Worm Tube for the SFG

sanderson wrote:Clumps of dirt keep falling into the tube through the 1" holes.  Can I use 1/2" holes on my next tubes?  - - - -  Thank you

Just make sure your worms' waist size do not exceed 1/2 inch in diameter.  

Thank you for replying Kelejan. I see I left out the "ant" part of "Argentine ant." Too hot to think straight!!

Thanks so much, Josh. Spent some time on your website last night and really enjoyed "getting to know you". I can see that you don't do anything half-way.  

 How did you get to Josh's site?  I clicked on his name and his contact info and for whatever reason, didn't see it.  I think I disabled everything relevant from my script blocker.   Any help appreciated!  Josh is a pretty cool kid who already has a lot of experience, and I'd love to read his site.

P.S.  This thread is so good it's almost a guilty pleasure.

Marc Iverson wrote:

Thanks so much, Josh. Spent some time on your website last night and really enjoyed "getting to know you". I can see that you don't do anything half-way.  

 How did you get to Josh's site?  I clicked on his name and his contact info and for whatever reason, didn't see it.  I think I disabled everything relevant from my script blocker.   Any help appreciated!  Josh is a pretty cool kid who already has a lot of experience, and I'd love to read his site.

P.S.  This thread is so good it's almost a guilty pleasure.

Hi there!  There are a few links in Josh's signature at the bottom of his posts.

Ah, the little icons under the name.  Hi and thanks!

Calling Josh.
Hiya Frenchbean here. Josh I found a piece of guttering , the tube is only 2 inches in diameter is it too small to be used as a worm tube?  

Marc Iverson wrote:

Thanks so much, Josh. Spent some time on your website last night and really enjoyed "getting to know you". I can see that you don't do anything half-way.  

 How did you get to Josh's site?  I clicked on his name and his contact info and for whatever reason, didn't see it.  I think I disabled everything relevant from my script blocker.   Any help appreciated!  Josh is a pretty cool kid who already has a lot of experience, and I'd love to read his site.

P.S.  This thread is so good it's almost a guilty pleasure.

 I think I just followed a bunch of links. Might have started with You Tube, but anyway... here is the link to what I was referring to: http://www.greenesgardenthings.com/  He apparently has a blog/forum, also.

Thanks, inkspirations! Just saw your reply now. I found his forum, but his regular site was news to me. So thanks again!

It's pretty cool by the way. Under the certificates section, it's apparent Josh has been an over-achiever for some time. Really pretty great to see such an accomplished and giving kid!

This evening I was grading the site for my new 2 x 4 box.  I hadn't seen a worm in the tube for almost a month, so I pulled out the worm tube.  HOLY COW.  The deep area where the dirt caved in inside the tube was teeming with both big and little worms.  I think I will cut out a little section of the new weed fabric and reinstall a tube somehow. The tube was about 2" into the new box area and I thought they were all dead, anyway.  Meanwhile I covered their area with a piece of wood until the box is set up.

I took this photo for my own update earlier today.  You can see one of the exposed holes of the tube.

I wanted to update how my worm tubes worked in my table top gardens this summer.

We had a crazy hot summer, spending nearly 2 months over 100 degrees and several times the temps were 108 for a week at a time. I installed a worm tube in each garden this spring and covered my Mel's mix with 2 inches of wood chips for insulation. I noticed that the soil was consistently moist and much cooler than the ambient temperatures.

Yesterday, I started freshening the boxes and planting for the fall. I have baby worms everywhere. They not only made it through the summer, but have been multiplying nicely. I also had a nice amount of worm castings in the bottom of each tube.

I'm thrilled with the results.
Audrey

Congratulations AJR! I'm happy for your success and the survival of your little buddies. I'm sure your fall harvest is going to be amazing with all of those little squiggly guys crawling around under your garden leaving little nuggets of gold everywhere.

You got me thinking of adding worm tubes in my SFG. My boxes are deep enough for the wormies to survive hot days in So Cal. (15"). I have two worm bins and am constantly fighting the moisture levels, ants, smell and flies. Getting worm castings is a bit of work too. Putting worm tubes would be so much easier!

Sanderson - I'm glad your worms are still alive! That was a nice surprise! Always nice to have victories once in a while.

Iverson - Josh should've patented his worm tube idea, but instead gave generously to us all....his legend lives on.

Audrey,  I'm happy for you!

I'm still thinking of reinstalling a worm tube just adjacent to the old spot.  Open to the soil below, 1/2 holes in the mix level, with a top for occasional feeding.  Big worms, little worms, both are welcome.

Sanderson; So how did your bed go? Did you get it finished?

I have been juicing a lot during the summer and my worms LOVE the pulp from juicing. It's broken down very fine. I have five worm tubes and have been feeding them once every week or two and they are eating it very quickly.

There isn't a spot I've dug in in any of my beds that I haven't found worms, so they are spreading through out and multiplying without much of any effort on my part. I'm a very happy worm mommy  

Audrey, I'm sorry to say that I haven't installed the tubes yet. I had a 4" with 1" holes and the dirt caved in to the holes and filled it up. Husband tried to buy 3" PVC today at OSH but they didn't carry it. So tomorrow he will try HD. I have three 2' x 4' boxes I want to try 3" pipe with 1/2" holes. They will be inside the boxes with MM this time. I hope to be a happy worm mommy like you. I'll let you know in a month or so.

