How I Am Using Redworms In My Garden

Let me start out by saying that I am a fan of a well fed worm trench system. My garden has begun to grow since I dug the trench and began adding manure to it. The key seems to be the manure. Now that I've had some slight success with the trench I've decided to create a series of garden beds that all utilize the same worm trench.

I dug a trench, that may need to be resized, that will have a 4' x 4' garden bed butted up to it. I will have another one next to it with a small 18" path between them. Opposite these beds, across the trench I will mirror this setup. I plan on having 18" paths between all my gardens. If I have enough room I am going to duplicate the trench and pattern of garden beds. I will plant in this setup and feed the worms more often and see if I can't grow some really nice veggies and some sweet fruits.

Meanwhile I've got two stackable worm bins and an old couch frame made into a three chambered on the ground bin. The stackable bins are doing the best right now. The on ground bin is getting attacked by large scavengers and making a mess. I should put a cover of some sort. I can do that today. It's just so hot out today. I will wait til this evening. Don't worry, the worms have shade all day,they are doing fine.

I haven't really checked the trench for worms, I have just noticed that the additions of cow manure have seemed to shrink into the pile pretty quickly. I need to add more soon. I have to go next door and pick up some free horse manure this weekend. That should keep them fed for a month or so. If not I can just go next door and get some more. Three horses work up a good pile to feed a lot of worms. I wonder how large a population that source alone could maintain. I guess a few months will tell. I wonder how long it will take for them to catch up. I wonder if I should weigh each time I feed them or just wait and let the worms catch up to the food source.

I think I've been under feeding my worms. They were growing and there were tons of them. I've spread them out quite a bit but I have been consolidating lately. I like having less bins to manage. It is easier to put food in one place than to try to remember whose been fed and who has been neglected. I know it is not too difficult to make a schedule and get a good feel for when they need food. It is just a matter of deciding when to do it.

Experimental Results in My Worm Farming Adventures

I had been putting 100 worms every week into small shoe box containers. I was having mixed results. Some containers were growing and flourishing and others were not doing as well. I noticed that the bins that had more moisture were the ones that did better. The ones that had less moisture didn't seem as alive. It seems that the worms aren't as much at risk of drowning as some misinformation out there would like for you to think. I did end up putting all of the shoe box colonies back together in an in ground bin outside.

As far as I can tell, in the past 3 days, the worms seem fine outside. My worm trench is really starting to pick up too. I am not sure if it is due to the increased moisture it has been receiving or if it is the steer manure I fed it or if it is a combination of summer, moisture and food. Since I am in Southern California I don't think that winter is going to be much of a struggle.

Our winters here in this valley rarely ever even see frost. I mean there are some cold mornings, every year, where frost shows up but the ground has never frozen, that I am aware of. The combination of a mild winter and some warm compost should keep them comfortable for winter. I may even try to grow a tomato plant all winter long. I think my porch may be warm enough. The only problem is that there may not be enough daylight.

I also have a bucket with 3/8" hole drilled in it buried out in the yard. I have been putting some bokashi compost and some garden waste in it and there are tons of worms all over in there. My garden is starting to pick up. It has a long way to go before I will be satisfied with it but the combination of more water and the worms being near by is starting to make a difference. It may also be the steer manure I piled on top of the worm trench. Any way you look at it I am getting better results. I am going to make a new trench with a 2' garden on each side of it. I am pleased with my results so far and I believe I will continue to improve as time goes on. As I start to see improvement I also gain motivation to do more work in the garden. It is a matter of how much you have to feed to the worms and how much room you have to keep them.

I recently picked up a new worm factory. I really need to start taking advantage of the nearby sources of free horse manure and start growing more worms faster. I only have so much time each day and only so much irrigation. I need to invest in more hoses and more sprinklers. That would allow me to care for more gardens with less effort. I could also build a shelter for a large quantity of worms. I could grow worms in large rubbermaid bins and sell worms and produce enough castings to keep my yard green. So, my new goal is to automate my irrigation and build a worm shack to house a large population of worms. In order to do that I need to start investing time in getting worm food supply. I will have to buy them food which may be a good investment but getting free manure is even more cost effective. I want to sell them locally but also online. There is a lake nearby that I may be able to sell bait worms to and there are lots of small farms. I need to start making money from my efforts.

What's With The Worm Trench?

I have read of a few people who simply dig a small trench and add some food and some worms and that's it. That isn't too hard, is it? I have begun mine. It is not doing much right now. The reason I dug the trench was because of a natural disaster. The disaster was caused by strong winds and a poorly thought out compost heap.

I had wired 4 wooden pallets together and added some yard and kitchen waste. I added a few leaves and some chicken manure. Then, the best part was adding the palm leaves. I added them by weaving them into the pallets. When the winds came the leaves were tall enough to cause the whole thing to fall over. I didn't want to have a big heap in the yard anymore anyway (although I am thinking that a proper compost heap may help out our recycling efforts). So, I dug a trench and stuffed the contents of the heap into it. Most of the heap was composed of cardboard and other carbon sources.

