Worm Farm DIY Plan

If you have been searching for a way to exercise your “green” thumb jump into this fun and unique world of “vermiculture.” or “vermicompost” is an organic gardening process of natural composting using earthworms, known as the Red Wriggler (Eisenia fetida). The Wrigglers transform food scraps into rich compost and liquid fertilizer. It is the perfect hobby to support the “cradle-to-cradle” return of organic matter to its origin, mother earth.

It is also perfect for small spaces. The worms only need about 1 square foot of surface area to digest each pound of waste material generated per week. Supply your worms with a container, some bedding material, food scraps, and the worms do the rest.

They consume food scraps, hair, and dust reducing organic waste by 25% in about 60 days; and produce worm castings, which contain the richest form of fertilizer known to man. Concentrated worm castings are very potent fertilizers and must be mixed with potting soil or water to dilute the concentration. Worm castings promote higher than average growth in plants and are rich in phosphorus, nitrogen, and trace minerals.

To start your new worm venture you will need the following supplies:

· Compost Bin (DIY or commercially available)

· Compost Scrap Keeper (Holds food scraps, ceramic or stainless steel)

· Bedding Materials

· Food Scraps

· Worms (Red Wrigglers or Nigh Crawlers)

Compost Bins

You could make your own DIY worm compost bins but to keep things, clean, easy and well-organized, I would suggest investing in a commercially produced vermin-culture compost bin. They are well worth the money spent.

Vermiculture Compost Bins automatically separate food scraps from finished compost, and most-importantly, does not need to be emptied or restarted like some DIY bins. Some recommended vermin-culture compost bins include:

· The Expandable Worm Tower

· Worm Condo

· Worm Bungalow

· Down Under Farm Worm Compost Bin

· Pet Poo Converter and Worm Compost Bin

· Friendly Habitat Worm Compost Bin

· Advanced Biosafe BioSystem

Other helpful accessories to look for are worm bedding (good if you are new vermiculture), a compost scrap keeper (ceramic or stainless steel), soil moisture & pH meter, compressed coir fiber bricks (bedding) and the “Compost and Worm Reference Wheel”

Worms

Oh and of course, don't forget the worms, Red Wrigglers or Red Worms (tolerate a wide range of environmental conditions) and/or Night Crawlers (feed on deeper parts of the bin) will do the job. A mixture of the two will create rich and abundant worm castings.

Bedding

After you have made or purchased a compost bin, you can fill it with bedding. The worms prefer a cool, moist, but well-ventilated, dark environment between 50 and 80 degrees. Worms shun light and are photophobic—they shun both sun and artificial light, burrowing as deep as they can to flee the light. Heat and sunlight will dehydrate the little Wrigglers and all you'll end up are “fried” worms.

The bedding material can be peat moss, aged manure, sawdust, dried grass clippings, hay, garden loam, coir (coconut fiber), straw, damp newspaper, Hessian, cotton rags, aged horse/cow manure (fresh manure heats up) shredded cardboard, newspaper, grocery bags, and most types of shredded leaves. Oak and other highly acidic leaves are not recommended since these worms don't like an acidic environment. Stay clear of inked and glossy papers, since they contain toxic substances which can exterminate your Wrigglers.

Keep in mind the worms have a hearty appetite and will eat whatever is put in front of them, including the bedding.

Feeding

Worms will eat ½ their weight of food each day. Be careful to not overfeed your worms. Like you feed your family, only feed them once they have partly eaten their previous food. This means no desert before dinner. Worms lack teeth and prefer their food mashed, chopped or pureed.

Worms need a variety of foods, and greatly appreciate a well-rounded diet. Worms will happily consume fruit and vegetable scraps/peels (except citrus fruit, onion, garlic and chilies), tea bags/tea leaves, coffee grounds and filters, crushed eggshells, newspaper, cardboard, egg cartons and shredded/soaked pizza boxes, old flowers and small amounts of garden waste, pasta, rice, wet bread & cereal, hair and small amounts of dust from vacuum cleaner. Avoid onions, garlic, citrus, dairy products, seafood, meat, oil, and pet droppings, or the wrigglers will run for the hills.

Worms

The Red Wrigglers are the hardiest, fastest reproducers of the vermin culture world they efficiently gobble up waste and create worm castings. Well-fed worms reproduce even faster, at an alarming rate. They double there population in 3-4 months. Young red worms are a shade of white but turn red at maturity.

