As a kid living on a busy street, I had an earthworm farm that I would utilize to sell by the dozen to fisherfolks. It was a fun hobby that netted me some money for '80s-era entertainment. Thank you for reminding me of a fond memory!
very good video......fall leaves (maple,oak) soaked in water for 24/48 hours then drained good makes a very good bedding for worms. the minerals in the leaves from the roots going deep into the soil make your garden veggies taste so much better. hope someone enjoys this tip.
Thanks for posting this. We're learning to live with all of these leaves & I asked my husband for the leaves out of the vacuum. I did just what you said & covered it with moist newspaper and cardboard. They seem very happy & as a first-timer, you've helped confirm my technique. Thanks!!! Happy worming!!!
@@lena_4466 i forgot to mention using some kind of Grit, worms have gizzards like birds. i crush washed eggshells and its worked for me for years. i also add sand
@@mattrobinson6594 yes, thanks. I've tossed in some old potting mix, along with a light shovel of our gritty, gravelly pile of dirt. I've also threw in some crushed oats I didn't eat before they became stale tasting, egg shells, etc. Another thing I'm learning & will leave here in case it's of help to anyone else is that they've loved the banana peels I've added after breaking them down/cutting up. Shredded paper, etc... along with my fruit/veg scraps and other compostable goods. Tried to balance moisture & brown/greens. Lastly, threw in a handful of castings generously gifted to us for our gardening this year. Hoping for the best but it looks like it's working & I am grateful for this community. I hope to get the hang of this, in order to build up the soil & growing mediums around our new home. We had a large, productive garden in the past. Our soil now needs some loving. Worms are going to help. I believe I'm working my way up towards 1000+ worms in my bin... Goal: build my population to sustainable numbers in garden & collecting castings. I've also loved working with our young child with the worms, love how it peaks their attention & interest in the garden. Thanks for the relatable video. Thanks for sharing your success & promoting the community. Just do it!
Looks like you found the right system and feeding regime. My largest system is a converted children's turtle shaped sandbox. I harvest it all at once after the worms have worked through the the material. My other systems include indoor totes, a four tray stacking system and in ground garden worm towers. ~ Sandra
I've watched a bunch of UA-cam about worm compost and really I don't think any of them help me but I learned a lot from this one I think I can do it now really appreciate it
Fantastic video on your worm farming journey!! Sounds like you did a lot of learning by doing!! I agree worms are great pets!! I really enjoyed hearing you go through all the issues and types of worm bins that brought you to where you are today!! Excellent video!! New subscriber & looking forward to checking out your other videos!!🪱🪱🪱
I put all my food through a blender and just pour it in, everything goes in tea bags coffee ground all the waste food, it all goes so much quicker as the worms I believe find it easy to eat it all, I started my worm bin about the size of 1 ton bag added some old compost and went round the garden and picked up worms and 6 months later I went back and there were a a load of worms and then I started feeding them. This winter I added a themomiter to see how cold the now 2 bins I've got went and they never went below 12 degrees and they kept munching away. And voila I'm not buying compost anymore.. Great work there :)
A good informative video Thank you for the tips. Very considerate of you to put in coffee grinds so the worms have a good start to their day. Maybe why they are doing the righty for you
i too had failed to keep worms alive. twice lol ... then i figured out i live in the south and they don't like the summer heat. I needed a larger bin (half a 55 gallon plastic drum ) and they've been doing good for two years now. they are outside sheltered from the sun but have screened drain holes on each end. I compost my food scraps to get rid of the initial heat of decomposition (important in the summer) then use that as food and bedding. though i feed some azomite and dried molasses to help out. recently that the weather is warm i get a five gallon bucket of castings that i sift from each bin. (i have six now ) The garden is doing better this year too for all the castings applied but i'm still working on that. thanks for the video .
I love your soil bedding method. It seems like you have better casting results with less debris (shredded cardboard). Bc as we all know, the most challenging thing for vermicomposters is harvesting castings.
Thank you. I will admit, I would not feel comfortable selling them as pure castings but since I use the castings for planting and in the garden, this method is acceptable. Thanks for the comment and for watching.
Thanks for the tip. Funny you mentioned the night crawlers because everyone that likes fishing complains that my red wigglers are too small. I don't fish very often but I feed all our house food to these so the worms are perfect for my application. Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment.
