Vermiculture

[Turtle]

Mmmmm...eizer tock, oder eat zie verms.:) Better yet, have the worms eat your garbage! Even eat your pet poo if done right.

I have no pets, but I have lawn debris which I usually compost & more recently attempted to convert to charcoal in a solar oven. Enter the worms. Having recently moved I needed to establish a new compost setup & in turning it today I noticed quite a healthy worm population. I have seen shows on verminculture & so now I have established a little worm farm for kitchen scraps in a large plastic planter lined with plastic.

Plenty on the web, just search 'vermiculture'. Here's a link to get you started.

http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=organics/composting/wormcompost.asp

Anyone else doing this?:)

 

By the by, did you know Charles Darwin's last major work considered the lowly worm in great detail?

http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin/texts/vegetable_mould/mould.html

[Racoon]

but of course, enlightened one.

 

I haven't actually gone to the trouble of "adding" worms, but rather they appear.

 

I mix in the compost and worm castings into the vegetable beds every year or so.

I would like to buy a nice pre-made fabricated device, with bottom trays to simply remove the "end product" without having to dig, and move everything.

 

Sounds like with Vermiculture and Terra Preta, you have the makings of some seriously killer dirt! :)

 

nice link by the by.:)

 

Racoon,

an equal opportunity carnivore

[UncleAl]

Even Roman Catholicism had its Diet of Worms, 1521. It choked, followed by a fatwah on Martin Luther. Luther survived to skim the profits of locally franchised vulgate religion. The multi-level sales territory rush was on.

[ronthepon]

AAAH! Vermiculture! Green Manure!

 

This is the most natural and pure way of fixing up good plant chow.

 

Around here, I've seen this procedure give much more efficiency than any other process!

 

Truly, earthworms ought to be used on as much a scale as we do silkworms!

 

PS: Hey Turtle, you make the earthworms seem a little backward.

the lowly worm

I mean hey! they have hearts for the first time in the evolutionary family tree!

[Turtle]

Even Roman Catholicism had its Diet of Worms, 1521. It choked, followed by a fatwah on Martin Luther. Luther survived to skim the profits of locally franchised vulgate religion. The multi-level sales territory rush was on.

 

I'm in no rush to the Rhine and as a chapman I have little need of a diet. My cousin Johnny favored Swedenborg & Johnny is said to have once thrown away his shoe to punish his foot for having stepped on a worm.

 

Truly, earthworms ought to be used on as much a scale as we do silkworms!

 

PS: Hey Turtle, you make the earthworms seem a little backward.

the lowly worm

 

I mean hey! they have hearts for the first time in the evolutionary family tree!

The term 'lowly' in this context I meant to convey a humble condition which is often overlooked for its value.

Many of the articles say the 'red wiggler' variety of worms eats more & reproduces faster than other species. Fo rnow I am going with standard issue earthworms from my yard & compost piles.:shade:

[ronthepon]

The term 'lowly' in this context I meant to convey a humble condition which is often overlooked for its value.

Oh ofcourse. I was joking.

 

To what extent can vermiculture be carried out? I mean, where ever we have a decent climate, vermiculture works out.

 

Question is: Why is it not in as much a use as cows, hens, pigs etc are?

[Turtle]

Oh ofcourse. I was joking.

 

To what extent can vermiculture be carried out? I mean, where ever we have a decent climate, vermiculture works out.

 

Question is: Why is it not in as much a use as cows, hens, pigs etc are?

 

Oh...it's OK. I often don't get the jokes. :cup:

So the extent I think is up to the person. Some of the links show how to make a setup that even can stay indoors in an apartment. I think in climates with very cold Winter the worms must have protection from freezing.

From this link I gave earlier, it says

The rule of thumb for bin size is two square feet of surface area per person, or one square foot of surface area per pound of food waste per week.

http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=organics/composting/wormcompost.asp

I do not know of any use of kitchen waste to feed cows or chickens, but pigs yes. Keep in mind in most cities in the US domestic farm animals are not allowed. So far they have not outlawed the worms. ( That is my joke;) )

Are you going to try this at home? Keep us posted.:eek:

[ronthepon]

That's a useful link. I might try it out in the remainder of my vacation.

I guess that it should be more efficient in that manner, with the red wrigglers (I don't know where to look for them)

 

I've just found out that worm compost has been used at quite a good extent around here for a long time. The thing is that climatic conditions do not help the worms a lot. Only recently have we got the resources (almost ∞ water) for keeping the worms alive through the hot summer.

 

Still, I think that the reason worms are not much used now is that our ancestors never had a chance to figure out the worms worth. Still, we can do that now.

