Introduction to growing with Vermiponics www.vermiponicsonline.com
Hi Everyone, Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter and for downloading this mini ebook. Unfortunately there s not a lot of information available on vermiponics at the moment so what I ve aimed to do in this mini ebook is to try and give you as much information on vermiponics as possible based on both my own experience and based on what is available online. I ll be updating this book as more information on vermiponics and best practices becomes available and when I do, I ll let you know when a new version of this mini ebook becomes available via the vermiponics online newsletter. So, let s get down to the details! Serge PS if you have any questions about vermiponics please feel free to post them up on our Facebook page and I ll try and answer them in the next version of this ebook!
If you re reading this, you must be interested in what vermiponics is and how to grow plants with vermiponics and that s what this ebook is all about! Depending on what your experience is with growing, hydroponics and aquaponics might seem daunting to you. Well, I can tell you from personal experience that vermiponics is different. Once you finish reading this ebook you ll be surprised at how simple vermiponics is and you ll be wondering why you might not have heard of it before. First thing s first, what is Vermiponics? Vermiponics combines: vermiculture (that is, raising worms) and hydroponics (growing plants without soil). In hydroponics, plants take up nutrients from a nutrient solution (instead of taking up nutrients from soil). Vermiponics uses a by-product of worm compost, the wormbin leachate (sometimes called worm-juice ) to provide nutrients to the roots of the plants 1. Vermiponics was first discovered when aquaponic growers found red worms happily living in their grow beds. They noticed that the worms helped breakdown solid fish waste in the grow beds and helped the plants grow by making more nutrients available to them. This discovery led people to trial worm-only systems, such as a Saginaw Valley State University project 2 and a study completed at Queensland Central 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/vermiponics 22 http://www.svsu.edu/~dgzuzula/
University 3 in Australia. These studies paved the way for over growers to try and build their own systems in their backyards. So now that you know what Vermiponics is you might be wondering What s so great about growing plants with worm-juice, anyway? There s plenty of soil out there, why don t we just use the worm tea on soil grown plants. Well, that s the thing. There are lots of disadvantages to growing in soil. Anyone who s ever done more than half an hour of weeding can vouch for that! So that s the first plus of growing with vermiponics. Vermiponics lets you grow without soil. And did you know that agriculture accounts for 70% of the world s freshwater consumption 4? And most water used in agriculture is wasted due to evaporation or run-off! If you do the research, you ll find that soil-less growers can grow the same produce with 5 to 10% of the amount of water that soil-based growers use 5. This water-saving can also be achieved in aquaponics and hydroponics but as you ll find out in the next section, those two methods of growing are not as sustainable or environmentally friendly as some people think. Vermiponics turning kitchen scraps into fresh food. Relative to the alternatives, vermiponics is truly one of the most sustainable ways of producing food. First, hydroponics relies on inorganic fertilizer to be mined, processed, packaged and then delivered to where it ll be used. 3 http://www.hydroponics.com.au/issue103-sustainable-aquaponics/ 4 http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/tables/worlddata-withdrawal_eng.pdf 5 https://www.brightagrotech.com/water-use-efficiency-hydroponics-aquaponics/
All of this takes energy and at the end of the day it just benefits Big Agra (as they re the ones that own all of the fertilizer and chemicals companies). And although aquaponics is better because it s more local and uses a sustainable source of nutrients (fish waste) at the end of the day aquaponics is only as sustainable as the fish feed that you give to your fish. And if it s a commercially produced fish feed, then chances are that it s made from sea caught fish, which indirectly contributes to the over fishing of the oceans. So what makes vermiponics different? Well, by combining vermiculture with hydroponics, vermiponics allows you to feed your kitchen scraps to your worms and then re-use the worm juice that they produce to grow quality vegetables at home. There s no extra fertilizer or mining or transport involved. The whole process is local, sustainable and good for the environment. And although you could grow with aquaponics and feed your fish black soldier fly larvae, vermiponics is far simpler to set up than aquaponics. Aquaponics takes several months for your system to cycle (which is the process where good bacteria is allowed to grow in your system) whereas with vermiponics you can start in under an hour if you ve already got a wormbin ready. So what do you need to grow with vermiponics? There s lots of different ways that you could grow with vermiponics, but I ll just use my current set up as a quick example. I m growing with the wicking method which is how self-watering pots work.
Basically, a wicking bed works on the following principle, plants are grown either in soil or a growing medium at the top of the wicking bed, and below the growing medium is a reservoir of water (or in the case of vermiponics, diluted wormbin leachate) as the plants roots soak up water from the growing material more and more water is wicked up into the growing medium from the reservoir by wicks (or ropes). It s the simplest form of hydroponics to grow with and it s very quick and easy to set up. So how do you set up a vermiponic wicking bed? What you ll need. - A wicking bed (we use the greensmart pot but if you re outside of Australia you might want to take a look at a self watering grow bed or you can build your own) - Rope (preferably made out of natural fibre) - Coconut coir - Perlite and - Your seedlings (by the way, you should wait at least 2-3 weeks after the seeds sprout before planting your seedlings, you want to make sure that they have strong enough roots to actually wick the water and nutrients). Step 1. Cut your rope in lengths that fit the size of your wicking bed, you want to make sure that the rope can reach the bottom of the reservoir.
Step 2. Add a layer of coconut coir. This will assist in the wicking and also gives the roots of your plants a medium to grow into. Step 3. Transplant your seedlings - its best to do this either early in the morning or late in the afternoon. As always, you need to be careful when transplanting seedling so that you don t break the roots of your seedlings otherwise they won t be able to take up the nutrients. Step 4. Water your wicking bed from the top with your wormbin leachate, make sure that you wet each rope (or wick) thoroughly. The wormbin leachate should generally be diluted 1 part leachate to 10 parts water (but a better rule of thumb is the colour of the wormbin leachate, it should look like weak tea). Step 5. Add perlite to the top of your wicking bed to help retain water. And there you have it your very own vermiponic wicking bed.
After this, just place the wicking bed in a sunny spot and top up the water level with wormbin leachate whenever it gets to a low level. And how is ours doing? Take a look for yourself.
By now you know how easy it is to start growing with vermiponics with your very own wicking bed but if you have any questions about getting started then head to our Facebook and just post your question on our wall. Thanks for reading everyone! Serge Blogger at www.vermiponicsonline.com