Now I want to get the pile a bit more active. I have been wetting the pile down every morning but it still seems to be taking a long time to break down. I am going to add more chicken manure and possibly some horse manure to the pile. I know the horse manure will be good for the worms but the chicken manure may be a bit too hot. I don't have enough to fill the whole trench anyway so a little at a time shouldn't hurt. I am excited to see the effects of a worm trench next to the garden.

The Shoe Box Bin Revisited

I am still happy with the shoe box bin. It is a little slow but it is good for creating a bit of castings for some worm tea or something like that. These little systems would be good for a fisherman. You feed them a few scraps every now and then and they will eat and grow and multiply. If you are fishing everyday then you may need a bigger system. I would guess you could take a dozen per week, after a few months when the population grows to the point of being able to produce that many worms per week.

I haven't noticed too many cocoons or eggs or whatever you call the things that worm babies come out of in my bins lately. I have also been using less cardboard as bedding too. I have heard from a few sources that they like cardboard for "laying" their eggs. Now I know what to add to my bins, or at least it is something to try out.

I am going to have to check out how many worms I now have in the bin. I wonder if they are increasing population or not. I don't know what the next step should be with the shoe box bin. Should I keep checking the population monthly or weekly and track the growth or should I add them to a bigger bin and use the castings on some plants in my garden?

I think I will set up a new shoe box bin every week with one hundred worms. Each week I will be feeding a new box, until the first feeding is devoured by the worms. That's when I can feed them again and that's enough bins to keep me on a weekly schedule. Once I am feeding and having the worms finish their food weekly then I will have to find a way to finish the compost. So, maybe the new bins should be made until I am harvesting a box full of finished castings and a setting up a new box every day.

I started a new bin on Sunday. The first bin I set up is a few months old and going strong. Each has had 100 worms added to it. Next Sunday I will make a new bin with one hundred worms and feed last week's bin. I will have to see if the oldest bin needs food or not. The food is going to be some Bokashi compost. If I get real motivated I will weigh out the food. The oldest bin is almost ready to be harvested. I may count out the 100 worms out of that bin to start the new bin. After a few weeks I will harvest the rest of the worms out of it.

The extra worms will go back into the indoor fabric pot bin. I want to get that bin going strong too. I mean I want some castings coming out of it constantly. I want to fill it to capacity with worms. Once I have it full then I want to start a new one. I need more worms but I don't want to buy them. It is really hard to wait for them to reproduce. They reproduce rapidly but it still seems to take forever when I have all these huge plans for them.

How To Keep Track Of Your Worm Population

I need to learn how to keep track of my worm populations. I have a shoe box sized bin that has had 80 worms added to it. I started with a 1 1/2" or so layer of sphagnum peat moss. I added 10 worms a day for 5 days and also added 2 apple cores, some strawberry tops and peels from one apple. I may have also added a small piece of papaya. All that's left is some remnants of peels and some of the cores. I have been adding 10 worms a day for the last three days now bringing my total added to 80. I am going to let them grow on their own once I've added 100. I have heard that worms double their populations every 90 days but I don't know if that's exactly true. There is a good article over at http://www.redwormcomposting.com/general-questions/will-a-red-worm-population-double-in-3-months/ that does a good job of explaining that it is very difficult to determine how fast someone else's worm population will grow.

I don't know if I should harvest all of my worms at one and weigh them or if I should just keep harvesting them 10 at a time and see if the population I am taking them continues to grow or if it gets difficult to find worms in my bin. I am going to have to decide how to track my inputs too. I do have a small food scale I could use to weigh how much I am feeding and I could see how long it takes a certain population to devour what I add, then see how many worms there are after a certain amount of time. I have noticed a bunch of small worms in my bins lately.

I want to do so much with them but I have to wait for them to do something. They need to reproduce and grow. That redwormcomposting.com site has tons of great information on how to compost your kitchen and garden scraps with worms. The guy who put that site together has written about tons of different types of worm bins he has tried out over the years. I've been learning a lot from his site. Google Drive has a spreadsheet that I can use to track my worm population. I started a spreadsheet there and I will post a link to it later, in the comments, when I figure out how to do it. Please help me figure out how to improve on it. So far I only have the approximate date I received them and the amount I received plus the date I should have double my original population.

I am going to add a column that will account for the amount I feed them. I will also measure the castings that I harvest. A later project will be how to process them to get a consistent texture. Not sure how I am going to harvest them either. A post for another day. I've got to go figure out how to share that spreadsheet.

Worm Farm Patience

I am at the point where I have to wait for the worms to grow. They are doing well. I want the population to grow to the point where I can release a pound of worms into my trench and feel confident that I will have that many new worms in my bin, or in my overall population to replace them if something goes wrong. I need to figure out how to feed them properly to keep the population on the rise.

My focus is on growing the population right now. I have many small bins started right now. I don't have space in any one bin to house the whole herd. So, I am going to keep them where they are right now and continue to feed them individually. I have been wanting to try out an experiment with a bin soon. I want use a fabric pot and slowly feed it til I have it full of castings. I will then take out the worms by some method that I feel will do the job, and plant a seed in it. Then take the worms to a new pot where I will do the same thing. I want to do this for many pots and also have a bin producing castings for top dressing and worm teas.

