I just finished setting up my new experiment. I emptied the worm tower (I am not sure if that is the actual market name for my worm bin but it is a stackable one like a tower) besides the last tray and found around 30 worms that I added to it. I have a rubbermaid bin, without holes drilled in it, that I filled with leaf litter and branches a while back after it rained. Then I planted a tomato plant in it. The bin is about half full of water soaked leaves. When I dug around in the bin a little to see why the tomato was suffering is when I discovered that the worms were definitely reproducing in there. The large amount of water pooled in there is not too good for the plant though, I don't think. The point is that I have a bin that is producing red worms for me and I didn't even know. I am using the worms that I find in there to populate my worm tower.
While I was dumping out my tower I ran out of room in my 10 gallon bins so I used an old cardboard box from Costco to hold the last tray. Then I took some more of the rotting leaves like the ones I used on the other bin, the one with the tomato, and covered the remnants of the last tray. I am not sure if you call that bedding material or food, but since the worms eat dead decaying leaves that is how I will leave them until it is time to add more food to the tower.
I bought a few bags of peat moss to use as bedding material. I am not sure how I am supposed to use it but I plan on adding layers. I will probably add one inch of the peat moss then add about the same amount of composting material, and one more one inch layer of peat moss on top. The reason I am doing that is because I believe that the worms will eat the compost because of the microbes present in it. Another tidbit of info I am not sure about is what exactly the worms are eating. I have read that they eat food scraps and carbon based materials. I have also read that they don't have teeth so they can't bite anything solid. Since they can't take bites they need everything to be wet so they can slurp it down. Now I am not sure if they are eating solely microbes or if they actually chow down on things like watermelon.
There is so much information out there about what worms do, eat and live. They usually conflict with each other. I have even looked at university studies from around the world and even they cannot agree on what is actually happening in the worm bin. For example, I had a bin that I gave up on. I repurposed it to dry out some crabgrass that I had growing in the yard. When it rained I never dumped out the water. When I finally moved the old bin I noticed some worms floating around with the decomposing weeds. I thought that worms would drown in water. They must have come from the weeds or from the eggs that may have been left behind when I dumped the worms out (I didn't feel the need to clean it out real well for the weeds). Another thing that I read constantly was to not feed citrus to the worms. I didn't listen and all of the lemons, oranges and even onions that I fed to the worms eventually disappeared.
My point is that the experts are not all that schooled in the actual art of rearing worms. I think that many folks read a site or two and see how simple worms are to care for and just believe what they are told. They regurgitate that info to try and sell worms to someone else, for someone else. I don't think that the original articles or sites were completely invalid by saying that certain foods worms don't like or certain conditions must be met or the worms will die were intentionally deceptive. In fact most of them seemed to believe what they reported. The problem is that there are so many variables in every situation. The experts don"t always mention that the advice they give may work if there are many other factors already in place.
One thing I do know is that my worms never complain. They have gone up and down in population over the last few years. They have been baked in the sun, drowned in the rain, starved when neglected and overfed when I first began farming them. They have survived and thrived. Now I need to find out how to feed them to get them to reproduce at the highest rate possible. My plan is to feed them from my compost pile. The materials are already mostly broken down and should be easily broken down further by the worms and turned into the castings that every organic gardener wants in the garden.
Since I don't have an aged compost pile going yet I am relying on the leaf litter and some kitchen scraps to feed the worms. I want to see how fast they actually eat and how much they eat. I fed them some carrot peels about two weeks ago and they are all mixed in with peels but there seems to still be a lot of peels. I think that it has been too cold the last couple of weeks for the bacteria and fungus to really take hold and break down the peels. Of course that is only my opinion as is everything on this blog so far.
One of my problems is being patient. I want to see results and it seems to take forever with the worms. That is why I want to get the population of worms in the first tray up to full capacity. The worm gurus suggest around 1000 worms per square foot of bin area. The depth doesn't seem to matter much. Supposedly red worms live mostly on the surface so too much depth isn't going to be beneficial to my herd.
I am unsure if it is a good idea to have the worms climb up the tower or to have them climb down. They have been climbing so far but I haven't ever been able to let them finish eating all their food and bedding before adding another tray. I haven't been able to harvest any significant amount of pure castings. I have been collecting some of what appears to be castings where the leachate is supposed to gather. Some of the worms like to hang out in the leachate chamber and they breed down there sometimes.
Not too sure what is best for the worms or what exactly I expect from them but I am having fun learning about them. I have a 2 year old son who also loves to play with them. It is pretty weird to me to be playing with worms and dirt and getting so excited about it. I see the potential for healthy home grown fruits and vegetable, a source for learning, and eventually an income stream!