Harvesting Worm Castings

Harvesting the compost is easy, just push the bedding and worms to one end of the box and fill the other end with fresh bedding and table scraps. Within a few weeks, the worms will munch their way over to the fresh food and you can scoop out the compost from the deserted side of the bin.

With commercial vermi culture compost bins, the work is done for you; just collect worm casts from the bottom trays, and fill the top trays with food.

If you find that cultivating worms and worm castings are not your thing, you could always take the day off and hang a sign on the worm bin that says “Gone Fishin!”

Of the ailments pets can suffer from, worms may not be the most dangerous to an animals health, but they are one of the most unpleasant from an owners perspective. Not only can they cause weight loss and mild diarrhea in your pet, they are also unsightly and some of them can be transmitted to humans.

There are 4 different types of worms that affect dogs and cats: roundworms, tapeworms, hookworms and whipworms. These very greatly in both the part of the intestinal tract that they live in and the effect they have on the animal.

Roundworms (Toxocara species)

These worms are commonly seen in young dogs and cats. The adults live in the small intestine and the eggs are passed in the feces. Animals are infected by eating other infected animals (e.g. mice, rats), eating the feces of other animals or, in puppies and kittens, via their mothers milk. Eggs are passed in the feces 3 weeks after infection. Infection with roundworms can cause a poor hair coat, weight loss (or lack of weight gain in puppies/kittens), a pot-bellied appearance, and diarrhea. Worms are sometimes vomited up or seen in the feces. Treatment is with an oral deworming medication with a follow up dosage in 3 weeks to catch the next generation that were eggs or larvae at the time of the first dosing.

Roundworms can infect humans, not usually in the adult form, but in their larval form. In a few cases children who ingest the eggs can suffer eye damage or blindness because the worm larvae move through the body causing damage to the tissues. This disease is called Visceral Larval Migrans.

Tapeworms (Dipylidium and Taenia species)

Tapeworms are long flat white worms composed of many segments that live in the intestines of dogs and cats. There are 2 main types that affect dogs and cats, Dipylidium and Taenia species. Dipylidium is obtained by the animal eating an infected flea whilst grooming (licking) itself. Taenia on the other hand is transmitted by eating infected small mammals (rats and mice), or by eating the feces of infected animals. Cats that hunt and dogs that live on farms are the highest risk. Diagnosis is by visualization of the small, rice-like worms in the feces (most common method); or seeing the eggs on a fecal flotation exam. The eggs and worm segments are inconsistently shed in the feces, so just because you cannot see any in your pets stool does not guarantee that your pet is not infected. Nor does a negative fecal flotation exam completely rule out the existence of a tapeworm infection. Clinical signs are rare since tapeworm infection rarely causes a problem. Some clinical signs can be a dull coat, an itchy anus, diarrhea or lethargy. Treatment is via oral deworming medication, an injection or a spot-on.

Tapeworm infection of humans is not common but can occur occasionally, usually in children who have ingested a flea which contains the larvae of the tapeworm. Adults can become infected with tapeworms by eating infected meat that is not cooked properly.

Hookworms (Ancylostoma species)

These worms are most commonly seen in young dogs and cats. Adult worms live in the small intestine, with the eggs passing out of the body in the stool. Animals become infected with hookworms by the following routes: eating infective eggs or larvae, penetration of footpads or skin by larvae, transmission through the milk while nursing young, or transmission from the mother into the fetus while still pregnant. It takes three weeks from the time of infection until eggs are passed into the feces. Hookworm infection can cause a severe and sometimes fatal anemia in young, weak, or malnourished animals. Clinical signs are weight loss, diarrhea, and bloody feces. Worms are occasionally seen in the feces. Treatment consists of oral deworming medication and correction of any anemia. A follow up treatment is given 3 weeks later.

Hookworm larvae can penetrate human skin and potentially cause a skin problem called Cutaneous Larval Migrans. No one should be barefoot for 5-7 days while the pet is being treated for hookworms.

Whipworms (Trichuris species)

This worm affects dogs 3 months of age or older. The adults live in the large intestine and eggs are passed in the feces. Diagnosis can sometimes be difficult because whipworms are not prolific egg-layers. Infection is via fecal-oral transmission. Eggs do not appear in the feces until 3 months after infection. Clinical signs that can be seen are weight loss and diarrhea, with or without blood. These worms are usually not seen in the stool. Treatment consists of an oral deworming medication with a follow up treatment in 3 months.

