Love of Worms = Dream Life?!!

There have been many years that I've searched for something that I like to do that can also make me money.

As an aging man, I am also more aware of the importance of health. The youthful spirit that gets you up at 5 a.m. to go work for someone else's wealth with vigor and excitement even though you didn't get to sleep until 3 a.m., has turned into something else.

The never-ending desire for massive wealth is alive and well in me. However, the need for health is more in view than ever before.

Worms and caring for them is interesting to my inquisitive science brain and there is a big enough market in the health niche to carve out a market for me to profit.

 

I see a potential crossover into internet marketing, credit repair, business credit, and real estate investing - all with worm farming!

The past year or so has been a learning experience and a huge failure as far as making money goes.

During that time I exploded my worm farm population with minimal effort.

What does that mean for making money online?

- Good Question!

You see, over the last couple of decades I have been obsessed with making easy money and it eludes me like the fountain of youth!

I have picked up huge tidbits of useful information along the way.

For this worm farming escapade, I have found something that may unlock the retirement wealth I've been after since my 20's!

The answers lie in business credit.

It seems like common knowledge now that business credit is the answer to unlocking access to massive amounts of cheap credit, or money, depending on how you want to think about it.

That leads to my other passions - online money making and content for a secondary business and possibly a tertiary one too...

This is the area where I find my greatest weakness, MAKE A DECISION!

I see this grandiose money-making conglomeration and I try to map it out and make it run smoothly before taking action to see what is really going to happen and end up spoiling the whole thing before making any part of it work.

This blog is part of a bigger system and I want all my blogs and systems to work together and integrate seamlessly.

In order to be successful (this is another product and income stream that this sentence is part of should I so choose) I am focusing on creating a working system that has a set of daily activities to make it work.

I am closing in on a system that works for me and my goals as a worm farmer.

In the next 3 weeks, as I work the system I have planned, I will have an idea of the output of my system and a new plan for moving forward as planned or the adjustments necessary to get the output I desire.

Before I start I also have the opportunity to get worms listed for sale on eBay. I have enough of a supply to sell a few online and be able to continue farming them for future sales too.

Once a few sales have occurred I will start building a business credit profile and start applying for business credit.

By the end of this year, I should have access to decent-sized lines of credit, my personal credit will be impeccable and my dream of owning passive real estate investments will be on its way to fruition!

I am starting here, on this blog, on this platform to show that it is possible to take what you know and like to do and turn it into a wildly profitable enterprise that brings your dreams into your reality.

Sell Worms, Get Free Castings!

 It's been a long time and a lot of things have happened to my worms in that time. I am back at it with an intent to make a profit selling my excess.

In order to produce massive castings I am in need of many thousands of worms. The food to feed all these worms, in a form that is easy for them to process into nutrient-rich plant food, costs money.

The worms that process the organic matter for the garden are valuable.

By setting up a castings factory I am also able to simultaneously produce massive amounts of worms, enough to sell and make money to feed the rest.

Actually, I want to do more experiments and I want to have a shop or a business that sells worms and related products.

I am going to develop a simple system that both produces worms for sale and castings for my personal needs.

I may be able to sell some of my harvests of worms and maybe even some of the bedding that is what grows my next round of worms.

As of today, it is going to take me approximately 1 month to have worms to take to market.

I have enough worms now but I don't have a system to grow them and have a solid plan for raising the next generation.

I am going to explain in words for now what I am doing to raise my worms for selling on ebay.

These are compost worms. I have never used them for fishing but they may work.

I raise them for their castings. I can buy bedding, food, and amendments for them with the money I make selling them.

With the compost systems I am running, I should have plenty of food to keep the worms healthy but it doesn't make a uniform product until I have a good system in place to have the compost finish and be harvestable.

Let me explain better, I have been just feeding a bin that hadn't been fed for a while and all the bins are a mix of finished and unfinished compost.

I am focusing on growing worms for sale.

I am starting bedding composed of peat moss and Kellog's brand garden soil.

I am adding some oyster shells, kelp meals, alfalfa meals, rock dust, and crustacean shell meal.

I have a 2-gallon pot that I use to measure out a 50/50 mixture of garden soil and peat moss. I then add one handful each of the mentioned amendments and sometimes others.

As I build my bins up to be more of a system that produces more castings that are easier to harvest I will be using more and more of my own homemade compost. I can use more castings all the time and they are valuable. It isn't very cost effective to be shipping compost all over the place but the worms I will be naturally producing can be shipped and reproduced over and over again easily. That way all the castings can be produced on site.

By going over each task that I do and why I am doing it I will help myself better define my tasks and make my systems more effective but also show others what works and what to avoid.

I have been raising worms for many years and I know what they are capable of. I have never organized my processes to fully take advantage of their casting producing abilities or their rapid reproduction to be able to sell either.

I now have a solid plan to produce all the castings I could possibly need and have enough worms to sell to be able to feed them enough to produce all the castings I need. 

I don't have a scale yet to see how much vermicompost I need but I have a plan to get a product. It will be at least 3 weeks before I have anything ready for harvest.

