Red Wigglers Farm Worms Etc blog

Earthworm Egg Capsules, Red Worm Reproduction

Written by Matthew on May 1st, 2012

Red Worm Egg Capsules

Worms reproduce by a fascinating method which also helps ensure their future existence. Earthworms lay egg capsules in the soil usually near a good source of food. The neat thing about theses egg capsules is there ability to survive harsh conditions that would kill adult earthworms. Earthworm egg capsules can survive freezing, and dry conditions for extended periods of time. The egg capsules will hatch after conditions warm and moisture is available.

Adult worms in favorable conditions will lay between 2-4 egg capsules per month. Worms are hermaphrodites and must mate before laying. I have never seen a worm “blowing” an egg capsule, but a colleague of mine tells me it looks like someone blowing a bubble out their mouth. Each egg capsule can hatch from 3-7 worms (Eisenia fetida). The worm egg capsules are bright golden yellow when first laid and progressively turn brownish red before hatching. Eisenia fetida egg capsules will hatch in about 21 days under ideal conditions and at about 80 degrees. The eggs hatch faster at warmer temperatures than what adult worms prefer.

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Creating the Best Conditions for Worms

Written by Matthew on April 12th, 2012

Creating the Best Conditions for Worms

Starting a worm farm can be a gratifying business that can bring many rewards. However – before you start thinking about things like profitability, environmental benefits and getting tradesman insurance – the first thing to consider is creating the right conditions for your worms. Earth worms can reproduce at an almighty rate – they begin the reproduction process once every 27 days – and they can also live for up to ten years, so the potential for harvesting productive worms is huge. However, this largely depends on the conditions you create for your worms. There are four things you need to consider when creating ideal conditions, which are outlined below.

Temperature

Number one is temperature. Worms require a temperature of between 60 degrees to 80 degrees F. They also prefer shaded or dark conditions as, although they can’t see, they can sense light and will naturally try to hide if exposed to it. Ensure that you provide enough depth to the soil so that the worms can bury themselves adequately. They do not like warm conditions, so make sure your worm bin is not kept in areas that are exposed directly to sunlight; a shady spot in the garden, or better still under a shelter, would be ideal. Ensure that you regularly check on the temperature of your worm bin (you can use a thermometer to be sure); if the temperature gets to high, carefully move the soil around (being sure not to harm the worms) with a hand-held spade to circulate the air and cool down the top layers. If the worm bin gets too hot you can also add a little water – the best way is to use a spray can so your bin doesn’t get too soggy. When using water, just ensure that you have adequate holes at the bottom of the bin so that excess water can drain away.

Moisture

The second factor you need to consider when creating the perfect environment for worms is moisture. It can be tricky to create the right moisture levels; worms will not survive in a dry environment, yet they will drown if exposed to too much water. The level of moisture you should aim to create is around 30%. To achieve a moisture of this level, you first need to ensure your worm bin is a) not in direct sunlight and b) not exposed to rain or other natural elements. Then, you need to regularly spray the farm with water. As mentioned above, make sure you have an adequate drainage system in the bottom of the bin so that water can flow away rather than clog and pose a drowning threat to your worms.

Oxygen

The third factor is oxygen. Like most living organisms, worms need adequate amounts of oxygen in order to survive. They “breathe” oxygen through their skin. In order to ensure you are giving your worms enough oxygen, make sure you pierce holes in your worm bin. Don’t make your holes too large – you don’t want soil to seep through them. Worms need a constant flow of fresh air, so position your worm bin in a place that has a good flow of natural air. You can also help by gently turning the soil – as mentioned in the first point above – to aid the flow of oxygen within the bin.

PH Levels

Last, but not least, ensure that your bin has the right PH levels. If conditions are too acidic for your worms, it will affect their ability to breathe properly; worms breathe through their skin and too much acid burns the skin. If conditions are kept too acidic for long enough, the worms will die. The correct PH level for an ideal worm farming environment is 7 (neutral). Invest in some litmus paper strips to help you measure acid levels and make sure you monitor this regularly (weekly). As a general rule, do not feed your worms any foods that have a high acid content, such as fruit or anything else containing sugar. These foods will increase the acid levels in your soil, taking the PH level below 7. If your PH rating dips below 7, you can add products such as garden lime or others that are high in magnesium to add alkaline and bring the PH level back to neutral.

