How To Grow Your Own Organic Worms - Your Silent Workforce

The main work worms do in your garden is tilling and aerating the soil. They burrow very deep, leaving channels through the soil that break up clods and allow air to enter and water to penetrate and drain away.
In the process of eating at the surface and eliminating lower down, they introduce organic matter to the deeper levels and steadily increase the depth of topsoil. Their main role is to digest decomposing organic matter, converting it quickly into a form plants can use as nutrients.
It is important to maintain good soil structure when gardening organically. Unlike mechanical tillers, earthworms do not damage the soil by inverting it, creating hardpans or breaking up the crumb structure. They never have mechanical breakdowns, they do not create noise or pollution, and they use garbage for fuel - an excellent way to dispose of your kitchen scraps, especially if you live in an apartment.

DIY Worm Farming

Commercial worm farms are very practical, widely available, easy to use and are quite aesthetically pleasing. You usually buy them with a small supply of worms to get you started. Choose either Red Worms or Tiger Worms. However, if you already have a suitable 'home' for your worms you don't need to spend the extra money.

A pair of old concrete laundry tubs in a shady spot near your kitchen door or close to your propagating area (or both) is ideal. Have the tubs elevated to make collection of the fertilizer easy. Leave the plugs out and put a strainer in the hole so that any excess water can drain.
Fill the first tub with compost and mix in a handful of dolomite or agricultural lime, along with about a half a bucket of soil. Place a bucket under the plug-hole and water this mix with a fine spray until it is quite saturated and starting to drip into your bucket.
Tip in your starter population of worms and cover the surface with an old hessian sack, wet cardboard, old carpet or similar. Worms usually live underground so they thrive in an environment that is cool, dark and moist. You can purchase a tub of 500 - 1000 worms to get started. They are available from professional worm breeders and can be sent through the mail. Many garden supply centres will also have them.
A close-fitting solid lid on your farm will suffocate your worms, so you need to fit a fly-mesh or shade-cloth screened lid to keep out flies and other insects.
For the first month you need do nothing except make sure the farm is kept quite moist, but not awash. Once the farm is settled in you should not need to add extra water. If your farm is exposed to rain, make sure the plug is left out or your worms will drown.
The compost itself will feed the worms for quite a long time, but to get maximum breeding it is best to add some supplementary feed every few days, especially as the population starts to increase. Add a dessert-spoon-full of lime or dolomite to each kilo of food.
You can vary their feed by rotating between:
- a bucket half-filled with water and cow or horse manure, mixed to a slop and poured over the surface;
- a blender filled with household scraps(not citrus or onion peel or meat) blended to a slop and poured over the surface;
- rotten potatoes, pumpkin or fruit, just placed on the surface;
- half a bucketful of new compost, spread over the surface.

Worms also like:
• soaked and ripped pizza boxes
• shredded and soaked cardboard, paper
• leaves, dirt, hair, egg shells

Worms do not have teeth, so scraps should be cut into small pieces - waste from a vegetable juicer is ideal.
Plants from the onion family (including garlic, leeks and shallots) and citrus fruits contain volatile oils. If any of these are included in the food scraps the worms will climb out of their housing to get away from the smell.
Within a few months the tub should be filled with a writhing mass of worms, and it's time to colonise the second tub.

Half-fill the second tub with the same mixture of compost, lime and soil. Put a strainer in the plug-hole and water the mixture until saturated.
Burrow down to the plug-hole in the first tub and put in the plug. Set a hose to just dribbling into the first tub until it is half-full, being VERY careful not to forget it and fill it right up. Leave the hessian on top to exclude light. The worms in your first tub will all migrate into the top half to avoid drowning.
Scoop them out and, reserving some to put in the garden, transfer them to the second tub. Let the plug out of the first tub and drain into a bucket. You are left with a bucket full of very, very rich liquid fertilizer and a tub half full of worm castings.
From now on you should be able to repeat this process every month or so, transferring about a third of the worms out into your garden or feeding them to the chooks each time. This will also ensure that you always have a supply of excellent liquid fertilizer available as well as the rich worm castings. Your plants will thrive!

