worm work and re-thinking my methods

[Alan]

Lately the fishing worm business has been a bit slow around here due to the increadibly high temperatures so I have had a bit of time to make some basic observations, improvements and mental notes about my vermiculture business. I have definetly decided to make the switch to more "commercial" feed sources, ie Producer "crumbles" for food as opposed to relying solely on produce and coffe grounds. While the organic produce and spent coffe grounds do an amazing job at making vermicompost the productive traits are nihl compared to the protein equivelent of commercial grade chicken feed which I have noted increases the productivity (reproductive) and also the size of the worms which is a definite plus if your trying to make a dollar or two off of the worms as fishing bait, as well you still get the "compost" built up over time with a nice carbon to nitrogen ratio and gives me a lot of coffe grounds weekly to use as an organic, high nitrogen fertilizer in our fields.

-Alan Bishop

[plantsnobin]

Just wanted to say thanks for the worms I got the other day. They are doing great. As for feed-ever thought of raising bunnies?? Just kidding. But I am going to seperate some worms, and feed them only rabbit manure and see what the results are.

[Alan]

Karen, I think they would do terrific with rabbit manure, your getting a lot of carbon to nitrogen ratio from it along with the "waste" output of protein from the rabbit feed and the worms will honestly love it, my main problem is getting worms "up to size" for fishing bait, in a world full of fishermen who for some reason believe that they need a Canadian Nightcrawler to catch a bluegill! I'm glad the worms are doing well, I spent yesterday making up some new bedding for the bins that I have been harvesting compost from and spent a good portion of today mixing up some new food sources (producer egg crumbles, coffe grounds, lime) and aerating the beds with my hands, they were starting to get a little "bogged down" since i've been watering them with the garden hose instead of well water (the drought has got my well way down! ) and bogged down bins don't bode well for aerobic activity and they start to smell after a bit.

Anyhow, keep me up to date on how the worms are doing friend.
-alan

[cff]

Alan"

Do you have a worm separator ? If not what method or tools do you use to separate your worms from the castings ?

[Alan]

No, unfortunately right now I don't have a harvester, which makes seperaing the worms from the vermicompost a bit of a job! My method is to take a few buckets of material and poor it out on my sorting table in the worm house, where I then sort through it, picking out the bait size older worms and cupping those up for bait. It takes quite a while to get a sizeable order up and going, but when you don't have the money to buy a harvester it will work for a little while. Plus it gives me a chance to get my hands dirty and really check on the overall health of the bins, the condition of the compost and a chance to harvest castings for use in the greenhouse or the fields, I shortly plan on expanding the worm-house to a size large enough to both supply the bait stores I plan on selling to over the next 2 years and to also allow for fertilization for about 2 acres of produce as an experiment in vermicompost fertility.

I can already tell a major differenc in feeding the worms the Pen Pals "egg maker" mash, the worms have noticably "sized up" in the past week to more than twice the size that they were, they have also picked their breeding habbits and egg laying back up, noticably laying more eggs!

I will still feed some coffe grounds and produce/table scraps as backup and organic amendments, but the main foodstuff will now be this "egg maker" mash.
-Alan

[Alan]

The worms are now doing much better (for the most part). I turn the worms every few days with a potato digging fork and that keeps the soil aerobic (oxegenated if you will) and definetly keeps the smell down, I have also stoped watering on an every day/heavy basis, now I water every third day and feed them "crumbles" every 2 weeks, their size and numbers have improved significantly, unfortunately the blue tarp which was keeping the worm house good and cool (it was overtop of the original piece of greenhouse/tufflite IV plastic) ripped and I didn't have the money to replace it, so I removeed it with hopes that the temperature here would cool off over the next few days (since it is now fall) but guess what, RECORD FRIGGIN' TEMPERATURES FOR THE PAST 3 DAYS AND ONCE AGAIN TOMARROW. For the most part this hasn't affected the worms, other than those which where in realatively shallow bins which where still pretty wet, which means the worms basically "cook" but I made the save on a good portion of them (there where only two bins like this) by dumping them and their contents into some larger bins, later this winter I will move them back into their respective bins and in the spring I will add a new tarp to the greenhouse to keep it cool next year, however I think the piece of greenhouse plastic and it's heat producing transparency will be a plus this winter, keeping the worms warm enough to keep the bins from freezing and allowing me to grow a larger "herd" due to increased winter breeding.

-Alan

[cff]

You must be having the same heat wave we are, it was 93 degs in the south central part of NC. Crazy wether with a major drought still in progress

[Alan]

Yeah, we got a crazy heat wave for 3 or 4 days and the a nice little cold front with some much needed rain finally came through. Anyhow, I cupped up some worms for bait today (sold some too!) and took another good look at the worms today and man they are looking 100% better than those wimpy looking ones I had about a month ago, they could really use some cool weather though, red--worms just aren't made for 80-90 degree soil temperatures!
-Alan