Note: while this is a public blog, this post was written in the stream of consciousness style to help me figure out two things - vermiforming and intention-states. I haven't gone back through it to edit it for readability. I think you'll still find value in the information, but it will take some work.
Worm towers are perforated tubes embedded in the soil. Worm food is placed in the towers, and worms have the freedom to enter the tower to eat. They then exit the tower leaving castings and aerating the soil. It's a permaculture win/win.
I learned the worm tower idea from Geoff Lawton of Permaculture online. Check out this short video...
Permaculture emphasizes living in harmony with the natural systems and using them to greatest advantage. The worm tower idea is a great example.
Videos to build your own worm tower can be found on my YouTube playlist - Worm Tower Info.
This is a picture of my vermi-enhanced slow-compost pile. It didn't work.
My brown material is mostly pine needles. There's also scraps of cardboard, twigs, and bark. For green material, I occasionally add used coffee grounds. A few grass clumps got thrown in too.
It's formed into a circle with chicken wire and wood stakes. The idea was to concentrate it and help it heat up faster. Everything has a purpose.
The blue circle in the center is the top of my worm tower. It's made from a Lowe's 5-gallon bucket. There are holes cut in the sides of the bucket for the worms to travel in and out.
Inside the bucket is mostly adolescent compost from my compost tumbler and paper shreddings. Any nightcrawlers I find in the yard get thrown in there too.
Unseen is the shallow pit I dug to start the pile. My thinking was an earth berm would increase heat retention (I started this in Southern California in January, night time temps in the 30s and 40s) and it would be more natural for the worms.
I'm taking the worm tower idea and using it to vermiform my backyard. Vermiforming is a combination of vermicomposting and terraforming. I'm going to embed (almost bury) worm towers in a pattern in the yard. My idea is that these worm towers will generate a worm colony that can survive on its own. In the process of establishing the worm colony, the worms are improving the aeration and health of the soil.
Over the weekend, I wondered how far apart I should put the worm towers. I found surprisingly little written about worm migration online. I found this report, "Implications of a Potential Range Expansion in Ontario's Forested Ecosystems: A Preliminary Vulnerability Analysis" from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources which says worms can migrate up to 10 meters per year. And this report in the journal Forestry, which says that worms migrate 5-10 meters per year. Part of the Forestry report was based on "Colonization of new habitats by earthworms" in the journal, Oecologia.
I'm going to assume 10 meters per year is the average worm migration. That ballparks down to little less than 3 feet per month. So I'm placing the worm towers 5 feet apart to give each colony 3 feet to spread out and overlap with another colony. After a month I will remove one worm tower and advance the vermiforming system by 5 feet. Ideally, after one month a colony will be firmly established enough to survive on its own. This is just a guess (how can I measure this metric, I wonder). Even if the colony isn't firmly established it may be aided in its survival by its proximity to another colony. Again, just a guess.
The concept of vermiforming the ground using worms from my worm bin addresses another question I have. I've never heard anyone address this question, but I haven't specifically researched it yet, either. Isn't there a lot of inbreeding that happens in a worm bin? By vermiforming already active soil, the worms have the chance to mate outside of their direct lineage. This doesn't improve the health of my worm bin but it does seem like a healthier way to use worms than in a bin. For my starter bin, I'm going to periodically add a small tub of worms from Walmart, maybe monthly. Or maybe I could start a worm exchange online with local growers.
OK, so that's my concept of vermiforming. Now the reason I decided to stop doing the actual work and start writing about it instead. I wanted to test out my developing practice of intention. Intention is the practice of thinking specifically about every action I take and why I'm taking it. An intention is a SMART goal, a SMART goal with a time frame of immediate. It requires work to stop every time I'm going to do something and think about why I'm doing it (some might call this mindfulness) but I want to see if the little bit of extra work can yield tremendous gains in productivity and accomplishment. An intention done correctly would be tied to a goal, a goal is a SMART goal with a timeframe a little longer than immediate. A goal should be tied to an objective, an objective is a desire that's going to take more effort than I can accurately gauge. An objective should be tied to a state, a state is what I'm calling values. The term state implies more flexibility than values. People can change. States can change, ice turns into water turns into steam. I've changed over time, my attitudes have changed, my values have changed. I think part of my resistance to finding and living by my values is the permanence that's embedded in the concept. The concept of states which I was inspired by this morning (but if I do some research I bet I learned it somewhere and just forgot where, haha) should help me make progress with less resistance.
Today's project - Vermiforming
Intention - dig 5 holes deep enough to bury worm towers, fill worm towers with adolescent compost from tumbler and a handful of worms from my worm incubator.
Goal - turn the backyard soil into a nutrient-rich, healthy, and fertile place to raise vegetables. It should take one month to establish a 3 meter radius worm colony, and 2 months to start seeing vegetables.
Objective - a healthy backyard that is abundant with worms, vegetables, chickens, and goats.
Intention-State - productive farmer (is this really a state, in the sense of a value, not sure, but I can work on it, this concept is new to me, just figured it out today).
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