1,000 worms on their way....

meatburner wrote:rose, I see a lot of folk talking about worm bins on this and other forums and have a question. How much production do you get from doing this? It doesn't seem like there would be much volume but maybe it doesn't take much to be very beneficial. Just curious. Tks

this is our first time farming worms so i dont know how to answer your question just yet on how much production we are going to get with our worms.....

but i can say.....we (the family) are learning far more then just keeping some worms for their castings.....our children have been learning the cycle of life thru gardening.....where does food really come from and how does it grow....what part due insects and worms play in gardening....water and heat....watching a seed sprout and ....become so very excited when we finally have male and female flowers for the bees......

so for us its exciting to feed and house our worms....in return they will give us some castings to add to our gardens....not enough for all of the garden but enough to see how that area does in compared to other areas that wont get any castings....

ever since we started to garden....soil is not just dirt or mud to our children any longer......our soil is alive and exciting!....and worms play a big part of that.....

hugs
rose

FamilyGardening wrote:... see when we first got our worms......april 30th....almost 7 months ago....should we have cleaned out the worms home before now?

hugs
rose

When to clean your bin? Think I found the answer and this helps me so much too. Thanks Rose!
I was looking closely at my worms yesterday and re-reading parts of the book, Worms Eat My Garbage. First I was puzzled why my worms all of a sudden look so much fatter since splitting the bin into two. Then in the book, pg 78, Mary Appelhof says, " the proportion of castings increases as the environmental quality for your worms decreases. There will come a time when so much of the bedding in the box becomes castings that the worm population will suffer." Pages 7 and 8 she mentions changing bedding about every 4 months. Wastes accumulate, are toxic, the environment is less healthy, and worms get smaller, stop reproducing, and many die. Since every bin environment is different it is hard to tell exactly when to harvest castings and change bedding. My personal and terrible lazy answer -- if the worms are skinny, I believe mine were plentiful but rather skinny (ooops sorry wormies) the bin is probably past the healthy stage, harvest those castings and change over to fresh bedding. Now I have - I guess - happy fat worms for the first time since splitting the bin into two. This was one of those times where reading something didn't really click until it became a personal experience. Thanks Again, Rose!

I am pretty much in the same boat ... I have the worm hotel and it has tiers and what I have done in the past is to take the richest tier, put it on the top and shined a light on it to make the worms go DOWN, and then harvest that tier of castings.
My worms are becoming SOOO Plentiful I have started adding food to all three tiers so it is getting to be a shamozel ...sp

I have also taken several worms and started just a large bucket bin, and they too seem happy.

I wanted to share something I have just discovered that really seems a great way to feed them
I ended up with many many "mystery squash" in my yard, so many that some got left out and froze.
After they freeze them get mushy, so I have been cutting them in half and just placing a half on top of worms and they ALL just seem to head to work eating these squashes (and melons) Finally you lift the top off and all that is there is a gazillion worms and nothing else...
After reading this I am going to have to go down and try to clear off the one tier with the most castings, and get a new layer started.
I have very few newspapers and so I have been starting my beds with peat moss, which seems to work quite well.
Nice to chat worms. I wish I still had little kids because my friends all just turn their noses up at my worm farm..

Wish I had "many, many mystery squash". We ate our one spaghetti squash and our one mini pumpkin last week.

I like to show off photos of my worms but no one is interested, and some are actually grossed out. I just don't understand it.

CC

GWN wrote:...Nice to chat worms. I wish I still had little kids because my friends all just turn their noses up at my worm farm..

Agree! No friends of mine want to see them either and I understand but they should at least acknowledge a worm's work - lol. And I believe deep down my husband is embarrassed I have worms too

lol. And I believe deep down my husband is embarrassed I have worms too

That is likely true for me as well.
The way I look at it, say.......10 years ago, I would have felt the same way.
I think it is a form of evolution and we are just further evolved people, NO WONDER everyone thinks we are nuts....

llama momma wrote:

GWN wrote:...Nice to chat worms. I wish I still had little kids because my friends all just turn their noses up at my worm farm..

Agree! No friends of mine want to see them either and I understand but they should at least acknowledge a worm's work - lol. And I believe deep down my husband is embarrassed I have worms too

I can see your husband's point of view; I think I would be embarrassed as well.

Haaaa.....!

I am so happy for this timely thread
I have just gone back to the book which says to make 9 little piles on a piece of plastic to separate the worms from the castings
and so I am going to do it on the dining room table so I had better get at it before DH gets home

we are going to do the same thing today GWN

hugs
rose....who never thought about using the kitchen table ....great idea GWN!

WELL
My wormies are living in the basement, it is a little cooler down there, but they seem to be happy. I am realizing that I likely have enough to start a few new bins for them. SO THAT is why I brought them up to my nice warm dining room
It is totally amazing how you make these little piles and they all snuggle down at the centre.
My DH did come home halfway through and not only was he just as amazed as me, he also went back into my "CASTINGS" bin and started salvaging MORE worms...
and now I feel like I should start over again.
Janet who is starting to TAKE from the castings pile and making more piles to see if any worms are in them.
I also have to say I am Janet who is incredibly amazed that Llama MOM counted them all

GWN wrote:I also have to say I am Janet who is incredibly amazed that Llama MOM counted them all

Oh heavens no, it didn't happen. But I do recall saying I was going to count them way back on another page when I was harvesting and splitting into 2 bins. But later on another page I believe I said I changed my mind! It was too much work. More recently I half heartedly tried counting the worms that keep hatching in the stored bucket of castings, but I have given up on that too. Now wondering if the crazy things are breeding in their sewage!

