Vermiculture

[Michaelangelica]

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.

You can buy a three tier plastic worm farm here in just about any nursery

You harvest the 'juice' from it ever other day. One tier is active where you put your scraps (on top) the next partially decomposed the bottom worm castings ready for the garden. The worms follow the food.

[Michaelangelica]

. He dropped out of college and he's already a millionaire.

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

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

Sounds like a big business.

Good for him

TerraCycle is looking for a creative use for bottle caps. As a part of our production process, we collect hundreds of thousands of soda bottles per year, many of which include a bottle cap. Over the years, we've collected quite a few. Help us find a use for these bottle caps and win a lifetime supply of TerraCycle.

Here councils re-cycle all plastic bottles. In one state (SA)there is a 5c deposit on all bottles

[Ganoderma]

very cool stuff. i experimented with this a while ago in a slightly different manner. i keep a lot of reptiles and amphibians so i had a lot of vivariums. i had a phelsuma (day gecko) enclosure running for 6 years with full plants and animals. the main bugs were red wigglers (thanks to a bait store) and sow bugs. fertilizer for plants, eat dead bugs/poo, aerate soil, and provide food for lizards. it was so successful that from 2004 till the end of 2005 i did not add anything but water. the lizards ate the bugs and the cycle continued.

 

there is also research on using fungus are composters. oyster mushroom is of special concern, it is great for composting cellulose. it is also being researched for cleaning up pollution. see Paul Stamets. I am thinking of experimenting with using mushrooms as a primary decomposition then moving it on to invertebrates and worms. Anyone try this?

 

i am curious why the want for removing wood lice (aka sow bugs/pill bugs)? they are excellent decomposers and will stay in the top area of the worm farm. i would think that any effective organic decomposer would be beneficial provided it does not prey on other live animals.

 

i have also recently being playing with snails for decomposing, but it is apparent that they are rather picky eaters, even the giant land snails....

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/NEWS/608270331

Worms give breeders wiggle room to be creative with organic fertilizer

 

By MARY ANN D'URSO

Staff Writer

 

PISCATAWAY -- Sure, worms poop, but is it enough to make a business go?

 

It is if you're Jersey Devil Organics, a worm ranch in the business of selling organic fertilizer made from worm waste.

One worm, the Coslicks said, will produce about 10 pounds of waste per year.

Australian experiments found that adding 10 percent to 20 percent castings to a mix increased the production of marigolds by one third, Bogdanov said. Likewise, the first year that vineyards put worm castings on the plant surface and covered it with mulch, grape production increased by a third.

 

"In the second year, they got the same rate of increased harvest without an addition of any vermicompost on the surface at all," Bogdanov said.

 

A casting, he said, has a mucus membrane around it that lasts at least a couple of years.

[Ganoderma]

just a guess but wouldnt fungi eat away at the paper/cardboard faster than earthworms would have a hope at? i have a feeling it, fungus, has first strike at things like paper then the earthworms finish 'er off.

 

i understand the "clean" earthworm style setup being mentioned. but if waste elimination is the goal why get rid of sow bugs? sow bugs are great cleaners as are millipedes and other soil dwellers. centipedes could go though, all they do is eat what you want to breed.

 

i saw a show a while ago about those massive earthworms. althought they said 6' was their max length! i believe it was by melbourne? very rare they said.

 

i am using some nice fat 12"ers in my 5 gal compost. i am going to be setting up an experiment using sow bugs and earthworms seperatly to compare the differences. i will be adding the same amounts of raw vegetation to both and leaving them in cool place. i am assuming the worms are far supperior but i am interested in how much better they will be. another one i may try is snails, them suckers are amazing eaters. just got to find the right specie for composting and not eating crops...

[Michaelangelica]

In warm waeather worms went through a lot of my scrap newspaper.

I shreded it a little but not a lot.

 

I doubt snails would be in the race- you would need so many of them

[Ganoderma]

I was in a book store this weekend looking at English books and saw a book in the science section and saw a book called "The Worm Book" (I think that’s the name). It talked about using worms, vermiculture, composting etc. Anyway one section I remember was it had a 3 columned list. Primary decomposers, secondary and final. it placed earthworms in primary and secondary. it also placed fungi (I always seem to mention mushrooms...) in primary.

 

i am wondering if earthworms are able to break down cellulose? perhaps using a mushroom worm cycle could yield super effective/fast results?

[Michaelangelica]

i am wondering if earthworms are able to break down cellulose? perhaps using a mushroom worm cycle could yield super effective/fast results?

They have just discovered some bacteria that will break down cellulose. (Usually the mushroom's role I know)

Many are excited by this as it will allow wood waste to be turned into bio-fuel.

 

For details of the soil bacteria involved see David Suzuki and Holy Dressel's "Naked Ape to Super Species" A & U 2002 or search the web.

 

I have a shreder. Do you think it would be OK to put shreded paper in my compost?

What about the ink?