Treating your pet

Regardless of whether your pet is an indoor or outdoor creature, you should deworm them regularly to keep good hygiene. Many indoor cat owners believe that since their cats are not hunters, there is no way they could have acquired worms. However, the author has seen many indoor cats with fleas (brought in on the owners clothing or shoes most likely) and many fleas are infected with the tapeworm Dipylidium. Therefore even purely indoor cats can be carrying worms.

Puppies and kittens should be wormed every 2 weeks from 4 weeks of age up until 12 weeks. The worms they would be carrying at this age are roundworms, ingested via their mothers milk, so the recommended treatment is to treat with the drug fenbendazole (Panacur), which is available as a liquid, as sachets of granules or as a paste in a syringe.

Dogs and cats greater than 12 weeks old can be dewormed using conventional worming tablets. This should be done every 3 months for optimum protection. There are a whole range of products out there, but the strongest and most effective ones are always those purchased from a veterinarian. Products purchased over the counter from supermarkets or pet shops will often only protect against one of the types of worm and not the others, or will only provide 1 month protection rather than 3.

Here are some useful tips on how to keep your pet worm free:

1. Adult cats and dogs should be dewormed with a veterinary licensed product every 3 months.
2. Over the counter deworming medications may not always be effective.
3. Prevent your pet from eating rodents such as mice, rats and rabbits.
4. Prevent your pet from eating earthworms (roundworm infection).
5. Prevent your pet from eating feces (tapeworm infection).
6. Remove feces from your lawn, street, or kennel daily.
7. Exercise your pets in grassy areas not frequented by other animals.
8. Control fleas! (Fleas carry Dipylidium tapeworm)
9. Deworm females before breeding and again after whelping to prevent infection of newborn puppies/kittens.
10. Deworm puppies and kittens every 2 weeks from 4 to 12 weeks of age.

Dogs and puppies can pass germs, diseases and worms on to people, but it does not occur often. There are certain precautions that you can take to help prevent this from happening. First and foremost, make sure that the dog or puppy you are playing with looks healthy. Do not touch or contact an obviously sick dog. Make sure that your personal dog has regular check ups and is checked for worms by your veterinarian. Look for obvious signs of disease such as spots missing fur on your dog. Hot spots or places that your dog keeps chewing or biting at can be another sign of infection.

One of the best lines of defense from getting sick from contact with a dog is to wash your hands well, especially with anti-bacterial soap. After dog or puppy contact, keep your hands away from your face, especially your mouth. Do not eat finger foods after dog contact until you can wash. Do not let your dog lick you on your face. Try not to have contact with dog saliva, urine or dog feces.

Dogs and puppies can carry a fair variety of bacteria, parasites, fungus and worms. Some of these are fairly common in dogs and others are quite rare. Some people are more likely than others to catch these diseases. Some of the factors associated with catching the diseases depend upon the persons age and status of their health. People who are more likely to get diseases from dogs include infants, children younger than 5 years old, organ transplant patients, people with HIV/AIDS, and people being treated for cancer.

The following diseases may be carried by dogs:

Brucella canis Infection (brucellosis): A bacterial disease rarely associated with dogs.

Campylobacter Infection (campylobacteriosis): A bacterial disease associated with dogs, cats, and farm animals. If your dog has diarrhea, you may want to consult with your veterinarian, as this disease may be the culprit and it is passable to humans. If you develop symptoms, including diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, and/or nausea, contact your physician. Be sure to inform him or her of your pet and if it is ill.

Cryptosporidium (cryptosporidiosis): A parasitic disease associated with dogs, especially puppies, cats, and farm animals. Animals can carry this parasite in their feces and pass it to people. Animals do not have to be ill to pass Cryptosporidium to humans, they may just carry the disease. This disease usually causes a mild to severe infection of the gastrointestinal system, including watery diarrhea, fever, abdominal cramps, nausea, and vomiting.

Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm): A parasitic disease associated with dogs, cats and fleas. Fleas carry the tapeworm and the dog must swallow the flea (which may easily happen during grooming) to allow the tapeworms to hatch and grown in the dog. For a person to become infected with Dipylidium, or tapeworm, he or she must accidentally swallow an infected flea. Most reported cases involve children. The risk of infection with this tapeworm in humans is low.