Oh heavens no, it didn't happen.

lol I feel so much better....
I would think it might be hard on their little bodies separating them for counting.Are your worms really thin?

After all of this discussion I have gone and harvested all my bins except for one and all of them have nice new bedding. It seems like a good fall/winter thing to do once all of the garden stuff is done and you are wishing it was summer again.
BTW my 22 YO son DID tell me he was proud of me having a worm farm, and he said it on facebook so it MUST have been true

GWN wrote:

Oh heavens no, it didn't happen.

lol I feel so much better....
I would think it might be hard on their little bodies separating them for counting.Are your worms really thin?

After all of this discussion I have gone and harvested all my bins except for one and all of them have nice new bedding. It seems like a good fall/winter thing to do once all of the garden stuff is done and you are wishing it was summer again.
BTW my 22 YO son DID tell me he was proud of me having a worm farm, and he said it on facebook so it MUST have been true

GWN--When I completed my first harvest a couple months back there were no fat worms. Now I see a lot of plumpy ones. Has to be the new fresh bedding, healthier environment. Yet the food is basically the same frozen stuff I've saved all along. Btw I am also proud of your son for putting your good worm-kid efforts on facebook.
Because He Gets It! Way to Go

Llama Momma
If you did your harvest just a few months ago, why are you worried that the worms are in sewage? They should be fine for now? RIGHT

My worms in the bins are fine. I was talking about the bucket of stored castings, the eggs keep hatching and/or they are also breeding in this sludge. There seems to be no end to the worms appearing in the bucket of castings with no bedding whatsoever.

LM Maybe you should go into the worm farm supplier or bait business.

I was talking about the bucket of stored castings,

OK I get it.
I guess I was thinking something similar myself, now that my worms have finally gotten extremelly productive, now that I have nowhere to put the soil :scratch:
All of the castings I harvested a few months ago are on my SFGs and so those worms that sprouted are on their own now.
I took my bucket of castings today AFTER I had harvested it all, and made piles of them and left them under a light and sure enough there was another pile of worms at the base of the pile, that had escaped my initial search.
This is all so hard after they become pets, I mean it is hard to do all of this without a few casualties, which make me feel really bad as well.
The real key is not to name them

Camp and GWN you both made me laugh. Probably not enough names for all of them, and No worm supplier or bait business for me. It's weird once the effort is made to grow these little guys I feel obligated to take decent care of them. It's like a specialty version of animal husbandry. I couldn't reconcile growing them only to have a bait hook stuck through their what - 8 hearts I think. I know, this is nutty stuff!

llama momma wrote:Camp and GWN you both made me laugh. Probably not enough names for all of them, and No worm supplier or bait business for me. It's weird once the effort is made to grow these little guys I feel obligated to take decent care of them. It's like a specialty version of animal husbandry. I couldn't reconcile growing them only to have a bait hook stuck through their what - 8 hearts I think. I know, this is nutty stuff!

... let me tell you about my 180,000 honey bees...

8 hearts I think.

now that would make them loveable...
However I have been wondering if they actually have blood...... now this IS getting weird.

camprn

180,000 honey bees..

funny, just this week I was thinking to myself..... what next? I seem to need something wild and wonderful to conquer all the time.
On my road towards self sustainability, the next quest shall be a source of something sweet. For jam making etc..
I am going to spend my winter looking into raising bees. I am sure I WILL be back with many questions

GWN wrote:camprn

180,000 honey bees..

funny, just this week I was thinking to myself..... what next? I seem to need something wild and wonderful to conquer all the time.
On my road towards self sustainability, the next quest shall be a source of something sweet. For jam making etc..
I am going to spend my winter looking into raising bees. I am sure I WILL be back with many questions

You gonna name them all?
This is getting hilarious.

well we did it!

cleaned out our worm farm and transfered the muck into a 5 gal bucket with lots of babies and eggs....it was really hard trying to get them all....so we decided the tiny ones can finish off composting in the 5 gal bucket ....we added some food and a small amount of fresh bedding....the bucket was filled to the rim with the muck.... ....soon to be casting come spring

we only found one dead worm

the rest seem to be doing well....only a few fat ones....so im glad we decided to clean their home.....when we took off the top cover there were some tiny worms trying to get out thru the vent holes....so again...that was telling us they needed a fresh start

we think the amount of worms has doubled since we bought the first few....so hard to tell really cause we didnt count them....just going by eye sight.....

pictures to come

hugs
rose

here is what it looked like changing out the worm farm

this is the top layer of bedding we pulled off... it went back into the worm farm bin .....its the start of the new bottom layer....then we put some food in and then covered it with a thick layer of new bedding....



this is the starting of the muck



here we are sorting the worms from some of the muck



here is the bottom of the worm farm bin



some of the worms that are going back into their farm bin



five gallon bucket of muck making worm castings we are going to sort the bucket come this spring and any Survivors will go back into the farm bin



hugs
rose