New to the hobby looks very interesting from South Carolina was thinking about doing this for fun do you keep your worms outside because I was looking to do an outside barrel was wondering if the heat or the cold will kill them outside do to me living in South Carolina And do you have to use table scraps or can I use uncle Jim’s worm food only
Welcome to the hobby. SC will be a bit different climate but my brother is in NC and he has a small bin that I believe he just put under his house in the crawl space and they made it through the winter. If you need to keep it a little warmer, you can buy seed starter mats that would probably work great. I tried them out but probably didn't need them. For summer here, I believe shade all day is the key. I keep mine under a roof. If we have hot dry stretch of days then I keep an eye on the moisture and I avoid rain here (we have some heavy downpours) to avoid too much moisture. I feed scraps since that was the goal and although I do feed them the worm food too, I'm not entirely sure what all is in there. I was worried about minerals and additives they were not getting from the food scraps. Since they will even consume rotting paper or wood, I'm sure they would survive but not sure if they would thrive. I hope that helps. Thanks for watching and for the comment.
Sounds like my experience, with the exception that I did not kill my worms...yet. I end up with pure castings. I stop putting table scraps in the bins and use only worm chow to end up with a bin full of castings that do not require much sifting. The migration method has worked for me so far. I suspect that since I keep food to a minimum in the working bin, when I re-stack the bins, the worms can smell the scraps I put into the fresh bin and beat feet to the top bin. Very few worms stay in the lower bin. Worms are a poor mans version of an aquarium. I find it relaxing working the worm system...hmm.
Thanks for watching and for taking the time to comment. Agreed on the therapy. I don't know why but I like feeding and caring for them. Finally added a lid with screen to the bin so they are living in luxury. I think my populations are high enough now they they process all the food I can give them. I have far less difficulties now.
Great video! I'm looking to get started with worm farming and I'm also in Florida. I was curious about how they handle the heat. What are your thoughts on doing a large, in-ground bin rather than a raised bin? I was wondering if that might help regulate the temperature in the environment better (along with shade).
Thanks for the question. This is my first summer so I am in the "gaining experience" phase on this topic but so far with it under covering and in the shade it seems to be regulating well. I think having a lot of material helps and we only hit into 90's for a bit until the rain sets in and cools it off a bit. Based on my past experience with ground composting I always struggled with fire ants. I treat the legs of the bed with spray if I see any ants building mounds near the base and it keeps them out of the bin. Fire ants are a huge problem. I had them get into a bin on the ground once and they chewed the worms in half. I had to keep treating the top layer of the bed with DE and after a few days the ants vacated the bin. After that I kept them on a table. Hope this helps and good luck and thanks for watching and taking the time to comment.
@@CedarTrailsLiving That makes sense. I hadn't even thought about fire ants. I haven't seen any around the yard, but I know they're in the area (we're in Ocala). It probably does make sense to move to something aboveground then. I've got a small greenhouse (just a metal frame with a white plastic cover, really) that I can use. It gets really warm in there, but maybe adding frozen water bottles and freezing the food will help regulate temp in the container. Something to work toward anyway! Thanks and I appreciate the insight!
As an amateur that is a question way out of my league. I have started adding calcium dust that I make from egg shells since I was worried about them having enough grit in their gut. I also purchased some worm food which I understand helps them with other necessary nutrients and minerals but I'm not sure I have seen any significant difference in populations as a result. Sorry I couldn't help. Thank you for watching and for taking the time to comment.
Thanks for the tip. I cooked them in a crock pot last time I had some and that worked well too. Thanks for watching and for taking the time to comment.
They do self regulate and if you are only processing your own waste and getting all the castings you need, you want a stable population, castings finish much faster if the worms aren't producing cocoons. Throw the lid away and cover the bin with landscape fabric instead. The worms can breath and keeps gnats and flies out. Compost the food first.
Thanks for the comment. I used to just put a sheet over them but I have to be careful about animals getting into the bin since it's outside. Long term I want to build a lid with mesh but that part of the project is still in queue.
Do they not get too hot in the summer months? It gets up to 100 degrees here in the summer. I would love to have an outdoor bin, but I dont think they would survive.
This will be my first summer in this bin. So far we have hit 96 but it usually stays cooler in the shade so I have them under a roof. I did start adding moisture more often since it dries out faster lately. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment.
I have 4 containers and hundreds of thousands of worms because I just empty and mix stuff in from my juicer + dry leaves. Im thinking I can just cut some big holes in the bottom and stack the containers and let them migrate but I need their p00 :D
I tried that method without success. I stacked the bins with large holes in the bottom and only fed on the top bin. I still had a large population of worms that just stayed in the bottom bins. Even today, only feeding on one side I still have hundreds of worms on the non-feeding side when I sift for castings. Some worms must not like to venture too far from home. Thank you for watching and for the comment.
I do. We live at 6k feet in western Montana. My compost pile, really just a pile of spent mushroom strata and is covered with snow all winter long, maintains a worm population year round. The worms in bins stay in the heated bath house, 50°F or better, through the winter.
Thank you for the reply. Great to hear about other climates. Here in FL we didn't even get a hard freeze this year so they stayed warm. If we do dip into the 40's it is for a very brief time and in the day we are usually back up into the 60-70 degree range. For us I generally worry more about the heat. It has been very hot and humid this year and this is the first year they are out in the open. So far there is so much material in the bed that it seems to regulate the temp well and much of our "heat" is from the humidity and the "feels like" factor.