I am putting together a plan for the bedding I am creating and how I am going to implement it.

While thicker stems and seeds may take extra long to break down it is still easier to work with the worms when they are large and the medium is uniform.

I mean, I don't want to be digging through rotten pumpkins and bananas while separating my worms from their bedding and cocoons.

The worms in the breeder bins that are being grown for sale and breeding will be fed a different diet than the worms composting my kitchen scraps and junk mail.

The compost will eventually be mixed in with bedding and eventually processed through the breeder bins too.

I don't know yet how I am going to separate the cocoons from the castings. I may have to process the cocoons differently after they've been through the same bedding a few times. Or, it may end up working itself out as I mix in bedding and separate them out. It may be possible to sell the bedding full of cocoons at some point too.

I am still working out a good system to sort out the Worm Factory trays too.

I have 2 worm factories and 8 total trays. I am looking at dumping 1 tray into my black bin, and filling it with another black bin's contents.

After I've filled the 4 trays of one farm I'll begin filling the next 4, 1 per day.

At the same time, I will begin dumping one tray, from the oldest tray to the newest, at a rate of one per day.

I may start filling the trays with one part of my bedding mix and one part compost bins mixture.

That way, when the fourth tray is dumped in I can start using that mix to supplement for the garden soil in order to get my bins processed into black gold for my garden.

After it goes through my breeder bins 3 or 4 times it should be ready to be put in the garden.

A Few Easy DIY Vermicomposting Bin Ideas

A vermicomposting bin needs to house your worms comfortably. It doesn't need to be fancy, but it can be if you want. There are so many different potential worm bins out there that it would be impossible to get them all down and detailed here. One of my favorites, the easiest and cheapest I've come across is the worm trench. The 5 gallon bucket buried in the garden works well and is not too difficult to get going productively. The last method I'll discuss here is the plastic 18 gallon storage container bin. They are all easy DIY vermicomposting bin ideas and really inexpensive.

My favorite method is the trench. Vermicomposting in a trench is easy. You dig a trench at least 18 inches deep but not more than 3 feet. Those are numbers that I have found online during my research and they just kind of make sense. If you go too deep you'll get pretty worn out first of all and it may cause aeration issues. You can make it as wide as you want. I keep mine at about 1 and a half times the shovel blade width apart. Add some bedding. Next is time to add the food. Let all that "marinate" til it cools down then add the worms. Depending what you've added as food, you may have to wait a long time. I like to fill my trench a little at a time. That way the worms can stay in there old food and bedding until the new food has "cooked" enough for them. The windrow concept is similar in idea except instead of burying the food you pile it up and then keep adding the food as it is available and create a row as you go. I prefer the trench because it allows me to create small garden beds that benefit immediately from the vermi- activity. This type of vermicomposting bin gets rid of food scraps and turns it into gardening fertilizer. You can also grow worms this way. Take them out to start new bins or to sell/give away. This is not the best way to generate excess vermicompost. With the windrow you will be able to harvest the vermicompost to use in your garden or to sell.

Along the same lines as the trench is the more portable Bucket System. I have a 5 gallon bucket with 1/2 inch holes drilled all over its sides and bottom. I then buried in a small 4' X 4' garden bed. I add food and bedding for the worms and they come in and eat when there is food for them and take their castings out into the garden to fertilize for me. I would almost be willing to bet that worms would naturally compost for you if you put food in the ground for them. You probably don't need to buy worms if you have enough space for all of your organic wastes to be stored until the worm population catches up with your organic waste supply. But if you need it to be gone quick just get a pound or two of red wigglers.

Another cheap DIY vermicompost bin is the 18 gallon plastic storage bin. This one requires a bit more TLC to operate successfully. I'm not saying it is too difficult but it does require more attention than the other techniques I mentioned already. The idea is to put bedding into the box and moisten it. Add some food and let it decay a little then add the worms. You must have ventilation to allow for air to flow but it must also retain enough moisture to allow the microbes and the worms to stay hydrated and run optimally. The more airflow the more you have to add moisture, the less could lead to anaerobic conditions and disease. Its a balance that experience will show you how to accomplish. This system can generate either castings or worms. Actually it will do both. Your worms must be harvested if you can't keep ahead of their population when it comes to food. They self regulate their population.

Those are a few easy DIY vermicompost bin ides that you can implement right away. They don't cost very much to build and they don't require high skill level to create either.  You need to decide what you are expecting to do with your worms, grow more or just maintain a colony and feed your plants with their nutrient packed poop. I like the trench and bucket to help me with my garden, it streamlines the fertilizing program for my gardens. The bins work good for people with cold winters who need to keep the bin indoors somewhere hospitable. The design is super simple and can be done in just a few minutes. The worms do really well as long as their needs are met. It is easy to produce both worms and castings in them which makes them very versatile. For those who need something from the store there are plenty of options available that do the same thing as these DIY bins do. Some may look nicer and that may be the deciding factor. Keep your worms happy and they'll do as expected.

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.