Building a larger wormery

[Alan]

In my absence over the past three days I thought I would give a quick update on a few things in progress here at Bishop's Homegrown, First off is the new "wormery" or wormhouse that I will be working on come next year.

The basic premise is that I need a larger area and a much larger volume of red worms to produce the amount of compost that I need to provide the soil fertility I desire for a bio-intensive farming regime here at Bishop's Homegrown. I have been throwing the idea around for a couple of months now and have decided to continue towards this work.

I will have to give up one greenhouse in order to create this worm haven, but that is a small sacrifice when you consider the amount of fertility I can create for the farm as well as consider the amount of incoming money from the sales of local fishing worms and also excess compost sales. This will also free up the former worm house to be made into a full time chicken laying house, accompanying another 100 or so chickens and allowing me to use the old chicken coop for some new Turkeys. All good things!


Over the weekend I was priveledged to have met a new friend by the name of Paul Schellenburger of New Albany Indiana. Paul has been featured on the local radio gardening program "HomeGrown" with hosts Jeanine Wishie and Bob Hill on Lousiville KY NPR station WFPL. Paul has been raising red worms for 18 years and has worked with the Louisville KY not for profit Tuning New Grounds in sustainable organic soil creation projects involving the recycling of waste coffe grounds and waste products from around Louisville by way of vermicomposting.

Paul and I had a meeting of minds on Sunday, exchanging ideas and taking a tour of Bishop's Homegrown, trading compostable materials (sounds strange, but then 90% of Eco farming is talking about manure and what we can use to make good manure). I ran my worm house idea past Paul who was all for it and is hard at work helping me scrounge materials to put the new house into motion. All in all it's a very easy conversion of the greenhouse, basically just sliding a heavy duty black tarp over the frame and under the plastic, we just have to set up the inside for constant harvesting and moving of raw materials and worm castings, which is no big deal, and I also have to find containers for the worms

Raw material for worm feed and bedding is no problem at all to come across for me considering the amount of produce that has to be pulled from the local stores when it doesn't sell, composted chicken manure/bedding, composted cow manure from the neighboring cattle operation, and a friend with well over 5 acres of rotten sawdust he is more than willing to deliver by the dump truck load for $20.

I believe the benefits of this will outweigh having to give up growing room in one greenhouse and I will never have to look at purchasing any form of fertilizer again in the future. I have slowly come to the realization that I am about to accomplish having a hand in the multitude of agriculture interest that I wanted to work with (honey bees, organic gardening, plant breeding, worm ranching, seed saving, wild crafting, raising chickens ext.) I just need to find a balance between all of my systems, this expansion will allow me to further balance my systems of agriculture here on this farm, bringing Bishop's Homegrown even more into the sustainable agriculture system.

Hopefully Paul will soon find himself here posting on this very site.

[johno]

That sounds really great, Alan. I eagerly anticipate photos of the progress!

[canadamike]

YEAH! I also want to go back to vermicomposting but in a more serious way, a bit like you do. I have the room on the farm a huge mostly enclosed building, there id a huge workshop and a sawmill on site and a friend of mine owns 3 Tim Horton's coffee franchise. There is plenty of red wrigglers to pick up in manure piles around... I am gonna follow your progress very closely and take the winter to build/create something kind of similar.

For those of you not used to vermicomposting, even if you only have a small garden, it is really worth it. Even kept inside, it does not smell.

I once played a trick to my wife, I kept the worm container in the kitchen for a month without her knowing. It was hidden under a small round table that was covered with a big tablecloth that was hanging down almost to the floor.

Alan, you can sell red wrigglers for fishing? In our neck of the woods they are only SOMETIMES used for creek trout fishing. Do you mix in some bigger grey worms too?

[plantsnobin]

I hope you don't want to kick yourself in the spring-greenhouse space is precious come April. I don't want to discourage your efforts, but it seems that you are going to have to be moving huge quantities of material in and out, mostly by hand since you can't get a front end loader in there. Would it be possible to take the manure directly to the fields you want improved, pile it 2 or 3 ft, seed it with worms, then cover with leaves/straw/whatever you have on hand? You would be surprised what the worms can do in a short amount of time, with minimal labor on your part. A load of rabbit manure laced with worms that I placed outside earlier this year has worked down to some great stuff, with no effort from me, and is loaded with worms, much more than the indoor bins. I am really not trying to be a downer here, I just think that you are going to need to maximize efficiency everywhere that you can on the scale you are working toward. My grandfather used to sell worms, and plants that he raised in a small homemade greenhouse. He raised some of the worms in wooden bins in a cellar under the garage, the greenhouse was attached to the garage too, very handy little setup. He also had worms in huge piles of manure that he put at the edge of the woods. The huge piles worked wonderfully, with no work compared to the bins.