For now, another action plan:
While I was dumping out my tower I ran out of room in my 10 gallon bins so I used an old cardboard box from Costco to hold the last tray. Then I took some more of the rotting leaves like the ones I used on the other bin, the one with the tomato, and covered the remnants of the last tray. I am not sure if you call that bedding material or food, but since the worms eat dead decaying leaves that is how I will leave them until it is time to add more food to the tower.
I bought a few bags of peat moss to use as bedding material. I am not sure how I am supposed to use it but I plan on adding layers. I will probably add one inch of the peat moss then add about the same amount of composting material, and one more one inch layer of peat moss on top. The reason I am doing that is because I believe that the worms will eat the compost because of the microbes present in it. Another tidbit of info I am not sure about is what exactly the worms are eating. I have read that they eat food scraps and carbon based materials. I have also read that they don't have teeth so they can't bite anything solid. Since they can't take bites they need everything to be wet so they can slurp it down. Now I am not sure if they are eating solely microbes or if they actually chow down on things like watermelon.
There is so much information out there about what worms do, eat and live. They usually conflict with each other. I have even looked at university studies from around the world and even they cannot agree on what is actually happening in the worm bin. For example, I had a bin that I gave up on. I repurposed it to dry out some crabgrass that I had growing in the yard. When it rained I never dumped out the water. When I finally moved the old bin I noticed some worms floating around with the decomposing weeds. I thought that worms would drown in water. They must have come from the weeds or from the eggs that may have been left behind when I dumped the worms out (I didn't feel the need to clean it out real well for the weeds). Another thing that I read constantly was to not feed citrus to the worms. I didn't listen and all of the lemons, oranges and even onions that I fed to the worms eventually disappeared.
My point is that the experts are not all that schooled in the actual art of rearing worms. I think that many folks read a site or two and see how simple worms are to care for and just believe what they are told. They regurgitate that info to try and sell worms to someone else, for someone else. I don't think that the original articles or sites were completely invalid by saying that certain foods worms don't like or certain conditions must be met or the worms will die were intentionally deceptive. In fact most of them seemed to believe what they reported. The problem is that there are so many variables in every situation. The experts don"t always mention that the advice they give may work if there are many other factors already in place.
One thing I do know is that my worms never complain. They have gone up and down in population over the last few years. They have been baked in the sun, drowned in the rain, starved when neglected and overfed when I first began farming them. They have survived and thrived. Now I need to find out how to feed them to get them to reproduce at the highest rate possible. My plan is to feed them from my compost pile. The materials are already mostly broken down and should be easily broken down further by the worms and turned into the castings that every organic gardener wants in the garden.
Since I don't have an aged compost pile going yet I am relying on the leaf litter and some kitchen scraps to feed the worms. I want to see how fast they actually eat and how much they eat. I fed them some carrot peels about two weeks ago and they are all mixed in with peels but there seems to still be a lot of peels. I think that it has been too cold the last couple of weeks for the bacteria and fungus to really take hold and break down the peels. Of course that is only my opinion as is everything on this blog so far.
One of my problems is being patient. I want to see results and it seems to take forever with the worms. That is why I want to get the population of worms in the first tray up to full capacity. The worm gurus suggest around 1000 worms per square foot of bin area. The depth doesn't seem to matter much. Supposedly red worms live mostly on the surface so too much depth isn't going to be beneficial to my herd.
I am unsure if it is a good idea to have the worms climb up the tower or to have them climb down. They have been climbing so far but I haven't ever been able to let them finish eating all their food and bedding before adding another tray. I haven't been able to harvest any significant amount of pure castings. I have been collecting some of what appears to be castings where the leachate is supposed to gather. Some of the worms like to hang out in the leachate chamber and they breed down there sometimes.
Not too sure what is best for the worms or what exactly I expect from them but I am having fun learning about them. I have a 2 year old son who also loves to play with them. It is pretty weird to me to be playing with worms and dirt and getting so excited about it. I see the potential for healthy home grown fruits and vegetable, a source for learning, and eventually an income stream!
For now, another action plan:
- Learn how to post pictures on my blog
- Continue gathering worms for the tower bin
- harvest some nutrient rich castings and put them to good use
The Worm Tower is a certain type of bin, not the stackable kind like I have, that is more like an inverted tower. It is designed to be buried in the garden and allow the indigenous worms to enter and exit as they please. I believe people make them out of 6" PVC or 5 gallon buckets or even 50 gallon garbage cans and just drill holes in them and add some worm food. Some folks add a population of worms to get the whole thing started in the right direction.
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