Giardia Infection (giardiasis): A parasitic disease associated with various animals, including dogs and their environment (including water). The Giardia parasite lives in the intestine of infected humans or animals. Millions of germs can be released in a bowel movement from an infected human or animal. Giardia is found in soil, food, water, or surfaces that have been contaminated with the feces from infected humans or animals.

Hookworm Infection: A parasitic disease associated with dogs and cats and their environment. Puppies and kittens are especially likely to have hookworm infections. Animals that are infected pass hookworm eggs in their stools. The eggs can hatch into larvae, and both eggs and larvae may be found in dirt where animals have been. Eggs or larvae can get into your body when you accidentally eat or have direct contact with contaminated dirt. For example, this can happen if a child is walking barefoot or playing in an area where dogs or cats have been.

Leishmania Infection (leishaniasis): A parasitic disease associated with dogs and sand flies outside the United States.

Leptospira Infection (leptospirosis): A bacterial disease associated with wild and domestic animals, including dogs. In people, the symptoms are often like the flu, but sometimes leptospirosis can develop into a more severe, life-threatening illness with infections in the kidney, liver, brain, lung, and heart.

Lyme Disease: A bacterial disease that can affect dogs and ticks. People get Lyme disease when they are bitten by ticks carrying B. burgdorferi, and this is in certain parts of the country.

Q Fever (Coxiella burnettii): A bacterial disease occasionally associated with dogs, but more often associated with sheep, cattle and goats, especially their birth products.

Rabies: A viral disease associated with various animals, including dogs. This is fairly rare in the US.
Ringworm: A fungal disease associated with dogs. Ringworm is transmitted from direct contact with an infected animal’s skin or hair. Dogs and cats, especially kittens or puppies, can have ringworm that can be passed to people.

A Guide to Composting With Worms

Worms can be useful in different ways. The compost worms are more easy to raise and can turn our unwanted food and organic wastes into a healthy rich plant food that can be use directly to the base of our  plants, or dissolved in water and it can be used as a foliar spray.

African night crawlers and European night crawlers are examples of large types of worms. This large type of worms can make for excellent bait and will almost catch freshwater species of any type of fish and other types of saltwater as well.

There are almost thousands of different types of worms, each of this thousands worms has its own purpose.Let worms eat our organic waste. They will be happily turned into some of the best fertilizers that can be used here at Earth. Worms also composts or it is also known as “worm castings” or “vermicompost”.  A fascinating and an easy way to recycle our wastes, vermiculture or worm composting:

Requires very little work

Produces no offensive odors

Help plants thrive

Only few things are needed to have good worm compost: a bin, bedding, worms and some worm food. By following some steps listed below, you will be easily learn how to make, maintain and you will easily learn how to compost your worm compost.

SUITABLE worm composting SPECIES:

A earthworm species are most often used Red Wrigglers but European night crawlers may also be used. There are names called at the European night crawlers including dendrobaenas, dendras, and the Belgian night crawlers.

You can also get your worms from your compost bin; you can purchase them/find a horse stable/farmer with aged manure pile

In every 1 pound per day of food waste, you’ll need 2 pounds of worms. Whether you are unable to get this many worms at the start, reduce the amount of food waste until the population of worms increases. Red worms can mature sexually in 60-90 days and it can produce cocoons which take 21 days for them to hatch their baby worms. Once the worms start breeding they can deposit 2-3 cocoons per week with 2 baby worms in each cocoon.

Red worms/ Red wrigglers are the best kind of worms for composting. These worms are often found in the old compost piles. These worms are different from the earthworms you would normally find in the ground. These worms have a huge appetite and they reproduce quickly and thrive in the confinement. These worms can eat more than their own weight in food every day. When you purchase some red worms, 1 pound is all you need to get started.

The best suited for composting are red worms. These worms are often found in the aged manure, compost heaps and piles of the leaves. These worms are also known as brandling and manure worms. Their official names are Eisenia foetida and Lumbricus rubellus. On the other hand dew worms are also better suited to life in the soil and shouldn’t be used in a worm bin.

