Worms aren't just good for the garden.

Irritable Bowel Syndone (IBS) increases from one in 10,000 to one in 250 in societies where the people don't have worms. Reintroduction of worms into IBS sufferers cured most of them. New York Times story.

BioPods

One problem with worm farming is soldier fly infestations. BioPod hasn't looked for a solution for soldier flies, it's looked for a use. They can eat a wider range of foods more quickly than worms. Their castings can then be fed to a worm farm. The worms will reprocess it making nice, earthy vermicaste that we are comfortable with.

So, how do worm farmers use this to our advantage. Soldier fly larvae (SFL) are considered the enemy for many worm farmers. This attitude towards SFL means that they are a problem to deal with. We limit foods they prefer, weed them out, kill them off, struggle, fight, scratch and generally waste time trying to get rid of them.

BioPod lets us embrace their strengths. Worm farms with SFL will process a wider range of food wastes more quickly. That is good! The worms will re-process the SFL castings section of the bed in the fullness of time.

Wading pool gardens.

City Farmers use any amount of available space to grow food and get in touch with natural cycles. Having a tub, pot or wading pool garden would be a perfect use of vermicaste. The worm farm (you could make one of the pools into a worm farm) would compost all the garden waste. You would know that the scraps you are feeding to the worms doesn't have any pesticide on it so the vermicaste and leechate wont contain harmful chemicals.

Worms at work.

Californians are encouraged to keep worm farms at work. This is a great way to keep food scraps and paper out or land fill.

Kris' horizontal migration bin.

Kris has put pictures on photobucket of her simple, inexpensive horizontal migration bin to allow for harvesting of vermicast without physically sorting or sifting out worms.

Cheap and easy home made worm bin.

This page gives instructions for the construction of a cheap worm farm.

Reproduction Experiment.

"How many worms is enough to start?" This is a common question from people new to vermiculture. Bentley Christie at Red Worm Composting decided to see what would happen it he started a worm farm with just 4 worms. It was a good result. In less than 6 months he had 100 worms in a new worm farm. If you take 100 and divide it by 2 five times you get 3.125. So, the reproduction rate on worms seems to be a doubling in numbers every month if there is no food or space constraint. Another 6 months and there would have been 6400 worms in the bin is they'd continued to double in numbers monthly. This has been extrapolated simply by multiplying 100 by 2, then 200 by 2... and so on. Obviously there are more variables than you can poke a stick at in vermiculture so mathematical projections are theoretical at best but interesting all the same.

Industrial Scale Worm Farms

Tat-G Pty Ltd make industrial worm farms for use in any industry that creates organic waste.

Wooden Worm Farm

This is a nice looking verticle flow worm unit made from wood. The each wooden layer has a mesh bottom. To harvest remove the upper trays until you get to the lowest tray. Empty that tray then use it as the top tray. You just keep feeding them instead of trying to sort them out of their bedding when the bin is full.

Mini Worm Farms

A mini worm farm might be a good way to explore vermicomposting.

From.

A worm farm from a wheely bin - very simple

Setting up an simple bin.

An instructional video on setting up a simple, inexpensive worm bin.

Wikipedia Page

The wikipedia page on vermicompost gives lots of info on worm farming.

Put yourself on the map.

Vermicomposters lets you put yourself on the map to see who's vermiposting how much and where.

An update on the African Nightcrawlers in a Can-O-Worms

This seems a good time to report on my african nightcrawlers in a can-o-worms project. To recap: There was much talk of whether it could be done or not so I bought two lots of 25 african night crawlers from the fishing store and put them in a can-o-worms to see what would happen. There is much talk of them being earth- rather than compost worms, not heat tolerant, prone to wanderlust, and so on... I wanted to know and figured that doing would give a definative answer. If the very worst came to the very worst I'd just have wasted a few dollars on the worms and some establishment time on converting it to red wrigglers.

I am happy to report that the african nightcrawlers are thriving in their can-o-worms. It was a bit touch and go in the beginning. It seemed that they had all died but they recovered. They seemed to want to be in the collector tray all the time but the second level seems to have fixed that problem. I thought they may have been escaping because I found some worms on the concrete nearby but this doesn't seem to happen any more.

Currently the second level is about half full. My friend wanted to start a can-o-worms with african nightcrawlers. I went to my can-o-worms to collect a few for him. I was struggling to find enough. With red wrigglers it is often possible to find a knot of worms under a particularly tasty bit of food. I was hoping to find a similar knot of african nightcrawlers. It wasn't looking good until I looked in the second tray. It was thick with worms! Big fat worms all through the castings. This explains how they get through so much food. They were huge!

So, my theory is that they come up at night ('cause they're nightcrawlers. .. yes?) and munch through all their food (I know they don't really munch).

Two handfulls of bedding and worms later and my friend's wormfarm was off to a good start.

Mesa Lane's home made worm farm.

Mesa Lane's blogger contacted me via the yahoo group 'Worm Bin' to show me some pics of their home made worm farm. The blog offers a good howto on feeding and some good pics of the worm farm itself.

Worm bin from a Otto/Wiz/Wheely Bin

The Ceres worm farm is made from a Wiz Bin. It is a verticle through-put system (in the top and out the bottom). The baffle allows the controlled harvest of vermicast.

Wonder Worm Waste Management offer a similar bin.