[Alan]

I could probably do that, I do add worms to the outside compost bins and they seem to fair pretty well and lay a profusion of eggs most of the time, however I want something that I can use to keep the worm population up and reproducing and eating at all times, thus I need climate control, I've definitely given it a lot of thought, since we decided not to raise plants for sale next spring however I think I can make it work out pretty well, the big greenhouse leaves enough room to raise 60 strawberry plants and 150 tomato plants with more than enough room to start my own plants as well, there will also be a 6-10 foot zone in the worm house that will still be open to sunlight where I can start and grow some other plants too. My main problem at the moment is coming up with the number of worms required to keep them in stock to sell to fishermen while also having enough worms to create the compost I need and also keep a high breeding population, of course having the room to feed the compost that I have to the worms is now becoming a problem as well.

I do wish that we had put a double door on the front of the other greenhouse, however there is a nice large flat spot out front where I can unload raw materials or drive the tractor right up to the door to unload it into a wheelbarrow for transportation to the various sections inside the house and outback there is enough room for a wood fuel cache, finished material storage and driving and turnaround space for both the tractor and the used manure spreader we got this past spring, so all in all it shouldn't be too awful bad.

My friend who recently opened the new convenience store worked out a deal with a bread delivery company where he buys their day old bread and has a special sale, of course after two days it can't be sold any longer, that actually works out pretty well though cause I'm getting the leftover stuff and there is a ton of it, in the past two weeks I have fed to the chickens, worms, and flat out composted several hundred loaves of bred, pretty cool!

[plantsnobin]

Oh, I didn't know that you weren't going to be growing plants to sell. That makes a big difference.

[Alan]

I couldn't remember if I told you that or not, sometimes I'm not even sure what I've told folks about what I'm doing. The wormery idea actually came out of nowhere just a few weeks ago when I was looking around going, where can I put more chickens and more worms, aha! Two birds, one stone!


I need to get over your way sometime some we can have another of our gossip sessions that we haven't go to have lately, I'm sorry I haven't made it sooner, I'm just still so busy and I've been putting off going to the co-op until I have enough to really make it worthwhile and make it a really good trip. I'll have tomatoes in a week or so and I'll head over that way when I come, I'll bring you guys some tomatoes and some other stuff as well.

[Alan]

Over on my blog I've been detailing the project a with a little more detail (http://homegrowngoodness.blogspot.com) one of the things that I've been blogging about is the integration of Aquaphonics or Aqua-Char in soil building. So far we have seven bins lined up and ready to go along with all of their individual pieces and parts, a fifty gallon fish tank, and ten gall fish tank, the tarp for the house and a bunch of buckets for castings, water catchment, bio-char and so on. This is going to be a really exciting project and make the farm that much more self sufficient, I really do look forward to finishing up the project in the near term and getting the gears going.

We are hot on the trail of a bunch of fifty gallon barrels for water catchment for the wormhouse, the greenhouse, the chickens, and the outside crops. I'm going to be able to accomplish a lot of really cool things with this new set up I think.

As soon as all is set up to go I'll be posting some pictures up here. I'll be going into a lot more detail on the blog as well.

[Alan]

During the past week I have devoted most of my time to getting this project going and will be further detailing the progress over on the blog site. So far Paul and I have 7 bins built with two more coming. I moved all of the worms from the old worm house into the new one and they are resting in the first three of the bins with the old bedding and several inches of new bedding, tomorrow I will be devoting some more time to feeding them some composted cow manure and finishing up some other minor details. Thus far everything is coming along nicely and it's just a matter of finishing up the rest of the bins, the water catchment system and getting the worm population built back up to a sustainable level. I got two new lbs of worms this past week and just put in an order for three more in order to get the population up to critical mass in order for mass breeding and quicker conversion of compost. This project is turning out wonderfully even if it has been a lot of very hard work. Be sure to check out the blog at homegrowngoodness.blogspot.com

[Alan]

We are now 9 bins into the project and everything is looking good. The first three bins are full of material and the temperature is staying right around 80 degrees, the worms are going crazy and breeding up quickly. I recently was able to acquire about 12 tons of cow manure from the neighboring cattle operation have been feeding this to the worms mixed with coffee grounds and crushed eggshells and the worms have moved into the mixture faster than I have ever seen them move into any other feed mix. Come the middle of January I will start the second set of bins and by mid Feb. the third set. I should have finished off all of the cow manure by May which will be right in time for planting and by which time we will have aquired another 12 tons of compostable cow manure from cattle operation next door.