[Ganoderma]

I suppose that would depend on what ink they use, not all are the same. I know some use "environmentally friently" ink. Not sure what that means though... If your asking if it will affect the bugs, i highly doubt it. It will definitely NOT harm fungus!

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/magazine/20wwln-consumed-t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1179693596-vj4NoNBuvVaka6xwxunlbg

 

a fun article

there is money in poo

as long as, or if? someone sues you?!

It was a worm bin that Tom Szaky started in his college apartment that eventually led to his founding TerraCycle. He was trying to grow “certain plants” in order to “harvest the buds,” as one account put it. High on the effects that vermicomposting had on his gardening project, he and a fellow student wrote a business plan that turned on making effective and earth-friendly products for gardeners who didn’t happen to have worm bins of their own.

TerraCycle began to appear on store shelves in late 2004. The packaging explains that the stuff comes courtesy of “millions of worms” that are fed “premium organic waste” — and slags “synthetic chemical” rivals. By 2006, Inc. magazine judged TerraCycle “The Coolest Little Start-Up in America.” The plant food is now available at Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Target.

 

Producing mass amounts of worm waste proved less difficult than figuring out what to put it in. This has led to the company’s “Bottle Brigade Program,” which involves sending boxes to people and organizations (about 3,100 so far, according to Zakes) across the country, to be filled with empty 20-ounce soda bottles and shipped to TerraCycle. Its bottle shapes are thus inconsistent on retail shelves — but that has become part of the brand’s look, and the company is trying to trademark the packaging style.

[LaurieAG]

Are the maggots i found in the bottom anygood for my heap of goo

 

The maggots probably mean that you are composting meat as well as vegetable matter. If you remove the meat from your mix you will get rid of the maggots and any bad smells as well while doing your worms a favour.

[Michaelangelica]

The maggots probably mean that you are composting meat as well as vegetable matter.

Good for fishing and gangerous wounds.

I have been told that flys will blow a liquid compost made from comfrey leaves because of its high protein level??.

(You 1/2 fill a garbage can with Comfrey then fill with water wait three weeks and you are supposed to have a fertiliser about equivalent to Commercial Tomato Liquid Fertiliser.)

 

I have a question.

I get several local papers (I get all my news on the net now never buy papers) and heaps of junk mail every week.

If I shredded these up, I have a little shredder, how do you think this would go as worm food?

OK with the paper -lots of colour supliments but not with the glossy-brocure stuff?

Would the electricity I used in the shredder be counter productive CO2 wise?

 

I notice they don't seem to be impressed with my composting efforts with sea weed. The particular variety of seaweed I collect seems to take an age to break down even with layers of chook poo and horse poo.

[Ganoderma]

i have problems with that plastic coated paper stuff as well....i often recycle that as i know nothing of how to deal with it myself.

[maikeru]

Sorry to revive this old thread...but I figure that good discussions never get old.

 

I'm joining the vermiculture bandwagon. I purchased a couple pounds of red worms and hope these guys will come in the mail (and survive the heat...38-40 C) in the next few days. I'll keep the large part of the population in a basement bin, where I can feed them coffee grounds and kitchen scraps. The last few days I've been doing a lot of reading and research about vermiculture... Not too complicated, not too expensive, either.

 

Are there any Hypographers still raising and celebrating their little worms? Also, will I find it helpful if I slip a few red worms into my terra preta pots to allow them to compost and feed the plants in the pot? Any tips for a vermiculture newbie?

[Michaelangelica]

I had a three stage worm farm but finally gave it up for a 'compost" bin.

 

I placed it just outside the kitchen window and threw all kitchen scarps and a lot of paper into it.

The possum used it as a feeding tray but after about twelve months I had lovely humus.

I then started a new bin at the other kitchen window.

 

Worms seemed very slow in winter but in summer it was amazing what they got though including a lot of local papers.

[Chacmool]

You can buy a three tier plastic worm farm here in just about any nursery

You harvest the 'juice' from it ever other day. One tier is active where you put your scraps (on top) the next partially decomposed the bottom worm castings ready for the garden. The worms follow the food.

I only got into vermiculture a few months ago. I have one of the contraptions Michaelangelica describes. It's ridiculously low maintenance, and my plants seem to love the nutrient-rich water that filters through the system. I also like the fact that a lot of my organic waste doesn't end up in the bin anymore.

[lemit]

This guy is very good:

 

Garbage Busters Home

 

I've had a lot of luck with my Guinea Pig bedding/coffee grounds garden. Usually in about a month I have a very worm-rich soil. In three months I have a very rich loam.

 

I can't imagine buying worms for a garden. Like "Field of Dreams," if you build the soil, they will come. (I don't know if the kind of grass Kevin Costner put in would attract worms as well as it seemed to attract dead baseball players, although if you think about it, dead baseball players would be mostly composed of worms, so perhaps the analogy works.)

 

So in this Halloween--and MLB Playoff--season, if you want to attract worms, dead baseball players, or a symbiotic combination of the two, just build up the soil naturally.

 

--lemit