Matt Drane of AgriBio Systems showed us how they produce 40,000 lb of vermicompost each year to produce compost extract on a commercial scale.

We start with the thermophilic compost that we make down the road, it’s the main feedstock for the worms here. We do the cover crop in between the capping of the compost. We'll bring the compost from over there. We'll have a cover crop growing in here. We let it get a foot or so tall. About the time it starts to lay over on its own, we'll bring in the thermophilic compost.

I try to limit it to a four to six inch layer. I try not to layer too much at a time. We also add a lot of different bio-stimulants in here. We'll use some kelp. We're playing around with some algae. We use acid, biochar. We do some minerals, azomite, green sand, some different things just to bring some mineral balance to the compost as well. We use a mycorrhizal product in here for all the cover crop seeds.

The cover crop gets done growing. We cap it with that layer. And it's that continuous system over and over again. We'll cut from these beds probably once a month or once every three weeks, just shy of a month. We'll harvest several thousand pounds out of this room at each cut.

Is most of the castings being used in extract production or do you sell a lot?

Probably 95% of them are being used to make extract. There's a very select few that are using it to maybe pot plants or make some soil, but a majority of it is all going to extract, whether that's we're extracting it here or we're shipping it to a farm and they have an extractor and they're extracting it themselves.

So tell us a bit about the conditions that you maintain in this space to keep the worms happy, temp, moisture, all that.

That's actually one of the difficulties with these beds. So that's why I'm trying these blankets. We used to run this irrigation, but the irrigation is really inconsistent and it doesn't water everything the same. You get wet pockets and dry pockets. So I've switched to using these worm blankets and hand watering every day to try to make the moisture even because it's so important to have even moisture because where you have a lot of moisture, that's where you'll see more worms. Trying to get it the same everywhere is really important. And I think that'll help with the cutting of the beds because these large beds have an issue with falling out and they'll get wet spots underneath these drippers and they'll be like solid concrete. You’ll have to break those up. I'm striving for like 70% moisture in here or maybe even more, but it's difficult in these beds. I'm playing around with ways to keep the moisture high now.

Temperature wise, we keep it at 72 degrees. That's about the perfect temperature for the worms, and it stays 72 year round. The floor heat does a good job with that. But when you're heating a room, you also have to deal with moisture evaporating quickly. So being in here hand watering every day is important. They get checked on multiple times a day to make sure there's no drying out.

The general purpose of the cover crops is to stimulate the mycorrhizal fungi?

The cover crops, they have a lot of purposes. Having a growing plant pumping the sugars into the system. It's stimulating the biology as well, which stimulates the worms because the worms are feeding on it. It provides an easy source of nitrogen for your worms. We look at a lot of worm production systems they're using outside materials to feed to the worms, whether that's fruits, vegetables, whatever.

Having the cover crop in here growing is a great food source for the worms. The worms go crazy on the cover crop when it's finished. It's been a really good system and I think it really changes the microbiome that's in there. It definitely helps diversify it. There's triticale in there, there's rye, vetch, wheat. I think there's clover, I definitely see some clover in this one over here. There's radishes, there's African forage cabbage, there is, now there's chicory. What came up, it looks like mostly just the grasses, that's mostly what comes up in here. Maybe a little bit of clover.

The compost that you're feeding them, that's, what's that primarily made from?

It’s a combination of dairy cow manure, chicken litter, wood chips, hay or straw that we get locally, and leaves. We collect all of Jacksonville City leaves and we'll unbag those. We make it in 10,000 pound batches of all those different ingredients.

And these worms get plenty of fresh food scraps as well. We have a nice kitchen here and we eat here often. So we do put fresh food scraps and things in here that they enjoy. But when you're making this much compost, it's tough to get that many fresh food scraps, right? So the cover crops like the next best thing. We used to grow a bunch of greens in the greenhouse, but that becomes difficult because in the middle of the summer, the greenhouse gets really hot, the greens don't grow well. You really have a lot of insect pressure in there and it's difficult to grow a good crop to feed to worms. It's like a second job. And so having the cover crop in here, just kind of does it all in one place.

Do you think you're getting a fairly consistent products across your castings as far as the microbiology that's in there?

Yeah, so every time we harvest some, I take it under the microscope and I'm looking at it just to double check, see what it looks like, see how well it looks. It's pretty consistent. I think you do see some differences with the winter versus the summer. I don't think it's huge, but then again, we don't harvest from the bins often in the winter. We try to keep a lot of the compost in here because we're just not using it in the winter.

We do multiple batches of compost over there every year, and usually only a few thousand pounds will get brought over here when we're making a hundred thousand pounds. We'll test them all and pick the best ones, where the biology looks the best on it, it's the most matured, it looks completely finished. That's the compost that comes over here. The rest of the compost will either sit, be re-composted, or it'll get spread out on the fields. But we always take the best from over there back to here to feed the worms.

