Compost worms

[freakazoid]

First, happy australia day

so i'm thinking about setting up a worm farm but wondering if my efforts might be spent in better ways i.e. compost heaps.

i like the idea of harvesting the worms though for "free fishy food" and the vermicasts seem to be described as some kind of super fertilizer. so i'm just running it by you good folk.. what are your opinions on compost wormies, worm hotels e.t.c.

Cheers

[bℓσωηG]

compost heaps to me are worm farms, its a good start....if you can get hold of a ''worm factory'' then youll be able to capture the ''worm water'' which diluted is gold for crops.....the council used to sell em cheap here to encourage green waste recycling....once you got a handful of worms youll soon have billions of lil workers

[gerbil]

Do the compost heap as well and use them as a larger incorporated system, within each other or out to the soils/plants. I've been slack with mine, only just refreshed it all an hour ago with some good byproducts yielded and just topped it back up by scrounging the yard for fuel.

I've not looked into the technicalities, but understand there are different worms for different purposes, which can be very relevant if you choose to utilise the system to full potential, i.e. yielding worms to feed into larger aquaponic systems or something, finding the best species for running the farm as well as best yield and nutrition for the next system. It can go as far as you want it really.

[mescalito]

Yeah there's so many ways to farm them,the simplest is old bath-tubs or similar (no plug) in a shady spot and keep the top moist with cardboard,rags,hessian bags etc. ,keeps 'em shaded,cool and they eat the cotton too.

Alternatively if you want to keep them near your garden so they can travel put down layers of cardboard(they love this stuff) wet down and pile on some cow dung and cover with shadecloth.Just keep it moist!

Tub on tub styles are easy too.You can use Brocci boxes(brick in bottom one),plastic stack type containers...I think e-how had some good ones too.

Go green for Australia Day!!

[Mt.B]

HA! Classic. I was out tending to my worm farm today and got myself a nice buckets worth

I went for a worm farm due to space restrictions at the place I'm living at now. I didn't bother buying a proper worm farm, instead I got two large tubs, drilled wholes in them and stacked one on top of the other. Pretty much like in this vid;

[bℓσωηG]

HA! Classic. I was out tending to my worm farm today and got myself a nice buckets worth

I went for a worm farm due to space restrictions at the place I'm living at now. I didn't bother buying a proper worm farm, instead I got two large tubs, drilled wholes in them and stacked one on top of the other. Pretty much like in this vid;

 

great link thanks

[Quill]

I love my worn farm. Great way to deal with food scraps in a positive way, ie they don't go into landfill, and you get worm wee and castings, which are like steroids for your plants. when I feed my plants using worm wee accelerated growth is noticeable the next day.

I got the farm cos of space restrictions. Having a compost heap would be cheaper and you can compost stuff that the worms can't eat, so I'd say go both mate. Worms can cost a bit so make it worth your while and name them all, by.

I paid for my farm shoulda done it Mt.B styles

[yaguareté]

Hey guys, new here. first post

I got my worm farm cheap through my local council. They run free one hour workshops on worm farming then you get a worm farm at the end about half retail price. they dont come with worms but i was able to find some on www.freecycle.org.au (awesome site but you need a yahoo email to use it, people constantly giving stuff away)

It took about 6 months to start going well but now its awesome. Can eat up to about 1 kg of green waste per day. and pumps out loads of castings and worm juice. I keep mine inside, as long as you dont put dairy or meat in it then it wont smell.

[Chiral]

Gotta get me a worm farm, my mum has one and it's wicked as for food composting, the juice is poured off every second day and mixed with water for small garden and it looks lovely.

castings are apparently quite good in a mushroom substrate too...

[freakazoid]

Hi folks, some very good ideas above. i wikipedia'd "earthworm" which i know is a little different to compost worm but here are a few exerpts from the page that had me all like " yeah gots to gets me some'o'these lil dudes" too.