You can also get your worms from your compost bin; you can purchase them/find a horse stable/farmer with aged manure pile

In every 1 pound per day of food waste, you’ll need 2 pounds of worms. Whether you are unable to get this many worms at the start, reduce the amount of food waste until the population of worms increases. Red worms can mature sexually in 60-90 days and it can produce cocoons which take 21 days for them to hatch their baby worms. Once the worms start breeding they can deposit 2-3 cocoons per week with 2 baby worms in each cocoon. 

FEEDING YOUR WORMS   

Worms in composting bins like to eat many of the same things we human beings to eat, only when they aren’t so picky. Favorite foods they eat are:

Stale bread

Apple cores

Orange peels

Lettuce trimmings

Coffee grounds

Non-greasy leftovers

Vegetable scraps

Feeding your worms at the beginning feed them only a little at a time. You can add larger quantities of food waste. You should do bedding regularly, if you rotate the bin as you go.  If you return to the first spot, most of the food you have buried there should have been eaten.

 Your worms can eat your food scraps, fruits and vegetable peels, pulverized egg shells, tea bags and coffee grounds. To avoid some potential rodent problems do not compost meats, dairy products and soon.

 If you pull aside the bedding bury the food waste deep and cover it up with the bedding again divide the bin into 3 or 4 imaginary sections and bury successive loads in different areas in the bin. There’s a weekly waste food that will help us human beings to determine the size of your worm compost bin and the number of the worms you’ll need. Do this for 2 weeks to get an estimate the average of our food waste.

Back in antiquity, Aristotle called them the “intestines of the Earth,” but it took several more centuries before earthworms were systematically studied — by Charles Darwin who wrote a whole book on the importance of worms in breaking down dead organic matter, enhancing soil structure, and maintaining soil aeration, drainage and fertility. Darwin calculated that earthworms in the soil add about eleven tonnes of organic matter per acre (about 18 tonnes per hectare) each year; modern scientists believe that where worms abound they can move up to 250 tonnes per hectare per year.

According to Darwin, earthworms have an acid reaction in the upper part of their digestive canal which affects the soil and organic matter passing through the canal. Calciferous glands in their gut secrete carbonates of lime, which slowly neutralise the acidic particles and eventually change the reaction to alkaline as the transiting soil reaches the lower part of the digestive canal. As earthworms feed, the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio in organic matter progressively declines. Nitrogen is converted into more usable ammonium or nitrate forms; phosphorus, potassium and other nutrients are also converted into readily available forms.

As various kinds of mineral and organic particles pass through the earthworm digestive canal, they get mixed very close together to form aggregates, which improve the drainage and moisture-carrying capacity of the soil. These organic matter-mineral aggregates have great water stability and enhance other characteristics of the soil. Various investigators believe that as much as 50% of aggregates found in surface layers of the soil come from earthworms.

In addition to aggregates, earthworms also play very important roles in forming soils, improving soil structure and enhancing its physical characteristics. Modern agriculture utilises earthworm products in various ways.

Worm composting

Also called ‘vermiculture,’ the term refers to the production of humus from organic matter by using a combination of microorganisms and earthworms. Unlike other composting processes, worm composting does not require heat to degrade and stabilize organic material; instead, it makes use of intimate interactions between the earthworms and the microbes that live in their intestinal tract and in the organic material. Worm composting yields two economically valuable products — vermi-cast and vermi-meal.

Earthworm casts consist of remains of digested organic matter, mucous and nitrogen-derived substances. The texture of these casts is finer than can be found in traditionally composted wastes. Vermi-cast is superior to inorganic fertilisers in its ability to provide growth nutrients. Apart from the normal N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) contents, vermi-cast delivers enzymes, beneficial microbes, and growth hormones. Vermi-meal is a protein-rich meal made from ground earthworm meat. Its protein content is about 62% with 11% fat. It can be used as an ingredient for animal feeds.

Worm juice

Worm juice is a special product from earthworms. It also contains some N-P-K, but its major benefit comes from its plentiful supply of nitrogen-fixing bacteria (about 100,000 CFU/ml), trace elements, and minerals all mixed in an aerated liquid and immediately available to the plant. Usually applied at the rate of 10 litres per hectare, worm juice helps the soil regain its natural capacity to provide plants with the nutrients they need in readily available form. It is also used as a foliar spray and as dressing on seed coats to increase germination rates.