I've used the black French drain material and it already has holes, rather slits in the plastic like material.  I simply used plain scissors to make the holes bigger and it works just fine.

I took a standard 1-gallon round black nursery pot and buried it almost up to the rim in one of my garden beds. On top, I put an upturned smaller round pot that fit snuggly right down inside of it, but is no trouble to remove. Both pots have holes in the bottom, so air (and maybe a tiny bit of rain) can get in to the top "cover" pot, and worms can get in or out of the holes in the bottom pot. Also, juices from decaying veggie matter can leak out, perhaps enticing more worms.

I cut a cantaloupe in half and then quarters, and was able to stuff the whole thing into the 1-gallon pot pretty easily.

I've got several inches of bark mulch all through that bed, so any worms will have all the bedding they want.

It's a dirt-cheap (in fact, free) worm tube, but it's as tubey as any, I suppose. Hopefully it will work. My garden has almost no worms, but I did spot one or two here and there, none of which I brought in from outside. It's such a cheap way of doing things that I think I'll try "planting" a few more pots and throwing kitchen scraps in there if the old ones get eaten up. If I really have only very few worms, I'll have to wait quite a while for them to multiply much, but that's fine.

I love the idea of a worm tube, but honestly, I have sooooo many worms in all of my beds that I don't see the point.  It would be a cool project tho' (insert groan from Hubby).

GG

Oh stop gloating!

I have next to no worms, so for me, all this worm stuff is still exciting. (exciting???)

Marc Iverson wrote:Oh stop gloating!

I have next to no worms, so for me, all this worm stuff is still exciting. (exciting???)

Sick puppy if that's qualified for "exciting" LOL!!!!

Marc Iverson wrote:Oh stop gloating!

I have next to no worms, so for me, all this worm stuff is still exciting. (exciting???)

Didn't mean to gloat, and personally I STILL find all this worm stuff exciting, even tho' I don't need a tube!  I sort of wish I did, just for the project...

GG

Just kidding you, of course.

sanderson wrote:Audrey,  I'm sorry to say that I haven't installed the tubes yet.  I had a 4" with 1" holes and the dirt caved in to the holes and filled it up.  Husband tried to buy 3" PVC today at OSH but they didn't carry it.  So tomorrow he will try HD.  I have three 2' x 4' boxes I want to try 3" pipe with 1/2" holes.  They will be inside the boxes with MM this time.  I hope to be a happy worm mommy like you.  I'll let you know in a month or so.

Bump

Old tube:

Saturday, I was cleaning the old bed next to the new 2' x 4' three-layer box where I had installed a new 3" PVC worm tube.  I was pulling out roots with my hands when I came across a big worm.  I dug a little hole in the new bed MM and buried him.  This morning I found a big ground worm feeding in the tube!  I had put some scraps in the new tube a while back, hoping to get my little compost worms back into a box.  But, heck, I'll take any new worm!

 
Footnote:  To get the out-of-box worms into the bed, I cut a hole in the weed fabric so they could come up from the dirt into the tube.  I hoped they would like the MM so much that they would forsake the soil and live happily ever after in the box.

Question:  Since I have weed fabric at the bottom of my boxes, how did the ground worm get into the old box??  Hmmm

Sure is a pretty planter. And tall-looking.

Hooray for your new worm! May she have many healthy babies who all grow up to be doctors and lawyers.

I have two impromptu worm tubes now, both buried deep in the wood mulch I piled deep onto the decayed granite that makes up a narrow bed behind our retaining wall and the deer fence behind it. One is a standard black one-gallon nursery pot, earlier filled with old cantaloupe, and the other is about a three or four gallon plastic pot filled with shredded cardboard, newspaper, and assorted kitchen scraps. Both are buried up to their necks. Both have multiple holes in their bottoms.

I found a worm crawling across the pavement a few days ago, and put him in a paper towel, then wet it with water and put that in a plastic grocery bag I had in the car. I brought him home and put him in the larger "tube." He was so immobile I thought he was dead, though. But there was plenty of food and bedding in there. I hope he got off to a good start.

With our horrible soil, odds against my maintaining an active worm colony out in nature are not great, and a worm factory is family-verboten. But I've got nothing else to do with my kitchen scraps but at least give it a try.

Oh, man.  You're the kind of person who would love having worm tubes in beds.  It's so neat to sneak up and lift off the lid.  They bolt for the holes!

Thanks on the new bed.  I like the look of 3 studs (10 1/2") more than the lower 2 studs (7").  I put a neutral oil-based coat on the outside and top rims.  Kind of looks like cedar now!  Of course, they are from free construction wood and some are pretty beat up on some of the other boxes.  You can see the spaghetti squash and single butternut vines to the right.  First time ever for winter squash.

Sanderson;
Off topic... Do you get freezes at all down there?  I'm trying to help my kids learn to garden and they live in Fresno.  I don't exactly know how their weather patterns are different than up here.  
aj