I want to get more worms. That seems to be the hard part. Being patient while the worms grow. So, back to my plan. I will focus on feeding the stackable worm farm until I have all 4 trays full. Next I will focus on the fabric pot. I need a way to quickly estimate my numbers.I need a way to quickly harvest. Well, maybe I could just take my time. I am rethinking the stackable trays. I believe it has about 1 1/2 square feet of surface area and each tray is about 6 inches deep. I would guess that 2 to 3 thousand worms should be a good amount of worms for this system. Once I reach those numbers I will need to harvest some amount on some sort of schedule and start filling my other projects to capacity. Once I have enough where the trench is producing a fine garden then I will start selling my stock.

I need to prove to myself that these critters can make me look like a decent gardener. These castings need to prove themselves before I can honestly sell the worms for this purpose. If I come into a few extra dollars somewhere I may order more worms to help speed up the process and I may look into getting a local group together of about ten people and go in on a 10 pound shipment or something like that. I wouldn't mind doing that. I will try and set something like that up. Maybe I will do that and try to get my worms paid for. Maybe I could go to the swapmeet and sell worms, or craigslist, or ... ebay? Who knows, if the worms act like they are supposed to then the worst that could happen is I get to eat healthy fruits and veggies that I grow myself!

Some Interesting Research Findings

If you are seriously looking into using red worms for waste reduction, a gardening amendment, or to raise and sell worms then you've probably come across the site redwormcomposting.com. That site has tons of articles about the many different uses for red worms and other worms. Today I was reading a few of the articles and I came across a paper from some university, I'll see if I can find it again and put a link to it, and it gave me an important distinction in the direction worm farmers can take.

The realization came when I found out that there is a difference between vermiculture and vermicomposting. The first, vermiculture, is the act of raising a colony of worms while the second focuses on processing waste and turning it into a gardening amendment. The reason I bring this up is because I was wondering how to feed my worms appropriately. The answer was, of course, "that depends!"

What this has led me to is to focus first on vermiculture. I want a large population of worms so that I can process all of my waste and all the waste of those in my close proximity. In order to do this I need a substantial population. 1 to 2 pounds of worms per square foot of bin area is the recommended amount. So, with this new found information I must redirect my efforts. The day before yesterday I dug a trench and stuck a bunch of waste I had been composting in it. I had planned on adding some worms into it but now, that seems a bit silly. What I expect would happen is that my small population, in regards to the 10 foot long trench, would spread out and not see each other. That would result in slow population growth and overall slow decomposition.

The trench will remain in its current slow decomposition mode for now. I just started a Bokashi bucket. This is what I will be feeding to my worm farm as it ferments down enough. That is going to be a few months down the road. In the mean time I've got to keep feeding the worms. I have plenty of cardboard and junk mail handy but I don't have a ton of nitrogen rich material to add. I am going to have to use some chopped weeds or something. Even the weeds are going to be a little tough to come by since it hasn't been raining at all this year.

I read this morning that pig manure stimulated the most growth in populations of worms. Too bad I don't have a pig! Anyway, the Bokashi will eventually start mass producing a feed source soon enough. I will be able to scrounge up enough waste for my worms to at least sustain there current level, especially since I now know what I am aiming to do.

Just to make sure I am on the same page as myself, my goal is to grow my worm population so that I can sell worms and have a constant flow of nutrient rich castings. I want a vermiculture that also produces plenty of vermicompost. I want the best of both practices. My focus is on growing my current worm population to be able to consume the contents of a trench 1 foot wide, 10 feet long and 3 feet deep. So far I have been spreading them out to thin to allow them to reproduce at a sufficient rate. I need more patience or more money to buy more worms.

One last observation, I built a small bin out of a shoebox sized container and added 50 worms. It has been doing well but I think it would be doing better if I added 500 to 1000 worms. I would like to see my scraps disappearing daily instead of bi-weekly. I have 7 working bins right now. I will take from the less active bins and add those worms to the stackable farm. I will use that farm to create a large population to fill all of my 7 bins to capacity then begin working on expanding. There are 4 trays in my stackable farm, 3 filled and one emptied yesterday. I will add some peat moss to the empty tray and begin feeding there. I have two 10 gallon rubbermaid trays next the stackable farm that have worms. I will take 10 worms per day from there and add them to the top tray. I also have a large tub with a tomato plant growing in it that has no drainage and has chickens eating from it. I found a large cache of worms hiding in there that I will begin transferring over to the top tray as well.

I guess it would be wise to take measurements and see where my experiments are leading me and that is my number one downfall. I am almost incapable of keeping written records. It has always seemed like that was someone else's job to me. I am too good to do that. I think it is really just that I am too lazy and selfish to burden myself with that type of activity and my personal growth will most likely continue to suffer because of this shortcoming. I am enjoying this project on the other levels though. Who'd a thunk I was gonna be a worm farmer?