than not, the factor determining the
economic well being of farmers is soil fertility. In particular, the biological component of the
soil, represented by living organisms and dead organic matter, is the major factor limiting
fertility of dry land soils. Therefore, improving the biological fertility is usually a priority of
land development programmes. If activities designed for such purposes also afford an
opportunity to earn a livelihood, the eventual benefit realised is much larger.

BAIF Development Research Foundation, based in Pune in India, has been engaged in
improving the livelihoods of rural communities through land-based activities. Most of the
projects implemented by BAIF are sponsored by development agencies and a majority of the
targeted beneficiaries are marginal farmers. The extent of degradation of their lands being so
acute, these farmers are forced to seek a livelihood elsewhere as migratory labour. Making
them realise that the land they possess can be turned into a valuable asset and encourage them
to return to their farms is the primary requirement of any development initiative. In this
regard, BAIF’s strategy has been to introduce sustainable systems such as tree-based farming
and encourage practices such as the use of compost to supplement the biological fertility of
soil. Although several methods of composting are practised, vermicomposting has been the
most popular method among participants in BAIF projects.

Vermicomposting

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Composting is the process by which biomass is broken down to humas, which has several
beneficial effects on soil physical and chemical properties. Further decomposition of humas
releases the nutrients contained in it for crop uptake. A requirement for composting is
organisms that feed on biomass and break it down to physically finer particles and chemically
less complex substances. In nature, earthworms and microorganisms decompose dead
biomass. When this process is initiated with the deliberate introduction of earthworms into a
stack of biomass, it is called vermicomposting.

The quality and the state in which biomass is available with most BAIF project
participants has a relevance as to why vermicomposting is preferred to other methods of
composting. Of the limited biomass available, farmers use straw, leaf litter and tender stem as
fodder for farm animals while hardy stem and coarse leaf are sources of domestic fuel. The
leftover biomass, after these immediate priorities are met, is coarse material that does not
break down easily. In such material, earthworms are more effective in initiating the
decomposition process and paving the way for subsequent microbial action.

Another source of biomass available to farmers is cattle dung. It is an excellent

substrate that undergoes composting on its own and becomes farmyard manure of very high
quality. Unfortunately, the dung available with small farmers does not compost well because
of the state in which it is available. Animals owned by them usually graze in the open and the
dung is relatively dry when collected. It is then left in a collection pit where it loses more
moisture. Therefore, dung collected in the open, unlike fresh dung, does not have the
microbial populations in required numbers to decompose into farmyard manure. However, it
becomes an excellent substrate for vermicomposting when wetted.

The method

The substrate for vermicomposting, on weight basis, is three parts of dry biomass (chopped
into pieces of less than 10 cm) and two parts of wet dung. The biomass and dung are mixed
well and wetted to have an overall moisture content of 30-40%. At this moisture level, a ball
made by pressing the substrate particles together breaks up when dropped. If it does not break
up, the moisture is too high whereas a ball cannot be made if the substrate is too dry. The
substrate is made into a bed of desirable length with 100 cm width and 50 cm height, and kept
covered with a wet gunny. After two weeks, 200 earthworms are introduced for every 100 kg
of substrate. The substrate is stirred and turned once a week, water sprinkled if it is too dry
and the bed remade. The vermicompost will be ready for use in about 45 days.

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Livelihood opportunity

Recognising the potential of vermicomposting in small farm conditions, BAIF introduced it to

participants in its development projects in several states of India. A component of many of
these projects was to grow fruit trees on marginal land, which required filling the planting pits
with manure and soil. Hence there was a need for manures such as vermicompost in these
project sites. Farmers would collect dung and leaf litter from their own farm or from the
neighbourhood and make the vermicompost with earthworms supplied by BAIF. The surface-
feeding species of earthworms such as Eisenia fetida were very effective because of their
tolerance to relatively higher temperatures prevalent locally. In order to emphasise the
importance of earthworms, they were not given free of charge. Every recipient was required
to ‘pay an interest’ of 200 worms in three months for every 1000 they received. As a result,
there were sufficient worms to go round in most project locations within a few months time.