By Contributing Author, Izzy Woods

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Growing worms worms and more worms

Written by Matthew on January 31st, 2012

I never had any idea how much I would learn by being a worm farmer. Starting and running a small business with little money means that I have had to do most of the work myself. Although sometimes I do use part-time help, most all of the work is done by myself. Often I find myself doing carpentry work to build worm beds. Other times I will be welding and bending pipe to make greenhouses. Currently I am working on the computer obviously, kind of basic, but two days ago I was working on a programing issue with the website. Eventually I gave up on that and hired a programmer, but I didn’t really want to. Many of my customers are gardeners so I try to keep up to date on the latest gardening buzz like the square foot gardening. Often I am running a skid steer loader, other times I am wire lights or pluming a sprinkler system.

Sometime though I do find myself actually feeding, harvesting, shipping worms. Actually this is a lot of my time of course. I am learning a lot about red wiggler worms. Its been a real adventure figuring out the best things to feed them, how much water they do best in, and other things like how often to aerate the beds.

In order to be able to sell more worms I am constantly expanding the size of the worm farm.

New Red Worm Beds

Here you can see the worm beds that are in construction. The one on the left is finished and the one on the right is partially done. I stock them simply by adding the worm castings that come straight out of harvester. There are some worms that always escape being harvested and of course all the egg capsules. It takes quite a while before the new beds have enough worms to be harvested though.

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New building, again, for Worms Etc

Written by Matthew on November 26th, 2011

I am so excited, today I got a great deal on a green house. Can’t wait to construct it on the property, but I’m still finishing another greenhouse on the property as it is, but it was a good deal so I snatched it while I could. More room to grow worms in!

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Sandpit type worm farm

Written by Matthew on November 25th, 2011

One simple and cheap way to grow worms and compost with them is a “sandpit” style worm farm. You just construct a structure that would be similar to a sandpit for children built on the ground. You simply need construct a sandpit, but don’t but sand in it, instead fill it with your compostable materials and then add the worms. As for building the sand pit, there are tons of different ways. Just search Google and you will find tons. Here is an example. Taking care of the worms is the same as in any other bin, like here.

If you live in a hot area be sure to build it where it will get some shade. Also be sure to keep it damp and fed well. A lip of some sort around the top will help keep worms from escaping. Be sure its deep enough to not freeze through during the winter. Check your frost depth and build accordingly.

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Compost and Vermicompost, What are they?

Written by Matthew on August 30th, 2011

Compost is the process through which organic matter transforms from an unstable state to a stable state. To understand this, think about an apple that has fallen off of a tree and is left sitting on the ground undisturbed. The apple, although fresh and ready to eat when it falls from the tree, will not stay in this condition for long. Because the apple cannot stay in its present condition it is said to be in an unstable state. The apple has stored energy in the form of sugars, starches, and proteins. These chemical stores of energy came from the sun and were stored through the process of photosynthesis. The apple tree took CO2, water, oxygen, and converted these basic ingredients using sunlight through the process of photosynthesis into the sugars and starches that make up most of the apple. The apple will soon begin a natural and God created process of decomposition called composting. Organisms such as yeast, bacteria, and fungus will begin breakdown of the apple into a more stable form and eventually into a material called humus. Humus has many important functions that whole books could be written on, but for basics its important to know that humus holds nutrients for plant use and acts as a filter and helps prevent contamination of ground water from many chemicals (Miller 148).

It is quite fascinating to see how this natural process keeps everything in balance. If things did not rot (compost) eventually there would be huge piles of leaves in the forest, our uneaten apple cores would soon litter the planet, grass clippings would eventually take over your yard, so on and so forth, but more importantly the soil would soon run out of nutrients because they were not getting replenished. Composting is necessary for new things to come about. Composting is a natural process through which God has allowed for His creation to continually renew itself. Everything that was once living will eventually turn back into the soil. (Genesis 3:19) The complexity of natural cycles is amazing and so vast that scientist cannot completely understand the chemistry involved, yet at the same time somehow they are fascinatingly simple and complete systems.

A large portion of garbage created comes from organic and once living sources. All the food, paper, wood, cotton and much of the other resources we use come from the ground as grown products. These product all can be turned into compost when their usable life is over. Currently we throw much of these materials into landfill when they could be used to enrich our soils. The problems comes from the fact that the natural process of composting is to slow to efficiently handle the huge volumes of organic material currently produced. However through intentional composting and using special methods we can compost large amounts of garbage quickly, producing a valuable soil amendment in the process of reducing waste. This also prevents depletion and waste of agricultural capacity.