*earthworms play a major role in converting large pieces of organic matter (e.g. dead leaves) into rich humus, and thus improving soil fertility.Worm casts (see below) can contain 40% more humus than the top 9" of soil in which the worm is living.

*Investigations in the US show that fresh earthworm casts are 5 times richer in available nitrogen, 7 times richer in available phosphates and 11 times richer in available potash than the surrounding upper 6 inches (150 mm) of soil.

*In conditions where there is plenty of available humus, the weight of casts produced may be greater than 4.5 kg per worm per year, in itself an indicator of why it pays the gardener or farmer to keep worm populations high.

The application of chemical fertilizers, sprays and dusts can have a disastrous effect on earthworm populations. Nitrogenous fertilizers tend to create acid conditions, which are fatal to the worms, and often dead specimens are to be found on the surface following the application of substances like DDT, lime sulphur and lead arsenate. In Australia, the use of superphosphate on pastures almost completely wiped out the giant Gippsland earthworm.

Therefore, the most reliable way to maintain or increase the levels of worm population in the soil is to avoid the application of artificial chemicals. Adding organic matter, preferably as a surface mulch, on a regular basis will provide them with their food and nutrient requirements, and also creates the optimum conditions of heat (cooler in summer and warmer in winter) and moisture to stimulate their activity.

[hebrew]

i got a bokashi bucket which seems to be doing great, similar to worms but you dont have to have worms, only downfall is you have to buy the bokashi powder regularly, but you can add meat and all sorts of stuff, and the juice is great, i also got worms but last summer they died off, so need to get some more

[bℓσωηG]

we should start a worm trading thread

[Quill]

great idea blowng mine died recently due to hot weather. I'm down

edit: yeah

Edited February 10, 2010 by Quilliam

[matty]

if you have access to bread crates that is a winner for an industrial strength worm farm. 5 bread crates covered in something, we had a sheet of eco ply wood which was perfect, bottom crate sealed with builders plastic with drainage hole into bucket, second tray is base tray with worm starter kit, peat mos, newspaper, lucerne, shade cloth lined to prevent wormys from escape, next three trays are the roptational trays. lid on top. worms love it. all recycled materiels. they charf the food nown now but took them 2 months to get crackin.

does anyone know where you can buy native worms, i am interested in wicking garden beds full of poo but apparently native worms are necessary who prefer poo to food scraps.

[s4L]

This is how I discovered compost worms.

I had a 60L garbage bin with holes drilled in the bottom in which i'd put vege scraps in and some sugarcane mulch occasionally thinking it would be a good compost bin but afterawhile it became quite wet and anaerobic. So i left it alone for a couple of months and later found it to be full of compost worms that had migrated into the bin from the soil. Not earthworms but tiger worms. The kind bunnings sells $50 for a 1000. A had this bin sitting under an orange tree so it would continually feed it but this is all it did due to limited design. So I bought a worm farm with changeable trays and a tap and am slowly building up the population from the old bin.

If you create the right environment for them they will come

[Whispering Leaves]

I was sorting out a large bed for some winter veg this afternoon and found some earthworms that were literally the thickness of my index finger (or more) and 20cm long at least.

I went digging during heavy rain a month ago for some bait and found NONE at all.

Amazing creatures.

[ThunderIdeal]

i have encountered a giant worm in my work

as thick as a thumb, unknown length after being severed but at least 15cm

presumably an earth worm, it's rings were quite defined being such a large worm. found under a load of bamboo.

[Whispering Leaves]

I find them under heaps of old mango and bougainvillea leaves in a nice shaded spot with very deep soil profile and good drainage. Chemical free. Massive things, would feed Bear Grylls for a fortnight

[mac]

Giant Gippsland Earthworm, can be up to 11 feet. The longest worm on record was 13 feet long

We get some big buggers like the one pictured down this way, but only after several days to a week of heavy rain they come to the surface

They wont survive long in worm-farms but make great bait when fishing

Edited May 3, 2010 by mac

[Whispering Leaves]

Mac, that's amazing!