Worm compost tea

Also known simply as ‘worm tea,’ this nutrient solution is a liquefied form of vermi-cast produced from worm composting, further enriched with minerals, essential plant nutrients, and all the various microorganisms so necessary to soil health and enhanced plant growth. Application is easy but it is important that worm tea be applied within 4 hours after the solution is activated. Worm tea is usually applied on the soil, plant leaves, and mulch to promote soil health.

Continued use of earthworms and earthworm products will help you eliminate inorganic fertilisers and other chemicals in your farm.

Interesting facts about worms you may not know

Worms are invertebrates, that is they have a long, soft body and no back bone or legs! They do not have a brain but do have a nerve centre (called a ganglia). They do not have eyes but are sensitive to light.

Worms either move by stretching and contracting their muscles or some only move using the movement of other creatures or the soil movement.

Worms come in all sorts of sizes from tiny little thin things to very big ones. Guess how big you think the largest earth worm might be?

The largest earth worm is the giant Gippsland, it lives in Australia and can grow to about 3 metres in length, it is a protected and endangered species as many have been killed by farming methods.

There are hundreds of thousands of species of worms and about 2,700 are earth worms. Earth worms have been around for 120 million years! That’s quite a long time, they were even around when the dinosaurs were here!

Dendrobaena worms are native to the UK. They live in the top 2-10 cm of the soil and have a good and varied diet, thus why they are favourite for wormeries.

Darwin described the earth worm as “the intestines of the earth”

Did you know that a Tonne of these worms can eat a tonne of green and kitchen waste in 1 – 4 days!!!! Not a lot of people know that. They basically can eat their own body weight in this time, Imagine a human of 60 kg (10 Stone) doing that!!!!

They like most things we like but are not partial to onions, garlic leaks etc. They also do not like anything high in acidity, so oranges, tomatoes, grapefruit etc are not suitable for a wormery as the increase in acidity can kill them also they just wont eat it!

One of their favourite food is Poo! They just love horse manure, to them this is the same as us going for a favourite Chinese dinner!

If you think of archeologists when they dig up ancient bodies etc there is usually nothing left except, bones, metal or stone objects, this is because the worms and other tiny life in the soil eat almost everything else!

Worms are hermaphrodites, that is to say each worm is both male and female, but they can cross fertilize. Two worms will wriggle together, go all wet and slimely (bit like humans) and both will produce an egg. The ring around the worm, about 1 third down from its head end is called the Clitellum, often referred to as the saddle. The saddle is where the worm eggs are made,

After mating the clitellum forms a shell around the worm cells and “rolls” itself over the head of the worm making the egg capsule, called a Cocoon.

Each worm will produce between 1 and 2 cocoons per week.

Each cocoon will contain between 1 and 7 hatchlings, always an odd number usually 3 or 5.

The eggs can lie dormant for up to a year, hatching only when the conditions are favourable. They like a temperature of between 15 and 22 degrees.

When hatched the hatchlings are tiny, about 2mm in length and the with of a fine pencil line!

The hatchlings develop and are fully sexually mature at about 16 weeks; this is when they develop their clitella and can start mating and producing eggs.

In 1881 Charles Darwin wrote:-
“It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures”

Visit: www.wormsonline.co.uk
www.earth-essentials.co.uk

Big Oil, the meat industry, chemical fertilizer manufacturers and queasy people everywhere are shaking in their boots due to recent scientific and agricultural innovations brought about by worm farming.

The buzz is: worms may well save the planet. Consider: worms are one of the easiest animals in the world to farm, and all you have to do to harvest 100% organic meat is to raise earthworms in organic soil.

Home worm farms are a breeze to set up; they compost your fruit and vegetable waste and your dog and cat’s poop; and their droppings diluted in a water solution to the color of a weak tea make the best fertilizer you’ll ever use in your garden.

And your fruit and vegetable crops won’t be the only bounty you can eat. Raw worms are not the most desirable food, but meat scientists are fascinated with the possibility of processed worm meat.

People will never know what they’re eating was ever worms by the time the processors get through with it. It will taste just like beef, chicken, fish, pork or turkey; and processed worms can be poured, mixed and molded to look exactly like those meats, too!

Processed worm meat, which will be branded as “Weat” by a very large agricultural conglomerate that you know very, very well, is coming soon to a store near you. Weat is nearly 100% fat, cholesterol free, low in calories, high in protein and high in fiber.