Good question. The boards don't cover the whole bed so the end is open. The shower curtain is also short so lets air in from the end. The boards helped keep the racoons from getting in there until I can make a proper lid. Thanks for watching.
FYI: the worms eat bacteria. Bacteria eat sugar. Bacteria love banana and melon. and which is why the worm are on food that have high content of sugar.
Agree entirely. I also feel like softer foods break down faster so they favor those. They cluster in old avocados too. Thanks for watching and for taking the time to comment.
Yes, sorry about that. After trying to fix it for over 4 hours I gave up. It sounded fine in the editor and every time I rendered the video it came out messed up.
As a kid living on a busy street, I had an earthworm farm that I would utilize to sell by the dozen to fisherfolks. It was a fun hobby that netted me some money for '80s-era entertainment. Thank you for reminding me of a fond memory!
very good video......fall leaves (maple,oak) soaked in water for 24/48 hours then drained good makes a very good bedding for worms. the minerals in the leaves from the roots going deep into the soil make your garden veggies taste so much better. hope someone enjoys this tip.
Thanks for posting this. We're learning to live with all of these leaves & I asked my husband for the leaves out of the vacuum. I did just what you said & covered it with moist newspaper and cardboard. They seem very happy & as a first-timer, you've helped confirm my technique. Thanks!!! Happy worming!!!
@@lena_4466 i forgot to mention using some kind of Grit, worms have gizzards like birds. i crush washed eggshells and its worked for me for years. i also add sand
@@mattrobinson6594 yes, thanks. I've tossed in some old potting mix, along with a light shovel of our gritty, gravelly pile of dirt. I've also threw in some crushed oats I didn't eat before they became stale tasting, egg shells, etc. Another thing I'm learning & will leave here in case it's of help to anyone else is that they've loved the banana peels I've added after breaking them down/cutting up. Shredded paper, etc... along with my fruit/veg scraps and other compostable goods. Tried to balance moisture & brown/greens. Lastly, threw in a handful of castings generously gifted to us for our gardening this year. Hoping for the best but it looks like it's working & I am grateful for this community. I hope to get the hang of this, in order to build up the soil & growing mediums around our new home. We had a large, productive garden in the past. Our soil now needs some loving. Worms are going to help. I believe I'm working my way up towards 1000+ worms in my bin... Goal: build my population to sustainable numbers in garden & collecting castings. I've also loved working with our young child with the worms, love how it peaks their attention & interest in the garden. Thanks for the relatable video. Thanks for sharing your success & promoting the community. Just do it!
Looks like you found the right system and feeding regime. My largest system is a converted children's turtle shaped sandbox. I harvest it all at once after the worms have worked through the the material. My other systems include indoor totes, a four tray stacking system and in ground garden worm towers.
~ Sandra
14:00 sound is messed up 😅
I've watched a bunch of UA-cam about worm compost and really I don't think any of them help me but I learned a lot from this one I think I can do it now really appreciate it
Glad to have helped. It's easier than one might think.
I had very similar containers, ended with a big plywood box, much bigger space, my worms are also small.
Frozen foods also break down much faster as if cooked.
My red wigglers LOVE carrots. Chop them up in a blender so they are small and soft. The worms will be happy. Thanks for all the great information.
Great tip. My dad has been juicing and bringing me the carrot pulp. They seems to enjoy it. Thank you watching and for taking the time to comment.
Fantastic video on your worm farming journey!! Sounds like you did a lot of learning by doing!! I agree worms are great pets!! I really enjoyed hearing you go through all the issues and types of worm bins that brought you to where you are today!! Excellent video!! New subscriber & looking forward to checking out your other videos!!🪱🪱🪱
I put all my food through a blender and just pour it in, everything goes in tea bags coffee ground all the waste food, it all goes so much quicker as the worms I believe find it easy to eat it all,
I started my worm bin about the size of 1 ton bag added some old compost and went round the garden and picked up worms and 6 months later I went back and there were a a load of worms and then I started feeding them. This winter I added a themomiter to see how cold the now 2 bins I've got went and they never went below 12 degrees and they kept munching away. And voila I'm not buying compost anymore..
Great work there :)
You give me hope to tie in my garden & worming through winter months. Thanks for sharing!
This was the most honest and matter of fact video, THANK YOU
A good informative video Thank you for the tips.
Very considerate of you to put in coffee grinds so the worms have a good start to their day. Maybe why they are doing the righty for you
Haha. Thanks for watching and for taking the time to comment. I sometimes wonder if they appreciate coffee as much as I do but I doubt it.
Don't know if it's just my phone but audio is jumbled around the 14 minutes mark for a little section , appreciate the video man , thank you !
