Vermicomposters Unite! Official Worm Farmers Thread

[Crab Pot]

I received the 10,000 worms from Lazy's Red Wigglers on July 26th and they cost me $165.95 with shipping. I made a funny video of the worms when I released them into their new home. It looked like a tital wave of worms in slow motion... LOL! Then, I read the instructions which said that you need to put a light over the worms their first night in their new home to keep them from roaming. Well, the bin is about 200 feet from the house, so I ran extension cords up there and put a lamp on top of them for the night.

165 bucks sounds expensive for worms but consider that I built my bin for free and it cost me about 50 bucks where I live to get a bag of Roots castings. It's only been 3 weeks and I probably have already paid for the worms in money that I will save from purchasing castings.

To tell you the truth, this has been an amazing experience for me. I only wish that I had been composting and worm farming years ago. We started the compost pile two and a half years ago and all of our fruits and veggies come from local farms and ranches. I also live very close to the pacific ocean so a lot of seaweed, kelp and crab shell go into the compost pile and worm bin. Horsetail fern and thistle grow wild and I already had yarrow in my garden. Our trash is now less than half of what we had prior to composting.

It's actually been easier worm farming on the ground then it has been in my wooden bin. I had some mold issues with the wooden worm farm in the beginning until I added some compost to it and since then (approximately 2 months) it's been great. I'm going to keep both worm bins going and compare the castings between the two.

Even though I have the two bins, I am still very new at this and it's great to have a place like this to learn from.

 

[Crab Pot]

Are we going to end up with better castings by feeding freshly made compost, fresh/frozen ingredients, a combination of the two or does it mater?

 

[Wetdog]

It doesn't really matter, worms don't really *eat* any of it.

Wrap your head around this:

What worms actually eat (slurp), is the bacterial slime from the decomposition of the 'food' added to the bin. All you have to do is add something that will rot, fresh, frozen, composted.

Wet

 

[Crab Pot]

Okay, I'm trying to get my head wrapped around it still. Please bear with me...

Worms don't have a digestive tracts but they are consuming more than slime aren't they? Those castings don't look like slime balls to me? Maybe slime/compost balls?

 

[Wetdog]

Of course they have a digestive tract, sort of. They don't have teeth or jaws but do have gizzards, much like a chicken. That's why a bit of sand is needed in the mix, like the shell bits for chickens. So, I guess some sort of solid gets slurped up along with the slime.

Maybe like us eating yogurt? IDK That doesn't come out looking anything like it did going in. Corn does, but that's about all I can think of.

I do know that the faster it rots, the more they like it. Put a melon rind down on top and the next day it looks like a gang of fat people at a $1.99 all-u-can-eat. A big treat for my worms is the 'santa's beard' that grows on top of my alfalfa meal bokashi. It seldom lasts for more than a day.

Wet

 

[Crab Pot]

Thanks for the laugh Wet... gotta love the worm humor... LOL

I had to google "worm digestive tract" to refresh my poor memory. Here is a line that I read earlier today from the old vermin-cast website. "From there the food moves to the gizzard where the soil is ground up with little stones, releasing organic matter."

I'm interested in making bokashi. Isn't it a type of anaerobic composting to get sort of an extracted, syrupy mess of plant nutrition?

 

[Wetdog]

Sort of and I didn't care for it at all, kinda gross.

What I did was make Bokashi Bran using alfalfa meal instead of wheat bran and would sprinkle this on top of food added to the bedding and some into the cans I save coffee grounds in. Sometimes by itself. It's all good.

Do a search on this forum, I posted some you tube links a few years back. If you decide to do it and when you get the stuff together, I'll let you know what I did to make the alfalfa meal work.

Wet

 

[Rrog]

I did the Bokashi over the winter. Worms loved it. It's just an initial breakdown that makes a lot of worm food.

 

[Crab Pot]

Okay... I'll look into Wet and let you know... thanks!

 

[NickNasty]

Thought I would throw up my version of the stackable trays. I had some compost ready to add so I thought I would give my worm farm a sieve and ended up with about 25 gal of castings.


Here are my stackable trays I just made this a week or so ago and have only 1 side filled but my worms seem to love it.


Right now its holding about 40 gal of compost with both sides full should be able to hold 80 gal and of course I can add more trays on top if I need too.
Total cost of the trays and stand was under 100$

 

[Rrog]

Chrissakes NN- Some people talk the talk. Not you for shits sake. Jesus H chrispies!

Seriously, man. I'd tip my hat if I could find the mutherfukin icon. You could sell that you know. I wish *someone* would make and sell this stuff *R*

 

[WeedKillsBrainCells]

I put in tiny red worms from this big waterlogged soil/weed bucket into my soon-to-be compost bin. Am I wrong in thinking that these are the composting type. Was gonna buy some but the price seemed ridiculous + read people saying get from soil. Dont tell me I have to get them out

 

[Rrog]

Probably fine, but some worms are better suited for composting. Not sure what you have there.

 

[turnip brain]

Thought I would throw up my version of the stackable trays. I had some compost ready to add so I thought I would give my worm farm a sieve and ended up with about 25 gal of castings.
View attachment 2797128

Here are my stackable trays I just made this a week or so ago and have only 1 side filled but my worms seem to love it.
View attachment 2797130View attachment 2797131

Right now its holding about 40 gal of compost with both sides full should be able to hold 80 gal and of course I can add more trays on top if I need too.
Total cost of the trays and stand was under 100$

Nice work, So is there some kind of bottom divider in each tray?

 

[NickNasty]

Yeah there is hardware cloth on the bottom of each. It allows the worms to migrate but for the most part the compost/worm castings stay in place.

 

[Rising Moon]

So glad to see my thread alive and thriving! It makes me smile.

Rock on RIU.

Keep those worms well fed, dont forget the botanical herbs!

 

[Rrog]

OK Moon! Did he just say herb?

 

[turnip brain]

So glad to see my thread alive and thriving! It makes me smile.

Rock on RIU.

Keep those worms well fed, dont forget the botanical herbs!

My own worm bin is doing pretty darn well these days though not the production of some posting to this thread. At least there is a self sustaining population now and they are behaving like the bin is home. This is after complete failure with the first two bins, and a seriously died off majority with this one before new worms started hatching.

 

[Rrog]

I think Moon said herb...

 

[NickNasty]

Thought I would add when you harvest castings you tend to harvest the worm cocoons too because they are roughly the same size. So if you are trying to increase your population in your worm bin and not in your plants once you have harvested your worm castings put your castings/cocoons in a tray in a warmer room and put a chunk of melon or manure or really whatever worms really love eating in one corner. Over the next few days the cocoons will start to hatch and the baby worms will start swarming the food then you just add them back to your bin. Worms prefer 65 degrees to mate or if stressed (fluffing your soil, etc.) they also like to mate and 85 degrees for hatching cocoons.