Having trouble losing weight? Experiments are still in early stages, but the Weat Diet is expected to be the most successful weight-loss and nutrition regimen in the history of dieting.

Worm counters offering battered and fried Weat, Wilk, Wice Cream, Wenderloin and Wurgers will be introduced in every Starbucks and McDonald’s in America.

Weat will be the end of world hunger. The State of Utah alone would be able to produce enough Weat to provide Weat for every person in the world, three meals a day, indefinitely!

The global-warming-causing methane and ecosystem-leveling solid toxic waste that’s produced by beef, pork and poultry farming will be a thing of the past.

Because worm farms can be packed with worms wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, the farms will be easily designed and manufactured to capture, collect and ship the fertilizer and methane produced by worms for use in all facets of life, business and industry.

Methane is an ideal fuel for creating hydrogen, and the carbon by-product will be easily converted into carbon nanofibers, which are currently revolutionizing every manufacturing process in the world.

And the biggie: worm farms can and will flourish anywhere, and the hydrogen that’s produced will be plentiful enough to be piped and tanked short distances to gas stations all over the nation.

As Al Gore has said, “thanks to worms, the hydrogen economy is now finally becoming a reality, and global greenhouse emissions are expected to drop by 50% in a previously unfathomable space of 10 years or less – all due to the humble worm.”

Are you Weady for the Wevolution?

The main work worms do in your garden is tilling and aerating the soil. They burrow very deep, leaving channels through the soil that break up clods and allow air to enter and water to penetrate and drain away.
In the process of eating at the surface and eliminating lower down, they introduce organic matter to the deeper levels and steadily increase the depth of topsoil. Their main role is to digest decomposing organic matter, converting it quickly into a form plants can use as nutrients.
It is important to maintain good soil structure when gardening organically. Unlike mechanical tillers, earthworms do not damage the soil by inverting it, creating hardpans or breaking up the crumb structure. They never have mechanical breakdowns, they do not create noise or pollution, and they use garbage for fuel – an excellent way to dispose of your kitchen scraps, especially if you live in an apartment.

DIY Worm Farming
Commercial worm farms are very practical, widely available, easy to use and are quite aesthetically pleasing. You usually buy them with a small supply of worms to get you started. Choose either Red Worms or Tiger Worms. However, if you already have a suitable ‘home’ for your worms you don’t need to spend the extra money.

A pair of old concrete laundry tubs in a shady spot near your kitchen door or close to your propagating area (or both) is ideal. Have the tubs elevated to make collection of the fertilizer easy. Leave the plugs out and put a strainer in the hole so that any excess water can drain.
Fill the first tub with compost and mix in a handful of dolomite or agricultural lime, along with about a half a bucket of soil. Place a bucket under the plug-hole and water this mix with a fine spray until it is quite saturated and starting to drip into your bucket.
Tip in your starter population of worms and cover the surface with an old hessian sack, wet cardboard, old carpet or similar. Worms usually live underground so they thrive in an environment that is cool, dark and moist. You can purchase a tub of 500 – 1000 worms to get started. They are available from professional worm breeders and can be sent through the mail. Many garden supply centres will also have them.
A close-fitting solid lid on your farm will suffocate your worms, so you need to fit a fly-mesh or shade-cloth screened lid to keep out flies and other insects.
For the first month you need do nothing except make sure the farm is kept quite moist, but not awash. Once the farm is settled in you should not need to add extra water. If your farm is exposed to rain, make sure the plug is left out or your worms will drown.
The compost itself will feed the worms for quite a long time, but to get maximum breeding it is best to add some supplementary feed every few days, especially as the population starts to increase. Add a dessert-spoon-full of lime or dolomite to each kilo of food.

You can vary their feed by rotating between:
- a bucket half-filled with water and cow or horse manure, mixed to a slop and poured over the surface;
- a blender filled with household scraps(not citrus or onion peel or meat) blended to a slop and poured over the surface;
- rotten potatoes, pumpkin or fruit, just placed on the surface;
- half a bucketful of new compost, spread over the surface.

Worms also like:
•    soaked and ripped pizza boxes
•    shredded and soaked cardboard, paper
•    leaves, dirt, hair, egg shells
Worms do not have teeth, so scraps should be cut into small pieces – waste from a vegetable juicer is ideal.
Plants from the onion family (including garlic, leeks and shallots) and citrus fruits contain volatile oils. If any of these are included in the food scraps the worms will climb out of their housing to get away from the smell.
Within a few months the tub should be filled with a writhing mass of worms, and it’s time to colonise the second tub.