The water catchment system for the two greenhouses will be going in this week along with the first aquarium/bio-char operations.

More updates soon.

-Alan

[Alan]

I worked in "The Wyrm" today moving around some newly made compost into some new bins today for several hours. I'll be inoculating the next set of three bins in the next week or so and a new set of three every two weeks or so until all are filled.

[mnjrutherford]

OK, so Mike is on the verge of wanting to give worms a shot. From the photos, I'm taking it you start with a plastic bin. Fill (layer?) the bin with .... what? If it was lasagna the first thing in the pan is a film of oil followed by pasta, then sauce, cheese, pasta, sauce, cheese. Can you make the explanation that easy for me? Do you need drain holes in the bottom of the bin? What is "enough" worms to start with? Where should I get them from if I can't get my boys to hustle enough from the forest?

Last but not least, how long AFTER we make the "wasagna" will we be needing to harvest the castings? I've perused all the photos, but I don't quite get it. This is how I understand it:
1. Large barrel with 2 "windows" cut into the sides.
2. Windows are covered with screening (what size?).
3. Axel runs vertically through the barrel with 2 stretcher bars at each "solid" end of the barrel for stability when rotating.
4. Axel mounted on support system (of what?) so that barrel is at an angle. How steep of an angle? Or is that important?
5. Castings fall into container underneath screened windows.
6. Worms and unfinished "stuff" land in container at end of barrel.
7. Worms and residue are returned to same plastic container with fresh stuff.

How close is that to reality? Am I way off?

[Alan]

Jan 18, 2010 20:48:19 GMT -5 mnjrutherford said:

OK, so Mike is on the verge of wanting to give worms a shot. From the photos, I'm taking it you start with a plastic bin. Fill (layer?) the bin with .... what? If it was lasagna the first thing in the pan is a film of oil followed by pasta, then sauce, cheese, pasta, sauce, cheese. Can you make the explanation that easy for me? Do you need drain holes in the bottom of the bin? What is "enough" worms to start with? Where should I get them from if I can't get my boys to hustle enough from the forest?

Last but not least, how long AFTER we make the "wasagna" will we be needing to harvest the castings? I've perused all the photos, but I don't quite get it. This is how I understand it:
1. Large barrel with 2 "windows" cut into the sides.
2. Windows are covered with screening (what size?).
3. Axel runs vertically through the barrel with 2 stretcher bars at each "solid" end of the barrel for stability when rotating.
4. Axel mounted on support system (of what?) so that barrel is at an angle. How steep of an angle? Or is that important?
5. Castings fall into container underneath screened windows.
6. Worms and unfinished "stuff" land in container at end of barrel.
7. Worms and residue are returned to same plastic container with fresh stuff.

How close is that to reality? Am I way off?

Wow! Great questions and I'll do my best!

Those totes, the blue or gray ones, for storage that are sold at wal-mart make terrific worm bins and as Karen said above, in one of those where you aren't dealing with as much volume you can finish a 30-50 gallon one in about 3 months from start to finish.

Heres how to set it up:

A few things to consider. Red Worms (order either Red Wigglers/E. Foetida or European Night Crawlers E. Hortensis, don't use wild endemic species) are the best utility species for worm composting/vermiculture/vermicomposting, feral worms are usually not of the composting varieties and are likely to migrate and leave the bin completely. In the South some use African Nightcrawlers but in the north the temperature requirements (80 F bedding at all times) preclude their use. European Nightcrawlers are culturally the exact same as Red Worms and they do make a better bait worm if one is interested in using worms for fishing or selling them as bait, but as someone who has raised both species I can tell you flat out that Red Wigglers will out eat and out perform European Nightcrawlers in all ways, to the extent that if they are placed in the same bin, the red wigglers will out compete them for food and space within a month or two of time and within 5 months you will have few to no ENC's left.

