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.