Compost Tea - The Tea Of Worms Explained

It is perfectly a very simple process with a couple of not so simple steps if you have never done it before. Basically, the vermicast is entrench leisure activity a bleed like a nylon and added to a jug of water and oxygenated in order to encourage microbes within the mixture to flourish and grow. Some additional ingredients to enter to this tea include molasses or sea kelp. The oxygenation process will continue through about a day or sometimes longer.

So the eventual time that you turn up about a personal social that can enhance the growth of your crops, make your fodder grace better, and increase your overall yields, you will not conclude about the kind of tea that you sip quietly at the scullery table, but of natures key that is habituated to us by burning worms to succour full organic gardeners evolve more vast crops called compost tear.

A Worm Farm Business Explained

Worm farming, Worm tea and vermiculture are fast becoming the most popular home and garden hobby of all time. (Vermiculture = a worm breeding farm)

Economic factors combined with the simple fact that the awareness of the health of this planet has led the mass movement towards an overall healthier way of living. A lot of people are looking at organic living in all its different forms. Worm farming has fallen directly within that category. The very simplicity of the system allows everybody to keep their own small or large worm farm running in their own homes.

Worm tea is simply the watered down fluids that run through the farming system that allows the "tea" or liquid compost to be so powerful. An average worm farm would produce at the very least 2 liters of tea per week. People are doing this farming idea for a number of reasons, and the two most popular reasons are either for profit or to produce better and better healthy crops in their own gardens.

The profit side is obvious as the worms duplicate themselves very quickly and the more you have the more "tea" you will produce and be able to sell. Naturally you would be making money from the sale of the worms themselves too.
From the other side of it all you would be able to produce bumper crops of specific fruits and vegetables almost at will. From my own personal experience I can absolutely promise you that correctly done compost grown vegetables will grow faster, bigger and longer that if you simply made a feeble effort.

What you then do is to grow a collection of organically grown fruits and vegetables that are in demand.
All of these benefits from a worm business? Yes. And a resounding yes - at that. The worm business will run with very little maintenance and low costs. Anyone can do it, and there are no problems like smelly things. (The worm farm in fact has a pleasant forest smell if any smell at all.)

Now for the bad news

There are some basic rules that you will need to follow as the balance of the worms' environment is important. There are certain waste materials that you can feed the worms without any worry at all and others that will kill all your worms quickly. I heard of one place that put an old pair of pants in a worm farm and only the buttons and zips remained. However on the other end of the scale things like pineapple are extremely bad for your worm farm.
So to end I would highly suggest that you get yourself involved in the joys of setting up and running your own worm farm. Do it for fun or as a business. For whichever reasons that you use the environment will be an added winner in your planning.

Stacked Tire Worm Farm

Have you ever given a thought to what it must be like to be a child sitting in a dusty drab schoolroom, trying desperately to concentrate, while hunger gnaws continually at your belly. This is the daily reality for many African children, both in remote rural communities and also in the ghastly shack-towns that surround the major cities. Jobs are a rarity, families are under stress and there just is never any money, period! Worst of all, this situation is not going to change anytime soon. Probably not in our lifetime!

Concerned people, both local and outsiders realize that international food aid can only go so far and often dries up, just when it is most needed, as in the current international financial crisis. To survive, the communities have to find a way to help themselves. Intervention at a local level is needed. One solution to the problem is to promote food gardens at the schools themselves - run jointly by the community, the parents , the teachers and mostly by the children themselves. Labor is freely available and skills can be taught, but the problem is that what little money that can be collected must go towards buying tools, seeds and fertilizer. The tools would be unsophisticated and can be donated or borrowed. Some seed would have to be bought, but in part it can be collected from the last crop. Fertilizer is always the main problem. In many areas soils are very impoverished and would yield little.

