Thinking about a worm factory.

[Arriga]

Which worms would be the best eisenia foeridas or red worms? Where should I purchase them?

[hendi_alex]

I grow every kind of earth worm that I find, mostly red wiggles and night crawlers. They all seem to thrive and all are industriously at work. I collect the worms wherever we travel.

[alexmac]

hi I bought a wormery last October and have been harvesting since January.
I have for testing purposes used 20% worm castings in my potting up compost in most of my tomatoes, keeping some free of worm compost as a control
I have found the following
Tom's potted up into six inch pot no worm compost are doing well, averaging 8" high

Tom's potted up into six inch pot 20% worm compost are doing better, averaging 12" high with first truss of flowers, so imho worm poo works.
I invested in a wormcity wormery


Rgds good gardening

alex

[rainbowgardener]

Alex meet Alex !

I just get my worms from my outdoor compost pile.

[valley]

I've been thinking I would do the same, grow some worms. Several animals eat worms, do you keep them in the house?

Richard

[rainbowgardener]

I keep my worm bin in the house (in the basement) in the winter, because the earthworms would freeze to death otherwise. In the ground, they can burrow down deep enough to survive; in the bin they can't.

In the summer they stay outside. They are in a tightly closed bin that just has air holes and drain holes. Even though we have lots of birds and raccoons around, my worm bin has not been bothered.

[imafan26]

I have mostly India blue worms but some people here have both the red worms and India blues. The India blues multiply faster and are good in starter bins but in the long run the red worms will catch up and be dominant as the worm bin ages.

I got mine from a local source. There are a couple of places to get worms here. They are not cheap, about $25 for 4 oz. but they multiply fast enough. I keep mine in a rubbermaid container. I have drowned mine once because I did not realize the bottom container had filled with lechate. I use newspaper and compost as a starter, but other people say they get good results using rabbit and chicken manure in the bins too. I feed them every 4-7 days and I add more carbon every three weeks or so. If I forget or don't have enough to feed them, they will eat the newspaper or cardboard. If I add to much it smells like ammonia. The local worm expert said to flush and fluff daily. I fluff once a week, but the bin is so soggy most of the time, I don't flush more than once in a blue moon.

[hendi_alex]

Many people get way too anal concerning the how to's of various projects such as having a worm bin. I started my worm culture with zero reading, other than having read of many benefits of earth worms in the yard and garden. My first effort simply involved buying about three pounds from the classified section in Organic Gardening magazine. I run a relatively cool compost pile, so that worked out great. Each time compost is moved into a bed, hundreds or perhaps thousands of worms get transported to that location. Later I decided to make a worm bin. We had an old kettle grill which was repurposed as a worm bin. The main substrate for the worms was half decomposed composed. Enough the brown leaves were incorporated to keep the material from becoming too soggy. Before the legs finally fell off after about ten years, that old kettle grill must have made a million worms! I build a large box raised above ground level to replace the grill. That hold probably 20X more organic material than the grill held, perhaps 60 or more cubic feet. It was made of reused treated lumber and was lined with landscape fabric, so that liquids could leach out but worms for the most part remain inside. That has worked very well. This is the end of the first year, and there are currently thousands of worms in the bed. This season is the first for blending that material into my garden containers and beds.


This link shows my new worm box:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share ... af7WWoH8SI

[hendi_alex]

My worm box photo: