Worms4Earth Blog

Its been awhile

2010-06-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

since my last post! Well the garden really got big and busy. I have a ton of tomatoes growing as well as bunches of bean and peas, squash, zucchini and radishes. I would like to amend the garden with even more vermipost for my fall crops.

As for now, I'm going to stop the garden entries and concentrate on posting entries about the raising of earthworms for the next few months.

Here are a couple of the latest pics from my garden.

As Garden Grows...

2010-05-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

It has been three weeks since my last blog entry. I have continued to add worms and worm castings to my garden. The soil in my raised beds has a bit more clay than I wanted originally, but the rapini and broccoli seem to love it! The tomatoes, zuccini and squash are also doing well. I have to think that everytime it rains or I water, nutrients for the rich top dressing of vermipost is trickling down to the roots!

We have already harvested arugula, rapini and radishes!

Seedlings Have Been Transplanted

2010-04-20T16:06:00.000-07:00

The seeds that we started in worm castings have grown large enough to transplant into our raised garden beds. I am still amazed at how fast they germinated! We started tomatoes, beans, peas, rapini and broccoli in the starter trays. Something of note: the starter trays we used are made from recycled paper and quickly decompose, so you can plant the entire starter pot without having to remove the plants! Easy peasy!

So we dug out holes in the garden soil, which is 40% compost and 60% topsoil (a little more clay than what I would have liked, but the clay does hold water better), and planted our seedlings. We dug the holes added worm castings, placed the plants in the holes, then filled the remaining space with more worm castings.

Worm Castings as Seed Starter

2010-03-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

I'm using the Red Wiggler worm castings as seed starter this year. Its pretty amazing how fast the seeds germinated that were planted in worm castings and watered with worm tea. The broccoli on the right came up first IN ONLY 3 DAYS. The rapini in the middle came up in 5 days and the tomatoes on the left began to sprout after 6 days. All of the seed packages stated that the seeds would sprout in 7-10 days.

Earthworms are pretty resilient

2010-03-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

This week one of my customers sent me a picture of the box her worms were sent in. Needless to say it looked like someone sat on it. Although a rare occurance, damaged boxes are occasionally delivered. I'm not trying to point out a failure of the US Postal Service; I just wanted to highlight the fact that none of her worms died as a result!

Food-On-Top Experiment Eight Days Later

2010-03-17T16:02:00.001-07:00

Here are the results of the Food On Top experiment. Not one of the bins smelled of rotting food at anytime. This is not to say that it wouldn't stink if I dumped 5 LBS of broccoli on top of one of them; I just wanted to prove that it is a viable option to keep earthworms inside your home without the bin stinking. Overall, the scraps were pretty much consumed at the same rate with the edge going to the African Nightcrawlers and Red Wigglers in the Gusanito Bin.

Here are the comparison pics (click on any of the pics to see a bigger pic with more details):

The Gusanito Bin w/ African Nightcrawlers and Red Wigglers

The 37 gallon European Nightcrawler Peat and Manure Bin

The 18 gallon Red Wiggler Paper Bin

As always you can find more info on the main website

Food-On-Top Experiment

2010-03-09T17:04:00.000-08:00

I have always buried the food in my worm bins so that the microbes in the bin would start to decompose the food as quickly as possible. I decided to do not bury the kitchen scraps in three of my bins and document the results. Each bin is configured differently. I added equal amounts of scraps to each bin

Bin 1: A 5 tray Gusanito Worm bin with a mixture of Red Wigglers and African Nightcrawlers. The bedding is peat.

Bin 2: A 37 gallon bin with European Nightcrawlers. The bedding is peat and manure.

Bin 3: An 18 gallon bin with Red Wigglers. The bedding is shredded newspaper.

Bin 4: I buried the scraps in an 18 gallon bin with Red Wigglers. The bedding is peat and manure bedding.

My goal is to compare how quickly the scraps are consumed on top of the bedding compared to the buried scraps.

Gusanito Worm Bin Config

2010-03-08T16:08:00.000-08:00

I'm trying something new with my 5 tray Gusanito worm bin -- I'm leaving the bottom tray completely empty, then stacking on the other trays. I've noticed that the weed barrier gets clogged up with pure worm castings; why not use an empty bottom try to catch the worm castings? I got the idea from the flow through bin design that is another alterative to the upward migration system. The idea behind the flow through bin is to harvest your castings from the bottom. The empty bottom tray will function as a reservoir for castings that drop through the system. Will check back in a month to see how much has collected.

If you don't know what the Gusanito Worm Bin is you can see it here

My First Entry

2010-03-08T13:44:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone,

I decided to create this blog because I wanted to document my own day-to-day experience on maintaining my own worm bins. My goal is to keep this blog up to date with information on what and when I am feeding my worms, track the population of my bins and document when I harvest the castings and divide my earthworms into more bins. I will also be blogging about how worm castings go up against mushroom compost in my garden. I'm looking forward to the results of this head to head competition! As always, feel free to ask me anything about raising earthworms either here or from my main website, Worms4Earth.com