Jesse: Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Steve Churchill from the Urban Worm Company. We met Steve early on, when we were still trying to understand what vermicomposting was, why so many people were talking about it, and what it meant for agriculture. Since then, you've created a lot of educational content, including a great YouTube channel and website. It's great to have you on today.

Steve: Thanks, Jesse. Great to be here.

Jesse: Could you start by introducing yourself, how you got into worms, where that has led you, and what the Urban Worm Company is all about?

Steve: My journey into worms was a little different than most people's. My background wouldn't normally lead someone into worms: I'm a retired Air Force officer and an airline pilot. I like to joke that I burn fossil fuel for a living, so this whole worm thing is my penance for doing that. We moved to the Philadelphia suburbs in 2011 and had a little bit of land. My wife wanted a compost pile, and I happily obliged.

I went behind the barn, piled up a bunch of leaves, and they sat there doing nothing. I wondered why they weren't getting hot, then learned that you need nitrogen to heat the pile. I went to the local convenience store - Wawa, as we call it around here - which has 12 or 15 different kinds of coffee, and literally dumpster-dived for a hundred pounds of coffee grounds. I mixed them with the leaves, watered the pile like the internet told me to, and it fired up. I was fascinated that something could naturally reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit in a couple of days.

At first I was interested in composting, but by the end of the summer worms had moved in and started fragmenting the pile, turning it into material that looked like coffee grounds again. I told my wife about it, and she said, "Oh yeah, those are worm castings." I was fascinated first by composting and then by vermicomposting.

The information I found online wasn't satisfying my thirst for knowledge, and I also had an entrepreneurial itch. I thought, let me learn this and see if I can teach other people better than I felt I had been taught. That's how I started the Urban Worm Company. It wasn't really a company at first; it was a blog with a little drop-shipping income from worms and whatnot.

I kept going and never really stopped learning. What began as something to scratch an itch became a passion. Worms are still on the weird edge of agriculture, especially in conventional ag, but regenerative agriculture has gained popularity - I hate to call it trendy, but it's trendy. I happened to be there as that interest grew, teaching other vermicomposters how to turn organic waste into worm castings using worms and microbes.

The business grew. I launched products such as the Urban Worm Bag in 2018, and when COVID arrived a couple of years later, anything associated with being outdoors exploded. The business more than tripled in 20 minutes, then grew more modestly from there. I'm not blogging as much now, but we do YouTube and have expanded into bulk worm castings, bulk biochar, and other soil amendments. I've followed my interests, and now I have a side business that's still trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. I'm having fun with it along the way.

Why Vermicompost?

Jesse: For someone who's new to vermicomposting, why should they care? What are they getting out of it?

Steve: There are two tracks: the value of doing the vermicomposting and the value of the end product. Environmentally, vermicomposting is worthwhile because much of household waste is compostable, and food waste makes up a lot of its weight because of its high water content. By composting or vermicomposting at home, we reduce what enters the waste stream. We avoid trucks burning fuel and emitting carbon dioxide to haul that heavy food waste to a landfill, where it rots and emits methane.

Even if you threw away the worm castings, handling the waste at home would still have value. But worm castings are also an excellent soil amendment. They improve germination, root growth, plant growth and yield, and the plant's ability to suppress pests and pathogens. I don't want to call it magic, but castings have a dense and diverse microbial population. Whether you're interested in the input benefit or the output benefit, vermicomposting is worth doing.

Vermicomposting Methods: Piles, Windrows, and Continuous Flow

Jesse: I'm in it for both, and I'm sure a lot of people are. Could you talk about the different vermicomposting methods and scales you've seen people use?

Steve: We're essentially helping worms do what they already do in nature. You could vermicompost in a pile on your kitchen floor: add organic waste in the right ratio, add worms, and they'll process it. The basic biology is simple. The challenge, especially in commercial systems, is separating the worms from finished castings.

Composting worms generally operate in the top six to eight inches of their habitat, so surface area matters in vermicomposting. That's different from thermophilic composting, where volume helps trap heat in the core and encourages thermophilic microbes. Vermicomposting happens at lower temperatures and depends on that active surface layer.

Commercial systems often take advantage of the worms' attraction to moisture and fresher organic material. In continuous-flow bins, the worms migrate upward toward fresh feed while finished castings are harvested from the bottom. That's the principle behind systems like yours, Michigan SoilWorks, and my Urban Worm Bag.

Continuous-flow wedges use the same idea horizontally. You build a wedge of material against a wall, seed it with worms, and keep adding fresh material to the face so the worms migrate with it. Once the worms have moved forward, you can return to the beginning and harvest castings with few or no worms in them.

You can also vermicompost in windrows. Those tend to be shallower because surface area is so important, and a trommel can separate worms from fine castings and coarser material. So you have simple piles and windrows at one end, then more sophisticated continuous-flow systems such as Hiwassee, Worm Gear, and the Urban Worm Bag.

Choosing the Right Scale: Home Bins to Commercial Systems

Jesse: You mentioned those systems, and it's worth talking about scale. Roughly how large is an Urban Worm Bag?

Steve: The Urban Worm Bag has about a two-by-two-foot top surface, or four square feet. A Michigan SoilWorks system is about 32 square feet, and Hiwassee, I believe, falls somewhere in between. The Urban Worm Bag is less of a commercial option because it's fabric and won't last as long as the Hiwassee or Worm Gear systems. It’s cheaper, but it's less of a commercial solution than those two.

