Worm Composting

[insaneh]

I've been looking into this. Seems to be many benefits with little hassle.
Anybody doing it?

[Number5]

I guess I've been doing this for years without realizing it. I see these special "Compost Generators" or whatever they are being called today at hardware stores and Home Despot. You know, the big drum or plastic ball you're supposed to put kitchen scraps, lawn clippings and leaves into and then rotate or roll around the yard until they become "compost".

I take a couple fence posts, set 'em in the ground and run chicken wire around them and that's where kitchen scraps, lawn clippings and leaves go every year. I stir them up every so often, dump water on them when they look dry and start a new one every year.

When I dig out my compost it's full of worms.  

[insaneh]

Close my friend. Here's a couple of vids. THe worm tea sounds like a boon for the garden.




Store bought farm

[cajunlady87]

Just thinking about it I agree worm farming has many benefits. I don't have a compost but my leftovers and seafood shells are put at different places in my backyard where it does decay.

[orly152]

My favorite video was the last one

[Cwi555]

Jun 22, 2014 16:45:42 GMT -7 orly152 said:

My favorite video was the last one

I wonder how many men watching that can recall the instructions after the first viewing only?

[thywar]

There were instructions? Who knew?

[insaneh]

I thought you guys might enjoy that.
Assets aside, the info seemed adequate.
I'm probably not going the store bought route. All my extra cash is heading to crash for his worthy cause.
Anyways, it seem if you're gardening, the benefits are pretty good. The guy in the first vid was making some serious tea.
I can see a garden exploding with a fairly regular diet of that stuff.

[USCGME2]

Jun 22, 2014 16:45:42 GMT -7 orly152 said:

My favorite video was the last one

Why do I suddenly have this urge to garden??

[woodyz]

As mentioned before, I raise worms, not in bins or containers but in my many compost piles, under my rabbit cages, in my chicken and quail runs.

I started out with 5000 3 years ago and now I bet I have 50,000 of the wigglers.

They are in the dirt under the entire chicken/rabbit/quail coop (16x30).

The biggest problem I have with my worms is the current drought, some of them don't get enough water from the rain we don't get.

the ones in the raised beds and around where the chickens/quail are watered and under the rabbits are fine. Under the bigger composts piles they are fine but some of the smaller more isolated areas I have transplanted colonies to are drying out and moving away.

I have found them to be very robust and easy to raise. They get plenty to eat from the things I put out or throw into where they are and the chipped wood etc. But when I go down the hill and turn over a potato fork of soil and don't see any in the first 8" of dirt it is because it is too dry. Most places where I know they are I can take a hoe and make a trench and watch the soil move with the worms in it.

I will always tear the greasy stained parts of the boxes pizza comes in, they love it. And they like when I bury the old paper feed sacks a couple of inches under the dirt. In a week they will have the pizza boxes and feed sacks falling apart.

Before I got the worms and we started hauling wood chips in by the dump truck load, we had red clay and sand over red rocks everywhere but where the oak leaves collected with the runoff soil in the bottom, 2 1/2 feet of brown sandy loam there. We couldn't til 3 inches deep and broke a tiller many times trying to.

The soil here was so bad everything we planted went into to a container or a mound made behind a fallen tree arranged as a watershed.

This is on the land where we live. At the retreat or BOL 30 miles away, the soil is all old flood plain area pushed up about 400 feet above sea level some time way back and is mostly hardwoods and/or grass with soil a good 18" deep, you could plow and expect to grow something in.

Now everywhere at home we put worms and chipped wood or compost piles, we have great black loam 6 to 8 inches deep so far. Its like the boundaries of the soil areas spread out and down an inch a month. The runoff of water and dirt is controlled and directed and the wood chips and compost piles hold the water in the soil long enough for it to start to break it down.

I figured it would take 5 years to break down the wood chips, mulch and compost piles into soil, but with the worms added and with controlling the runoff of the water I think we will be able to create actual lawn or pasture areas after just 3 years.

While I am on the subject let me add a tip.

Composting anything, leaves, wood chips, pine straw, yard clippings all of that either needs to be turned a couple of times a week for a one year pile or set for years. It has to have a balance of greens, browns, heat, bacteria, water and air. The turning keeps mixing all of that up and keeps it working. But I was having problems with the big piles I couldn't turn often loosing heat and air. I started out adding pine cones to the mix. Pine anything adds acid and we have too much acid in the soil already so I was wary of it. What the pine cones did is make little pockets of open areas in the piles allowing air to circulate and working like turning would.

When I was ready to use the compost it was easy to remove/sift out what was left of the pine cones. Then I noticed every Sunday we would haul off a big load of empty water bottles with the church trash to recycle.

So last winter I started mixing some plastic bottles in with a couple of compost piles that I wasn't going to turn often. And it works like the pine cones did but better and easier to separate and use again. It does cause the piles to dry out faster, but they also "cook" faster. I can make good compost in a month turning a 3 foot cubed pile every other day or using a turning barrel as long as I control the heat and water, but for a slow cooked pile it needs limbs or something to give it some air and gaps.

Due to my Sons MC accident in Feb I didn't do very much garden/compost wise this year, but I did try a raised bed of carrots/onions/peppers/ and some beans. This is a bed I often use as a cold frame. Its 3' wide, four foot deep and 18 foot long made of concrete blocks and has good early sun but gets too hot in Aug.

Anyway I will get to the point I filled some of those plastic bottles with water and buried them through out the bed when I planted it in March. I left the top inch or so of the bottles above the soil and I didn't construct my cold frame over the bed. I wanted to see if the water in the buried bottles would capture the heat from the sun during the day and keep the ground warm enough at night to start the seeds. Onions and carrots did great I had some to harvest in April, even with a frost around Easter. Beans and peppers, not so much, they got killed back by the last frost.

I also tried it with my strawberries. They were in a raised bed with a cold frame in place Nov - March. In March I uncovered them, separated them and transplanted my "new" plants. In my new bed I buried bottles along the outside edges of the bed with the new plants in the middle and built the cold frame over them. By May they were straining the cold frame and seemed to grow inches every day. When I took the cold frame down I removed the bottles and picked the first batch of berries. I got a two gallon bucket of strawberries off of the new plant bed tonight and I am considering separating some of them and transplanting to a new bed before I cover them again in Oct or Nov.

Worked good on the blackberries my new growth vines were loaded too, although I lost all of my new growth blackberries to fire ants in the bed.

For Fire Ants use Amdro for ants, not the Amdro for fire ants, don't know why the regular works better but it does.

All right too much here.

Yes to worms, worms are easy, worms are great. I consider my worms just another livestock animal.

[insaneh]

Thanks for that woody.
I should be starting mine soon.