As this activity caught on, it was observed that in most farm-holdings,

vermicomposting had become the responsibility of women as it required continuous
involvement without hard manual labour. The simple production process and flexibility in
terms of time needed to attend to the activity allowed the women to handle it comfortably
together with their household chores. In order to take advantage of the skills of women in
managing this activity and to convert the dung, leaves and other bio-wastes found littered in
rural areas, vermicompost making was evolved into an income-generation activity.

The concept of Self-Help Group, where 10-20 like-minded women work together with
a common aim, was adopted for this purpose. Groups were provided training and it was noted
that the women were quick to acquire the necessary skills and thereafter managed the activity
on their own. Each group received a kg of earthworms worth about US $25. In some
instances, the women were very reluctant to touch the earthworms initially, but the
perseverance of the trainers eventually paid off. Project staff visited the groups regularly to
conduct discussions and provided guidance. These interactions helped the women get over
their aversion to handling earthworms. The women realised that vermicompost production
was a simple activity requiring only a few hours each day, with the entire group sharing the
tasks. Based on an understanding each member collects dung and other biomass from their
farms, homesteads and common areas, including forests.

The vermicompost produced by the groups was procured in most cases by the BAIF-
implemented projects for use in the fields of beneficiaries establishing the tree-based system.

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The availability of this market outlet served as an incentive for the groups engaged in this
activity. Thus, vermicomposting as an income-generation activity has succeeded in almost all
the areas where it was introduced. In a project location in Gujarat, for example, more than
250 Self-Help Groups comprised of tribal women produced nearly 2000 tons of vermicompost
in a year. The value of this is about US $8500, a sizeable amount considering the economic
status of the local people. The members of the group share the proceeds from the sale of the
vermicompost.

Soil fertility

It is imperative that the vermicompost made by Self-Help Groups is used to enrich the fertility
of soils within the locality. Ideally, the biomass taken out from a farm by each member of a
Self-Help Group should return to the farm in the form of vermicompost. However, this is
difficult to ensure as the objective of the groups is income generation. As of now, the main
buyer of the vermicompost produced by the groups is the development projects implemented
by BAIF, so it remains within the village and used on small farms. Once the project activities
are completed, there is a possibility of the produce getting sold to large farmers outside the
villages. This export of biomass from the site of its origin is undesirable. It is expected that
the experience and affordability of the farmers in project villages would result in their buying
the vermicompost from the groups for their farms.

Vermicompost made by individual farmers is used for fruit trees as well as annual
crops. Some farmers who earlier used small amounts of chemical fertilisers in combination
with organic manures are now able to grow their crops with vermicompost alone and get
almost the same yield. In general, farmers are introduced to a package of improved practices
and application of vermicompost is one of them. Therefore, the quantitative improvement in
the productivity solely due to vermicompost use is difficult to ascertain. But the benefits in
different aspects of crop production are often narrated by farmers. An example is the
observation that when long dry spells intervened during the monsoon season, the paddy crop
survived in fields where vermicompost had been applied due to the increase in the water
holding capacity of the soil.

Another instance of successful use of vermicompost is in a BAIF project where a

group of small farmers in Gujarat were encouraged to adopt an intensive vegetable production
model. Each farmer cultivated more than 10 species of vegetables in a year on 0.10 ha of land
with irrigation. The rate of vermicompost application in these fields is 10-15 tons per ha per
year. In spite of heavy nutrient extraction through repeated harvests, these farms have been

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able to sustain their production during the past three years. Several of them are of the view
that the fertility of their land has been gradually improving because of the continuous addition
of vermicompost.

Sustainability

The sustainability goals of this initiative are two-fold: firstly, vermicompost making should
sustain as an income-generation activity; secondly, vermicomposting should contribute to
sustainable farming in the locality. With this in view, corrective measures are suggested
regularly in the method used as well as functioning of the groups. In the beginning of this
activity, more than 70% of the material used was dry dung and the remainder was straw and
dry litter. Some groups have been using the same proportion for wet dung as well. This was
corrected to not more than 40% dung, so that a larger proportion of straw and litter can be
made into vermicompost. The aim is to maximise the recycling of waste biomass for
increasing the biological fertility of soil.

Vermicompost making through Self-Helf Groups is yet another demonstration of

BAIF’s strategy of combining technical interventions with community mobilisation.

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