The second thing to consider is where will you set up your vermiculture experiment. The key question here is, what is your climate like. Red worms prefer temps. between 60-75 degrees but can take temps up to the mid 90's (this is soil temperature by the way, not the air temp) for quite some time. They will also take quite a bit of cold as long as the bin is not overwatered and they don't freeze solid. If the bins are located outside they need to be placed in shade in the summer and be covered/insulated in the winter time. Location may and can also help determine their feedstock. Worms can be kept in small bins inside the house where you can feed them household scraps and paper (anything other than meat and dairy, mostly just because it smells. However, if the bin is outside not only is it ok to do this, but I reccomend it!)

Bedding Material:

Good feedstocks are made up of a 2:1 ratio of Carbon to Nitrogen, however you want to avoid adding anything to the bin that is acidic or which will heat up which can sour the bedding or cause it to heat up which will force the worms to make an escape from the bin, outside this isn't a problem, in the house, all I can say is that it isn't much fun to try to pull worms out of carpeting (did I mention garages are good places for worms along with basements, sheds, or you can buy a small cold frame from growers supply for about $100 bucks and throw a 6 mill hay tarp over it!), if they are outside of course and they leave the bin they will die, these type of worms will not live in the soil and can't burrow. In either location the bedding should be kept moist (like a wrung out sponge) and should be mulched over with a piece of cardboard, black plastic, tarp, or whatever you can find, and adding a bit of lighting over the bin for the first coupe months to disuade the worms from leaving the bin (usually because the worms you buy were raised in a different bedding than you will use and they are looking for "home) until they become better adapted to their new situation.

As far as the initial bedding goes there are some really terrific and free or cheap options out there.

Paper, non glossy types are good when they are well shreaded.
Rabbit, Goat, or Cow manure
Thermophillic compost is fantastic
You can use well rotted sawdust or even Spagnum, but neither is high in any particularly useful nutrient quantity and Spaghnum as we all know is non renewable. Coco coir works, but once again there is no real gain in nutrients to be found there, just bulking material really.

I feed my worms everything. Table Scraps, rotten produce, animal manures, humanure (composting), thermophillic compost, spoiled hay, straw, plant residue, cardboard. If the bins are outside just about anything is fair game really. They even get meat and dairy products outside and sometimes you end up with black soldier fly larvee in the summertime, these are even better composters than the earthworms themselves.

You do need drainholes in the bins and you want to be careful not to overwater. Be sure to to make the mistake that some people do of thinking of the liquid that comes out o the bin as worm tea, it's an anaerobic mess you don't want to use on your plants, trust me. There is only one way to make worm tea and that's using pure castings, water, and aeration!

Overall the wors are very easy to care for, cheap to set up and cheap to feed. A redworm will eat it's weight in organic material daily, but they will also regulate themselves by growing or shrinking their population to meet their food demands.

One more thing, worms do like a neutral PH so be sure to spread a handful of calcium carbonate lime (don't use slacked or hydrated which will burn them) over their bedding once every couple of weeks.

That will give you a crash course on their culture, if you have any more questions about their culture feel free to ask, this one is kind of rambling and I might not have been to clear about some things and will be glad to elaborate tomorrow. I'll get into the worm harvester then too!

[bluelacedredhead]

I think I'm going to regret asking this but ...

If the earth has to be between 60-75F, what temperature does the room the bin is in have to be to maintain that temperature? I'm trying to determine if my front porch would do to house a bin?

[Alan]

Hey Blue,

The temp doesn't have to remain at that level, those temp. ranges are just the ones which are more ideal for a worm culture to operate and breed within. As an example, in the winter, I keep my beds generally at about 55-60 degrees F by heating with a wood stove (usually only at night unless it is extremely cold and overcast during the day). By heating at night I can maintain the temp of the bin in these ranges by heating the house to 70 F.

The Average air temp of my greenhouse throughout the year (factoring in all seasons) is about 75 degrees F. In the summer it gets close to 100 F in there however.


As far as the worm harvester Jo. here you go:

Trash Can or plastic drum, ends cut out, cut it in two pieces, wrap wire around center and attach to both ends of the barrel. The bar in the middle is held in place by drilling a hole through the axle or bar that the harvester rolls around and placing into that hole something which will catch the end support, such as a koetter key, to keep the barrel from sliding down the pole.

30-35 degree angle
1/8 Inch wire.