This is where worm composting can lend a hand. Vermiculture produces high quality organic fertilizer that can be 20 times higher in nutriments than natural soil and brings trace elements and beneficial micro organisms to the roots of the crops, while simultaneously improving the disease resistance and moisture retention of poor soils. Crops grown using vermicompost will be fully organic and organic food is far healthier than any commercially grown products. Providing fodder for the worms is no problem, there are always organic wastes to be collected, in the form of animal dung, crop trash, paper or fallen leaves. Of the many types of vermiculture systems available , the stacked tire worm farm, which costs nothing to set up, is the most appropriate solution . We have described the setting up and operation of this simple system in detail on our web site at http://www.working-worms.com/

In brief, all the children need to do, is to collect discarded old tires and stack them upon a drainage board, as described in the article, and then begin feeding in organic waste from the top. The compost worms, will naturally migrate upwards towards the food, leaving their faeces (worm castings) behind them. The vermicompost is harvested by pulling out the lower tire from the bottom. The tire is emptied of compost and then it goes back to the top of the stack again and so on. The beauty of this system is that it costs nothing to set up and can be replicated many times over, to create multiple sets of individual worm farms to whatever scale is appropriate. All that is needed is a small amount of training and a supply of suitable compost worms - usually eisinia fetida (red wigglers), which can be donated from other schools, already on the programme, or from concerned individuals.

Stacked Tire Worm Composting is an appropriate low tech solution to a widespread Third World problem. It is a technology that does not require constant cash injections and can be fully run by the communities themselves. Besides everything else, the children will have a great deal of fun worm farming and will learn something useful. Best of all they will be doing something positive to improve their own lot, without relying on any handouts. This builds up human dignity. "Give a man a fish and you feed him today , teach him to fish and you feed him always".

Think about it - maybe there is something you can do to help.

Compost Tea

Compost tea or worm tea is made by steeping vermicompost (or other compost) in water for a period of time. The resulting liquid (or compost tea) is then used as a fertilizer for plants or as a prevention against plant disease. Compost tea is just another powerful outcome from having a worm farm.

Worm castings and vermicompost are an amazing product of worms. Worms eat, then produce this vermicompost; also referred to as worm castings (worm poop!). Therefore, this is a the end product of worms breaking down organic matter which is very nutrient rich.

Compost tea is typically used as a fertilizer. The use of this fertilizer requires a great amount of knowledge and skill. If used on edible plants one should avoid spraying directly on edible parts of the plant. In fact, the US National Organic Program has very strict guidelines on the use of compost tea for USDA certified organic farming. In addition, it takes some trial and error before you are able to find the proper amounts of compost tea to use. Composting is a complex process and in particular compost tea is not fully understood by everyone.

In addition to fertilizer; compost tea has also been used as a way to prevent plant disease. The use of it to prevent disease in plants is an extremely complex biological process. Steven Scheuerell and Walter Mahaffee of the Department of Horticluture at Oregon State University have given a more detailed presentation on: Compost Tea for Plant Disease Control: Production, Application, and Results.

It is possible to build your own machine or "brewing barrel". Many "do-it-yourselfers" have taken this route. In addition, there are lots of barrels produced commercially as well.

The process of actually making this product depends on its purpose. There are several kinds of compost tea all of which are processed differently. Some of the variables are the amount of Vermicompost, amount of water, amount of time allowed to steep, amount of aeration, method of aeration, application, and other ingredients.

Worm Farming, The Easy Way

If you don't feel like making your own worm farm, they are easy to find. Available from some hardware shops, local councils or even online, worm farms are very popular.

But if you can get hold of four crates or storage boxes , you are well on your way. The boxes will be stacked on top of one another, so make sure the bottom one is waterproof with no holes and large enough to take the weight of the other boxes when filled with soil. The other three boxes need holes in them or perforations, so that the worms can move from box to box and the box on the bottom will collect the worm juice.

Don't try to collect worms from your garden, not only will it take you ages but they just won't do. The best worms are red worms or tiger worms. You will also need a good supply of vegetable scrap waste.

Step One

Line the first box with soil and newspaper, add some fruit and vegetable scraps and then add the worms. Place a hessian cloth or more newspaper over the top to block out the light. Now place this box on top of the waterproof "bottom" container.