Many different compost methods have been devised by people over the years. Some compost methods are suitable for extremely large scale facilities composting hundreds of cubic yards a day and some methods have been developed that can allow for a completely automated compost bin to fit under your kitchen counter. One type of composting called thermophilic composting requires temperatures to climb to over 150 degrees F, compared to vermicomposting which takes place at room temperature. Vermicomposting is of course composting with the use of earthworms. Vermicomposting can also vary in scale from million dollar operations to 15 dollar plastic containers.

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Daily life as a worm farmer

Written by Matthew on August 12th, 2011

What is a typical day for a typical red worm farmer? That would be hard for me to know provably because I doubt that there is a typical worm farmer. Me and most of my colleague each do things very different, but I can tell you how my typical day goes.

You would think that a lot of my time would be spent managing the actual worm farm, but in reality I spend a lot of my time on the computer and phone answering emails and phone calls. To be honest I miss a lot of phone calls, but I do answer direct emails usually within 24 hours. Sometimes there is just no way for me to answer the phone. Everyday I try to do something online to get people interested in vermicomposting. That could be anything from writing blog post to answering questions on forums. Facebook is becoming an important resource for me to convey information and interest to people interested in vermicomposting. Lately, I have been working on making regular video post as well.

If it is a day we need to harvest red worms then me and at least one other person will go and harvest worms in the morning before it gets hot. After that the worms will need feeding. At least once a week the worm beds need turning with a pitchfork and this is quite a chore. Spot checks are taken every day to see the conditions of the worms. When doing a spot check I like to see how many worms are in an area, check for proper moisture, see if they are laying a good number of egg capsules, check for bedding temperature and compactness as well. It is always important for me to know about how many worms I have in the beds. If I start running low then something has to be done immediately or we could be out of red worms in short order. Thankfully we have not had that issue as of recent and our worms are breeding nicely.

Usually I also try and spend some time researching new ideas and trying to figure better ways of doing things. Every time we add a new red worm bed it is different and better than the older ones. Several times the improvement were so much that we would retrofit the old beds with the new improvements. Ultimately I plan to use the knowledge I have gained to help farmers and communities in third world countries. It will be exciting to start our first overseas project for sure. As for now I have no specific plans or dates set, just a head full of ideas.

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Red Wiggler Worm Composting Bin Setup Video

Written by Matthew on August 8th, 2011

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Red Worm Shipping and Packing Video

Written by Matthew on July 29th, 2011

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Red Worm Feeding Frenzy, How To Compost Quickly Using Red Worms

Written by Matthew on July 28th, 2011

Red worms are well know for their ability to consume vast amounts of food in a short time and multiply like mad as well. Often time however our worms will fail to meet this potential due to not a failure on their part but due to a lack proper conditions for them to get worked up into this feeding frenzy. When things are just perfect though, you can literally see the food disappearing in a matter of hours. This will work best in well established worm beds that have plenty of worms in them. There should be at least 1 pound of worms per square foot for this to work right.

It takes a few days to get a properly maintained worm bed to this point of boiling over with worm activity. First thing is to have the bedding material loose so that the worms can freely move through the bedding. Second is that the moisture level needs to be right. To check the moisture level, grab a handful of the bedding substrate and give it a squeeze. If no water drops are produced then it is way to dry. On the other hand if more than 4-5 drops of water are squeezed out then it is way to wet. Ideally 2-3 drops of water should come out of the bedding for best composting speed.

Worms must have plenty of easily digestible food to eat in order to get worked up onto a composting frenzy. All your normal compostables will work, but in order to get thing really moving fast you can mash or chop them up into smaller sizes, but this is not necessary and the worms will work on them either way. The food needs to be near the top of the bed as that is where the worms prefer to feed. It is provably best to feed in strips rather that feed the whole top. That way if the feed starts to heat up the worms will have a place they can escape to.

Check the worms every couple of days. As long as they have food and the moisture level is right they should really start to work on the food. Feed them just beside of the previous feeding moving the strip of feed just a little each time. The worms will follow the food scraps. If they run out of food then they will disperse through the bedding and it will take a few days to get them started eating like crazy again. This is not necessarily a bad thing though and every once in a while the bedding should be allowed to go without food for a few days so that any missed food will get consumed. Follow this and you will have loads of worms casting and no food scraps to throw out!

Thanks for reading,
Matthew Wilson
Worms Etc

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Red Wiggler Worm Farming Tips and Tails