Big enough to move beyond making castings or tea and maybe just compost the worm itself for blood n bone value! That bugger is nearly big enough to need a spine, hah.

What do you catch with those, 3 metre yellowbelly?

edit: are they "normal" earthworms just huge, or are they a different genus? Perhaps my giant mountain worms are halfway to being that big.

Forget the triffids, run from the worms.

Edited April 18, 2010 by Whispering Leaves

[ThunderIdeal]

i would use that to club my enemies into submission and after doing that i would ride home on it.

[matty]

This year we have been getting excited about hot composting - food scraps and poo to usable compost in 8 weeks - google it its awesome although a bit off the topic from worms. basically a cubic metre - with layers of greens (nitrogen high - food scraps, poo, Lucerne, wallibys and rabbits, carp? SEAWEED) and Browns (Carbon rich - sugar cane mulch, wood chips, acacia bark - (helps prevent root rot) leaf litte. If your layers are 10 cm thich go brown green brown green brown green brown green brown green brown. We seal in the smell by having a good layer of hay on top. however after 5 days skinky food scraps will smell like mother earth. Once you have Carbon - Nitrogen ratios right - you need to get the moisture and air combo happening. As wet as a rung out sponge, and after the first week turned every three days. We tried different methods of containing it but in the end their is nothing better than a good old heap. Set it up and you will be amazed in three days at the temperature in the middle of the pile - heating up to 70 degrees! as it cools down it is time to turn it - increase air. Aerobic composting is so much better than anaerobic it doesn't smell, doesn't let off as much methane, and is much much quicker, and what a great way to utilise the wasted road kill. Once you get it cr5anking you will be on the hunt for nitrogen - food scraps from cafes, poo from farms, road kill, carp are all achievable, Carbon if you know a tree lopper try and score free mulch.

[Magicdirt]

Worm farms are a great addition any garden. Most people whove tried it swear by it.

I have 3 bathtubs full of worms and a conventional plastic box type worm farm.

I also have a normal compost heap as well.

I sprinkle rock dust on my worm farms every now and then to ensure the compost has a complete balance of all the trace elements.

Apparently worms need grit in their diet to process thier food properly so the rock dust helps there too.

I crank out a lot of castings every year and I struggle to keep the food up to them.

If a potted plant ever gets sick I plant it in a worm farm and magically it recovers and thrives like never before, worms produce a bacteria dominated compost and root rot type of fungi don't seem to survive in the worm farm.

I gave my Mum a worm farm called "The Swag" and it produces more compost than a bathtub worm farm in the same amount of time. It is much smaller, more efficient and very easy to harvest the castings. She has it in her laundry and it doesn't smell. I'll stick to keeping mine outside.

The Swag in Australia and in the U.S. they have one called "The Worm Inn"

I don't dig my gardens anymore I just put down a layer of castings about 3 inches deep and plant into that, then I cover that lightly with cheap potting mix -sans fertiliser (sunlight degrades the castings and bakes it to a crust, the potting mix prevents this) . I give my plants a bit of seasol every now and then, and I never need any fertilisers.

I put a lot of paper (paper towels) in my worm farms to add carbon and the worms seem to breed in the paper.They say not to feed them onions or citrus but I find worms breed in old rotting onions and eat the citrus once rotted. Worms love pumpkin and crushed up eggshells are a good addition as well.

I even had a hydro system at my last place running off the juice coming out of the bottom of the bathtubs and I grew the best tasting veges I've ever had.

One tomato plant lived for 3 years and produced an insane amount of fruit.

Edited May 3, 2010 by Magicdirt

[Sola]

All the plants love the wormy by-products, to keep them satisfied I've even got

the local pub saving their scraps for me. They aren't difficult to make yourself just head

down to the local salvage yard and get creative.

Also some seeds seem to germinate better in the warm humid environment in the worm farm.

Mangoes won't always germinate in my climate but you can't stop them in there.

I'm just experimenting with different seeds now, see how they go?