蚯蚓堆肥法 (一)

今日係我地正式試運作蚯蚓堆肥系統一週年，所以想藉此分享一下呢個奇妙既堆肥試驗過程。

呢個亦係想跟進番上幾個月出嘅關於「堆肥在南丫」嘅貼文同時一樣再強調：純粹想分享吓一啲喺南丫島做堆肥嘅經驗同想法而我地絕對唔係專家，不喜勿插！

Today is an official one-year anniversary of our vermicomposting operation and we would like to share our journey of this amazing composting method with you all.

This is also a follow up on our previous post "Composting in Lamma" and like we said before: purely to share some experiences and thoughts about composting in Lamma and we are certainly no expert in this area so please bear with us!

咁咩係蚯蚓堆肥法呢? 正如之前既貼文所講，呢個係生物加上帶氧嘅堆肥方法，利用堆肥蚯蚓（唔係平時喺泥土見到嘅普通蚯蚓)去消化(通過細菌/真菌/等)有機材料。

So what is vermicomposting? As our previous post said, it is a biological + aerobic compost method by using compost worm (not garden worm) to consume (through bacteria/fungus/etc) the organic materials.

<關於堆肥蚯蚓>
無錯，並唔係普通花園泥土中搵到個種蚯蚓，而係目前 9000 幾種蚯蚓品種裏面，認定為最能夠採用嚟做蚯蚓堆肥既個大約 7 個品種。詳細唔列出但我地用緊既品叫 Eisenia Andrei (比較多人聽過既名係歐洲紅蚯蚓)

<About Compost Worms>
Yup, not the regular earth worms you find in your garden soil but a specific type of worms in particular good for using in vermicomposting. Among more than 9,000 species of earthworms in the world there are around seven species of earthworms have been identified as suitable for vermicomposting. Not going to list all but the species we are using is called Eisenia Andrei (or a more familiar name is “red wiggler”).

好多人(包括我地)都成日會問點解普通花園泥土中搵到個種蚯蚓唔可以用嚟做蚯蚓堆肥？學說因為普通蚯蚓只適合生活係深層土壤中(蚯蚓堆肥係淺層環境)，不能生存於被控制既環境內，繁殖能力唔夠強，不能有效率咁幫助分解有機物料，所以唔適合用嚟做蚯蚓堆肥。而堆肥用嘅蚯蚓品種係表層生活既品種，適應環境力強，繁殖快並可有效率咁幫助分解有機料，所以更適合用嚟做蚯蚓堆肥。為左求證（其實主要係因為我地當初搵唔到專用嚟堆肥用嘅蚯蚓，我地實驗過用我地農田泥土中搵到個種普通蚯蚓去試做蚯蚓堆肥，係網上買左我地第一個蚯蚓箱，再不停捉左好多條蚯蚓放入箱內開始做蚯蚓堆肥嘅實驗。

Most people (ourselves inclusive) will always wonder why regular garden soil earth worms can’t be used for vermicomposting. It said it is because the garden earth worm live in deeper level of soil (vermicomposting is a shallow environment), can’t survive well in a contained environment, not repopulate fast enough and can’t process organic waste efficiently for the vermicomposting operation while the compost worm live in surface layer of the soil, adapt well in contained environment, tough and repopulate fast and can process organic waste efficiently. We did try using our garden earth worms in order to prove the theory (actually was just because we did not have access to any of those seven species of compost worms at the beginning). So we bought our first worm bin and catch as many earth worms as we can from our garden then put them inside he worm bin for our vermicomposting test.

經過幾個月後既實驗，我地既結論係，蚯蚓堆肥箱內既有機物料都一樣會分解哂（相信係任何有機物料無論點最終都會自然分解左)，但轉化成既物料就唔係蚯蚓糞(變成類似普通堆肥後出嚟既堆肥)，不過最重要既結果，係呢 d 普通蚯蚓係箱內唔會繁殖，更加由原本手指
咁粗縮細到好似牙籤咁幼 …

After couple months of experiment, our conclusion is the organic waste we put inside the worm bin will still be decomposed (I believe any organic materials will be decomposed eventually no matter what) but it didn’t really turn into vermicast (more like a compost to me). However, the most important thing we learnt is, the garden earth worms will not grow or populate properly inside the worm bin. In fact, they all shrink from a finger size worms into tooth pick size worms …