Step Two

Look after your worms for a couple of weeks. Don't put orange and lemon skins in your worm farm, worms don't like acidic food. Also avoid raw onion, tomatoes and pineapples. Remove the hessian or newspaper every time you add food scraps and replace afterward. Add leaves or paper with every second or third batch of vegetable scraps and spray with water occasionally to keep moist. After about two weeks your worms will have grown larger and your box will be full.

Step Three

Set up box two in the same way as you did in step one, remove the hessian or newspaper from box one and place box two on top with the hessian or newspaper over it. Keep adding scraps to this second box and when this box is also full of worms you do the same thing with the third box.

Step Four

Now is the time to harvest your compost from box one. By the time box three is full the worms will have finished eating all the food in box one and moved on. All that will be left in this box will be compost material that you can now spread over your garden.

Step Five

The waterproof bottom container will regularly fill up with liquid fertilizer. Dilute this worm juice, two parts water to one part juice and pour on your plants as fertilizer.

Keep rotating your boxes and enjoy your beautiful garden.

Worm Farming - Uninvited Guests

Black Soldier Fly

Latin Name: Hermetia illucens. Although often listed as such in vermiculture articles, it is a moot point as to whether this fly should actually be called a pest. Worm farmers might not want it in their bins as they may feel that it competes for food with the worms - but that is not necessarily true.

The Black Soldier Fly is actually a benign species of tropical fly , originally from the Americas. It has now spread throughout the world. The larvae of the fly are produced in thousands and are actually very useful workers, as they have voracious appetites and are highly efficient composters, feeding exclusively on putrescent material - thus removing a potential source of disease. However these larvae are unattractive to most tastes, as they are actually a type of small maggot and seeing a mass of them writhing around in your worm bin can be very off-putting. The mature fly would be unlikely to win many beauty competitions either! However, it is completely harmless and after pupation, the adult fly has a very short life and it has no mouth and cannot eat (or bite).

These remarkable creatures, unlike the common housefly, do not spread bacteria or disease - in fact the larvae ingest potentially pathogenic material and disease-causing organisms and thus render them harmless. Moreover Black Soldier Flies exude an odour, which positively discourages disease carrying houseflies and certain other flying pests. When the larvae reach maturity they leave the feeding area to pupate, preferably in a shady bush or tree. After turning into an adult fly, the female lives only a further 5-8 days and produces almost 1000 eggs. The adult fly is nocturnal and characterised by very fast and rather clumsy flight. It has no mouth and cannot bite or sting.

The maggots are often found in worm farm bins, but although unsightly, they are not a real threat to the worms, as they do not attack them and may in fact complement the compost worm's activities, rather than compete with them for food. Like the composting worms used in vermiculture, their feces make excellent compost and the maggots can be used as a high protein fish or poultry feed. They may be utilised directly as live food, or dried and processed commercially into ground meal. They may also be used by the less squeamish for fishing bait.

However the worm farmer may still prefer to avoid them, in which case Black Soldier Fly can best be kept out of the worm farm bins, by not using meat, fatty waste or fecal matter for feeding the worms and by keeping the moisture on the dry side, and by making sure that there is always a good cover of bedding material over the feeding area. The use of fly screens and fly tapes to keep away the adult flies is an obvious choice that would also have the added benefit by keeping down other flying pests such as houseflies and fruit flies.

There is a growing interest in using Black Soldier Fly for commercial processing of sewage and agricultural waste. Its fast rate of reproduction and voracious appetite make it well suited for this purpose. Some hobbyists have been experimenting with the Black Soldier Fly, as an alternative to vermiculture, for private composting/ waste disposal. For the same size of container it is said that a well stocked colony of Black Soldier Fly would be able to process waste material very much faster than a comparable sized worm farm. To find out more about this creature and other "pests" see the Worm Dictionary at http://www.working-worms.com/content/view/43/68/#abc.

Ant Coe has a degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa and is passionate about promoting the use of cheap solutions for the various problems facing poor communities in Africa. DIY worm farming or vermiculture is one such proposal. Few poor African communities can afford the high cost of commercial fertilizer, and worm compost is an excellent source of free organic enrichment for school and village gardens. Visit his website at http://www.working-worms.com/ for further information.