I got worms!

I get mine from the bait shop, there used to be a lot more shops around here but little by little they've all gone away, everything is too expensive. You know those compose piles create a lot of heat but if you live where it gets very cold I dont know. The thing will probably smoke.


You can add everything you use in the kitchen to cook and throw in the waste, cut up lettuce, old tomatoes, everything, flip the bin over you're in business.


Heck of a combustion chamber.

 

Waiting for the worms


The Worm Factory arrived today. Once I get it ready it will be worm time.

 

Still waiting for the worms


I ordered a pound of red wigglers

 

Shit im going to get some fishing worms and try it

 

hmmm...


I am very interested in this...


call me a moron but...


how do you keep track of what all is in this compost? I'm talking npk content and such...is it kind of an all around plant food?


i know it's main use is not feeding plants...but once the tea is made how do you actually know how much to use? trial and error I assume


please post pics and stuff! I'm interested howmuch trash goes where...how spread out it needs to be and such...i've never seen this done before!

 

You will not be able to tell, after you have the thing cooking for awhile the mixture looks like a very dark soil at the bottom. It is mixed with clean soil and used to grow. Gardeners get spectacular results with the stuff, its used in garden beds mostly by people who make it themselves.


If you buy it already made you really don't know whats in it.

 

Worm shit isn't hot. You can grow stuff in 100% worm shit. Its not a spot type of fert, but a great base all purpose fert with extra beneficial microbes and bacterium. Mix it in with soils or tea it.


Usually for the teas, you just fill a normal OTC kind of Fruit of the Loom/Hanes sock and put it in a 5 gal bucket of water with a bubbler to keep the aerobic bacteria alive.

 

cool


Thanks for the knowledge... *stored*

 

this is really cool. So if i have one of them tumbler kinda bins i can do the same with my rootballs, stems and leaf matter? Ive been wonderin if i could reuse all the dirt im goin through. Damn this is way cool. So if that does work all i need to do is break all the root balls and what not up add worms and mabe once a week just give her a turn?

 

I don't think worms are used in tumblers. That's a different process.

Make sure they are Red Wigglers

 

Ya, no tumblers. That's regular composting.


Red wigglers work best at fishing also...they can survive better than crawlers in cold water.

 

I go with crawlers, people are paying up to eight bucks a pound for 6" little fish here at the supermarket, I fish the fresh water with the crawlers and get some nice catches, but what the heck does it have to do with compost?


I thought the worms are way under in the pile, when you flip they dig back down again.


I buy it ready made from the farms down there but I dont know what they add to it, guess just lanscape stuff, not bad.


Being a cheap ass, I dont just go and pick up a bag, I ask questions and stuff, gets kind of old but Im the guy with the cash, even if it aint much.


Interesting thread.

 

Meaning that red wigglers are the worms recommended for composting.


Nightcrawlers dig themselves way down deep, red ones are all over the pile just under the surface. But red wigglers can live in colder climates than there cousins the crawlers. Which makes them ideal for fishing when the temps are 40-50 F.

 

What part of the country do red wigglers come from? Or what country?

 

they're all over the place man, you know how you get them?


you have to stick something in the ground that vibrates the way they like it, then you dig up the earth and there they are, lots.


some places have contests, honest


gotta tell you I spent several seconds (more than the usual) trying to figure what your avatar was until I realized I was looking at an ass. lol

 

The worms are in their new home

 

for NPK from compost, just let it go with whatever you throw in there, eggshells, tomatoes, whatever, then just do a soil test on it when it's nice and black, and adjust with bone meal or blood meal. been doing it for years with veggies, now with MJ, seems to work just fine.

 

Harvesting n shit, if you don't use a multi layer system, worms don't like light at all and they move away from their shit to higher concentrations of food.


If you have a large container, you would fill the majority of it with a neutral base like dry leaves, shredded newspapers, cardboard shreds, etc. Then you make pockets of food the size of grapefruit or so in the middle of this 'bedding' in a spot by spot fashion to make the worms migrate following the food.


To harvest, you would scoop out the most shit filled areas and begin to slowly pull the castings away with a light shining down on the pile. When the light hits the worms, they will dig deeper into the shrinking pile, until its nearly all worms, and you just put them back into the container.


If you see these yellow gelatinous looking things like small peas, they are worm cocoons. Don't fuck with them if you can help it, keep them buried so they won't dry out.

 

Setup


I used the setup method given in the manual for the first tray...


Bottom is dry newspaper


Next is a mix of moist coco coir, shredded newspaper and some potting soil


A few handfuls of food scraps are buried in one corner


Shredded newspaper


Wet newspaper


Lid

 

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