And you can tell that it's finished compost because there's no scent at all.

It is finished compost, and we like to let it mature. Compost that gets to mature under some trees by a wood line, it really boosts the fungal numbers in it. You see more fungal spores and things.

Do you trommel it before feeding into the worms or after, once you harvest the castings?

We trommel it after. I think there's some value in having a lot of those bigger chunks in here. And like I said, we use a lot of biochar and stuff, so we'll have pretty big chunks of biochar that'll all need to be filtered out or screened out before we run it through the extractor.

What’s left over from the extract we use in the greenhouse, we grow a lot of our own vegetables here and things. We will recompost that. With the biochars, we just try to get all the big chunks out of it. Most of the small chunks, anything that's a quarter inch or smaller, all will still get run through the extractor. We just want to keep the big chunks out to prevent any damage to the extractor, any of the equipment.

What have been kind of the positives and negatives of running a continuous flow system like this? Is it easy to load, easy to harvest, are there challenges?

You know, I have a love-hate relationship with these beds. when you're in a smaller CFT, like the Hiwassee VermiFlow, I think that's a better size for these flow through beds. I think when you get this large, it's more difficult to maintain that moisture.

 It is a lot of work to hand-scoop everything. I think these are really cool for mass producing vermicompost when you're using a lot of food waste and you're cutting from them every day. But they take up a lot of space, and I think sometimes I wonder if a batch system could be better in other ways. But I really like these. They just come with a lot of their own challenges.

I wish we had 20 that were only four foot long instead of four that are 16 to 20 foot long because I do think the length is a difficult challenge with these. But other than that, they've performed really well and we've made some good compost with them.

How do you fill them?

With a tractor. This room's just big enough. We have to manually pull this bed out, fill them all with a tractor. And then as far as harvesting, it's just strong shoulders and a strong back and a few shovels. And we'll push all the compost out from underneath of them and run them through the trommel. And so that's one of the other challenges, I think, with this. We do probably 25 to 40% of our compost is made in a batch system now. And we use the bottom half of seed boxes. Biology-wise the smaller container looks better because I'm able to maintain perfect, consistent moisture the whole time.

And those are less manual labor because they're hopper bottoms. You just raise it up above the trommel, open it, and you don't have anybody scooping all the compost, which is really nice. You're just scooping it after it runs through the screen into a tote. So I like the smaller systems a lot more.

Even with the Hiwassee one where you're taking out the bins, I would probably rather use something like that than this just because it's smaller and you can maintain the environment better. And the environment's so important for the quality of the compost and the microbes. Really that comes down to the water, the consistency of moisture in there.

How much are you turning over with this system, like on a yearly basis, how many pounds?

I would say probably in the 40 to 50,000 pound range. And I think about half of that will be ran through the extractor. And the other half gets shipped out dry.

Where's this from?

It's just cheap burlap from Amazon. I layered it up twice here. I only did it on one bed because I wanted to see how, you know, see how it did. I don't know if it's going to last very long. You can see it's already starting to decompose. I put this on here like two weeks ago. It's already filled with springtails and worms.

So far it's done what I wanted it to. I haven't hardly watered this bed at all. And it's keeping the moisture right on the top. One of the other problems we used to have with this irrigation, it would water and it'd splash the sides and it'd run down the sides. And then all your worms would be on the side and not out in the middle. I'm trying to get the worms to be more in the middle and not all along the sides. Because you could come and just scoop along the side and you'd have a handful of worms, fifty, a hundred worms in your hand and go to the middle and you just don't see them as much.

In the batch system we do, those are all covered up. The biology always looks better in there. What you end up with in here is the top gets dry, so you have to water the top to keep the worms at the top. But then the water settles to the bottom and it's that same issue. You get a lot of water at the bottom because you keep water in the top. I think this will become a permanent thing having the worm beds covered.

Does the cover crop help maintain moisture a little bit for transpiration?

It does, yes, but the cover crops also drink. And I think this will be a good way of terminating the cover crop, too. Just being able to lay this down.

This is all the large chunks we get out of our compost. Some of it's just rolled compost from harvesting it when it's wet. We recompost this, but we'll add it back into the thermophilic process. Or we'll just put it in a pile down there and let it mature for a few years and then reuse it.

When they run through the trommel, you still get some material when you collect the worms. So I filled this with cornmeal on the top to bait all the worms out of all of this and got the top really moist. And then I'll add them back into these four bins here. And I'll feed them coffee grounds and cornmeal and just whatever I can get my hands on to really get them going. And you end up with a really, really high worm population. I love these boxes. I wish I could do all of my vermicomposting in these boxes, honestly, but it's just not scalable.