[Turtle]

I made multiple & relatively small compost piles to keep things manageable. Today I completely turned & sorted through a near finished pile & harvested over 150 earthworms which I added to my vermitorium (vermitarium?:D ). Updates to come as the worms turn.:)

[anglepose]

He He

We got a compost heap when ever i open it to dump the garbage in the lid packed full of literly hundereds of worms and loads of centipedes and wood lice and if i want more worms i just rake the leaf littter out from under the shed and the are hundreds of them. there like theese dwarf hamster some one i know had they have like 5 babies a month they went on holiday came back and poof! at least 50 dwarf hamsters.

[ronthepon]

He He

We got a compost heap when ever i open it to dump the garbage in the lid packed full of literly hundereds of worms and loads of centipedes and wood lice and if i want more worms i just rake the leaf littter out from under the shed and the are hundreds of them. there like theese dwarf hamster some one i know had they have like 5 babies a month they went on holiday came back and poof! at least 50 dwarf hamsters.

Loose the centipides and wood lice!

[Turtle]

Loose the centipides and wood lice!

 

I definately agree! Vermiculture is concerned with constructing artifical habitat for worms that excludes the flys, bees, centipedes, etc. while providing ideal earthworm conditions. :ebluehair

Your wormified compost pile means you have starting stock for the vermitorium.

[anglepose]

OK so i have to go out in the rain with fly swat to swat loads of centipedes after i hand pick them out from the worms. Are the maggots i found in the bottom anygood for my heap of goo

[Turtle]

OK so i have to go out in the rain with fly swat to swat loads of centipedes after i hand pick them out from the worms. Are the maggots i found in the bottom anygood for my heap of goo

 

No need to swat anything. I get the sense you have in mind using an existing pile, which is fine but not the containerized vermiculture I mean to promote. This link I gave earlier in the thread outlines vermiculture in containers.

http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s...ormcompost.asp

 

Web Search ResultsResults 1 - 10 of about 17,806 for vermiculture

;)

[anglepose]

alas i have crated a worm farm and an experimental worm farm just like it described however it is my firstt day and the farm may not look complete since it is not

 

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above is a photo of the main worm farm layer 2 bedding (i found by layering the beding with the compost you get a better finish

 

 

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above is my experimental worm farm with its cover taken off as you can see there are a few layers to see wich they like best

[Michaelangelica]

Mmmmm...eizer tock, oder eat zie verms.:eek_big: Better yet, have the worms eat your garbage!

By the by, did you know Charles Darwin's last major work considered the lowly worm in great detail?

http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin/texts/vegetable_mould/mould.html

 

Didn't Darwin say earthworms added 1/4" of topsoil to the planet a year???

 

I started with a shop bought three tier "Worm Farm" and a big pile of worms.

Anyway i never did get it to work properly.

You could buy earthworms for the garden or for fishing

 

I ended up with a compost bin outside my kitchen window.

I would toss all my kitchen scraps and stuff retrieved from the Frig "Crisper" (better named "Rotter").

What the Possum didn't eat at night the worms ate.

I added lot of paper and cardboard too and occasionally yard sweepings and some manure.

After 12 months I started a new pile at another window.

My fist pile was now mostly compost and earth,and worms.

 

I had to pay to have my garbage collected (I was on acres) so instead I turned kitchen waste into soil with no effort.

 

these days I am experimenting with compost teas and kitchen scraps go into that.

but I do throw out a lot of paper mmm

 

In Australia there is a Giant Worm, mostly in Victoria.

Very little is known about it.

It can often be located by the noise it makes burrowing through the soil

SEE

http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dse/nrenpa.nsf/FID/-1B2C22395FE507434A256809001893D3?OpenDocument

 

There are around 1,000 species of native earthworms in Australia. One of the most spectacular is the Giant Gippsland Earthworm; at over a metre long it is one of the largest earthworms in the world.

[Turtle]

I just finished watching an interesting news story on a young man in Oregon who is going big with worm poop. He dropped out of college and he's already a millionaire. What he and his compatriots have done (they said he has 2 Phd's on staff) is to develop a water & worm poop mix fertilizer which they are bottling in old plastic pop bottles & adding a sprayer top. It is cheaper than other fertilizers & the first bottled product ever marketed for which the bottles are not all the same type!

They already have the product in several big-box stores across the nation as well as many smaller outlets.

I'll check the news stations page & see if I can find a web link. :cup:

 

PS Here is a link to the product from worm poop called Terracycle:

http://www.kgw.com/frame.jsp?sid=http://www.terracycle.net/