Half-fill the second tub with the same mixture of compost, lime and soil. Put a strainer in the plug-hole and water the mixture until saturated.
Burrow down to the plug-hole in the first tub and put in the plug. Set a hose to just dribbling into the first tub until it is half-full, being VERY careful not to forget it and fill it right up. Leave the hessian on top to exclude light. The worms in your first tub will all migrate into the top half to avoid drowning.
Scoop them out and, reserving some to put in the garden, transfer them to the second tub. Let the plug out of the first tub and drain into a bucket. You are left with a bucket full of very, very rich liquid fertilizer and a tub half full of worm castings.
From now on you should be able to repeat this process every month or so, transferring about a third of the worms out into your garden or feeding them to the chooks each time. This will also ensure that you always have a supply of excellent liquid fertilizer available as well as the rich worm castings. Your plants will thrive!

Many people are tea drinkers. Whether they are drinking Oolong tea or black tea from their local grocery store, that person has a certain image as to what it is, what it tastes like, and what it is for. There is a certain kind of tea that no one should drink but is one of the most beneficial, nutrient filled solutions that has ever existed. It is called worm tea. What is worm tea? Here are a few tips on how you can create and use worm tea otherwise known as compost tea to enhance your organic gardening needs.

Used for hundreds of years, organic gardeners and farmers that have known of the value of vermicomposting have been creating this potent nutrient filled liquid that is better known as worm tea or compost tea. This liquid which some say has a fragrant odor or is completely odorless can be used on the leaves of potted plants and also in the soil to enhance plant growth as well as help protect the plants that you grow.

It is actually a very simple process with a couple of not so simple steps if you have never done it before. Basically, the vermicast is put into a filter like a nylon and added to a jug of water and oxygenated in order to encourage microbes within the mixture to flourish and grow. Some additional ingredients to add to this tea include molasses or sea kelp. The oxygenation process will continue for about a day or sometimes longer.

Once done, it can be bottled and sprayed on plants or poured into soil at the base of the plants in order to inject a kind of a topical fertilizer that not only helps plant growth but also repels insects and disease such as spider mites and various pathogens, respectively.

There are various ways to get compost tea and one of those ways is through the collection of worm castings. Worm castings are essentially the poop of the worms. Their manure feels like soft little nodules that can be bagged up and cooked like a tea (except at room temperature water) and then used in the same manner that the worm tea was used in liquid form. Usually distilled water is used in the sifting process when using the castings and can actually be a much neater process when doing this on a large scale.

Most compost tea is concentrated so even if it does come in a bottle that looks ready to use, treat it the same way you would miracle grow or other non organic fertilizers. Castings tea should not burn the leaves of plants or over fertilize the soil but it is a good idea to use it more often in diluted form than less often in concentrated form. Red worms and their castings have become a hot commodity for all of those in the organic gardening field.

In essence, you are putting healthy microorganisms back into the soil which can then begin to thrive and multiply creating the ideal environment for your plants and a natural barrier at times for things that would come to destroy them. And unlike most nonorganic fertilizers, if you happen to spill too much into an area of your crop, it will not burn your plants.

By taking the time to create your own worm farm, and making your own tea for your garden or crops, you should see not only a positive growth in your vegetables or fruit, but a noticeable taste difference and production difference in how long it takes your crops to grow. You will also notice that your plants succumb less to fungus and other pathogens and diseases.

Also, by regularly adding this special tea into your garden area, it will also help you regulate the watering of your garden which is very important for crop growth. If you are doing this on a larger scale, you may need special equipment in order to harvest the worm castings and process them, and also to make worm tea on a commercial scale requires significantly different equipment than a small scale operation.

Overall, it will be worth your while to go the natural way and create a worm farm that will supplement the nutrient needs of your garden no matter how big or small. The use of compost tea as not only an additive of nutrients but also as an insecticide to protect your crops will make your organic gardening growing experience more pleasurable each and every year.

So the next time that you hear about a special tea that can enhance the growth of your crops, make your food taste better, and increase your overall yields, you will not think about the kind of tea that you sip quietly at the kitchen table, but of natures key that is given to us by red worms to help all organic gardeners grow more plentiful crops called compost tea.