Jesse: I started vermicomposting with the Urban Worm Bag, and it's a great affordable option at the household scale, feeding a smaller garden. When I expanded into more of a food forest, I moved to one of our systems, which can produce around 1,500 pounds per year. That fits a market-farm-scale operation and can even work in commercial farming if someone has the patience to manage the system.

Larger systems such as Michigan SoilWorks make more sense when you're commercially producing castings for sale, or for farmers committed to producing bulk castings. The larger the system, the more expensive and complex it becomes. Starting small with something like the Urban Worm Bag and scaling up as your needs grow makes a lot of sense.

Labor and Feedstock: Realities of Scaling Up

Steve: A lot of people get into vermicomposting and immediately think commercially: I can make worm castings and sell them. They underestimate how much labor it takes to produce castings at scale, even with sophisticated systems. It's considerably more work than people tend to expect.

Jesse: A big consideration is maintaining a steady flow of feedstock. With a system my size, I need about a five-gallon bucket of material every week, which is more than my household food scraps provide.

Steve: Consistency matters in both volume and the makeup of the food waste. That's difficult at the household level because what you eat changes from week to week. Once you move beyond household quantities, I recommend pre-consumer food waste from the same source, in a consistent volume. Ideally, you want the same material you got last week.

Keeping Worms Happy: Temperature, Moisture, Food, and Shelter

Jesse: Once you've got the worms and the system, how do you keep them happy and productive? What conditions are you trying to maintain?

Steve: Think of worms as little people. They're flesh-and-blood creatures, and they tend to like the same kinds of conditions we do. They prefer roughly 55 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and need shelter, food, and water. For moisture, you're aiming for about 70 to 75% water content. If you squeeze a handful of vermicompost and get one or two drops of water between your knuckles, you're in a good range.

They need a continuing supply of organic matter, although it doesn't have to be a constant stream of fresh food. They'll even reprocess worm castings. They also need protection from the elements, especially direct sunlight in hot climates and heavy rain. The sun is antimicrobial in a sense, so shelter matters.

The comparison to people is useful: we need food, water and protection from the elements. If you're uncomfortable in an environment, the worms probably are too.

Commercial operations can keep those variables within tight ranges. A home bin under a carport or on a patio is going to experience a much wider range of temperatures and weather conditions, so home systems require a little more flexibility.

Jesse: Your website and YouTube channel are great resources for maintaining those conditions. I've enjoyed them over the years.

Steve: Thank you.

Beginner Advice: Start Slowly and Build the Ecosystem

Jesse: What else would you add for someone just starting out, or for someone considering scaling up?

Steve: I'd treat those separately. For a beginner, the biggest thing is patience. People get excited about worms and hear claims that they can eat 100% of their own weight every day. Those numbers are too high. They don't simply sit there and eat garbage. One of the most famous books is Worms Eat My Garbage, but it isn't quite that simple. Don't try to save the world tomorrow.

Vermicomposting is about creating an ecosystem. It starts with microbes breaking down the food waste and the carbon-rich materials such as paper and cardboard; then the worms move in. At first, it can look like not much is happening. If you respond by feeding according to an exaggerated idea of how much worms can eat, you'll overload the bin.

Most beginner mistakes come from being too eager. A worm bin ramps up over time, and people are often surprised by what it can eventually handle. But you have to let that ecosystem develop.

The Economics of Commercial Vermicomposting

Scaling commercially is a different challenge. Producing large quantities of worm castings is harder than it looks. You might produce castings in an Urban Worm Bag and sell them at a farmers market for six dollars a pound, but that price doesn't scale. Once you're selling by the cubic yard, you might be lucky to get around 75 cents a pound. The economics change as volume increases.

Business success isn't just a matter of taking a small-scale method and doing more of it. The economies don't scale that well. In both cases, manage your expectations. Worms are amazing, and vermicompost is an incredible product, but trying to take that and save the world tomorrow is where you get into trouble. You can end up with protein poisoning, anaerobic conditions, odors and fruit flies.

If a beginner overloads a bin, it fails and starts stinking, and they decide vermicomposting doesn't work. That's why I keep coming back to managing expectations, especially for the home gardeners.

How Worm Populations Regulate Themselves

Jesse: That ramping-up process is interesting because worms will regulate their own population relative to the food available. We have a guide for how many worms to start with depending on system size, but I've seen the population adjust in practice.

When my bin is thriving and I'm feeding regularly, I can rake off the top and it looks like spaghetti because there are so many worms. If I slack off for a while, they back off reproduction and manage the population themselves.

Steve: They're amazingly adaptive. If conditions aren't right for reproduction, they stop reproducing. I tell people not to start with more than about a half-pound to a pound of worms per square foot of vermicomposting area. The population may eventually reach three or four pounds per square foot, but don't start there. Once they reach the density the system can support, they stop breeding. I don't know what book they're reading that tells them to do that, but somehow they know. Amazing little creatures.

Learning More

Jesse: Thanks, Steve. That's great information, and of course we're only scratching the surface. Where can people learn more from you?

Steve: Most of my new content is on the Urban Worm Company YouTube channel. You can also visit urbanwormcompany.com and sign up for the email list. I'd love to have you subscribe and follow along.

Jesse: And people can find worms, supplies, the Urban Worm Bag, bulk castings, and more at Urban Worm Company.

Steve: Yes, they can. We've got the Urban Worm Bag, coconut coir, soil thermometers, worms - whatever you need to start at home - along with sifting equipment, bulk castings, bulk biochar, and blends of both. Come check us out.