Yep
Sorry about that. I thought it was the editor but I think it was the camera or file and I couldn't fix it.
Thank you for this video. It is very interesting and exciting. I learnt a lot. Best regards, Gitta
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment.
i too had failed to keep worms alive. twice lol ... then i figured out i live in the south and they don't like the summer heat. I needed a larger bin (half a 55 gallon plastic drum ) and they've been doing good for two years now. they are outside sheltered from the sun but have screened drain holes on each end. I compost my food scraps to get rid of the initial heat of decomposition (important in the summer) then use that as food and bedding. though i feed some azomite and dried molasses to help out. recently that the weather is warm i get a five gallon bucket of castings that i sift from each bin. (i have six now ) The garden is doing better this year too for all the castings applied but i'm still working on that. thanks for the video .
Great set up. Thanks for info.
Thank you for watching and for taking the time to comment.
I love your soil bedding method. It seems like you have better casting results with less debris (shredded cardboard). Bc as we all know, the most challenging thing for vermicomposters is harvesting castings.
Thank you. I will admit, I would not feel comfortable selling them as pure castings but since I use the castings for planting and in the garden, this method is acceptable. Thanks for the comment and for watching.
Leaves are a great bedding. But you don't need to soak them just wet them a bit. European night crawlers are a better worm for fishing
Thanks for the tip. Funny you mentioned the night crawlers because everyone that likes fishing complains that my red wigglers are too small. I don't fish very often but I feed all our house food to these so the worms are perfect for my application. Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment.
New to the hobby looks very interesting from South Carolina was thinking about doing this for fun do you keep your worms outside because I was looking to do an outside barrel was wondering if the heat or the cold will kill them outside do to me living in South Carolina And do you have to use table scraps or can I use uncle Jim’s worm food only
Welcome to the hobby. SC will be a bit different climate but my brother is in NC and he has a small bin that I believe he just put under his house in the crawl space and they made it through the winter. If you need to keep it a little warmer, you can buy seed starter mats that would probably work great. I tried them out but probably didn't need them. For summer here, I believe shade all day is the key. I keep mine under a roof. If we have hot dry stretch of days then I keep an eye on the moisture and I avoid rain here (we have some heavy downpours) to avoid too much moisture. I feed scraps since that was the goal and although I do feed them the worm food too, I'm not entirely sure what all is in there. I was worried about minerals and additives they were not getting from the food scraps. Since they will even consume rotting paper or wood, I'm sure they would survive but not sure if they would thrive. I hope that helps. Thanks for watching and for the comment.
@@CedarTrailsLiving thanks so much good to know the info given can’t wait to start
Sounds like my experience, with the exception that I did not kill my worms...yet. I end up with pure castings. I stop putting table scraps in the bins and use only worm chow to end up with a bin full of castings that do not require much sifting. The migration method has worked for me so far. I suspect that since I keep food to a minimum in the working bin, when I re-stack the bins, the worms can smell the scraps I put into the fresh bin and beat feet to the top bin. Very few worms stay in the lower bin. Worms are a poor mans version of an aquarium. I find it relaxing working the worm system...hmm.
Thanks for watching and for taking the time to comment. Agreed on the therapy. I don't know why but I like feeding and caring for them. Finally added a lid with screen to the bin so they are living in luxury. I think my populations are high enough now they they process all the food I can give them. I have far less difficulties now.
Great video! I'm looking to get started with worm farming and I'm also in Florida. I was curious about how they handle the heat. What are your thoughts on doing a large, in-ground bin rather than a raised bin? I was wondering if that might help regulate the temperature in the environment better (along with shade).
Thanks for the question. This is my first summer so I am in the "gaining experience" phase on this topic but so far with it under covering and in the shade it seems to be regulating well. I think having a lot of material helps and we only hit into 90's for a bit until the rain sets in and cools it off a bit. Based on my past experience with ground composting I always struggled with fire ants. I treat the legs of the bed with spray if I see any ants building mounds near the base and it keeps them out of the bin. Fire ants are a huge problem. I had them get into a bin on the ground once and they chewed the worms in half. I had to keep treating the top layer of the bed with DE and after a few days the ants vacated the bin. After that I kept them on a table. Hope this helps and good luck and thanks for watching and taking the time to comment.
@@CedarTrailsLiving That makes sense. I hadn't even thought about fire ants. I haven't seen any around the yard, but I know they're in the area (we're in Ocala). It probably does make sense to move to something aboveground then. I've got a small greenhouse (just a metal frame with a white plastic cover, really) that I can use. It gets really warm in there, but maybe adding frozen water bottles and freezing the food will help regulate temp in the container. Something to work toward anyway! Thanks and I appreciate the insight!
Do you think that adding biochar or yeast to the food scraps or the soil helps the worms ?
As an amateur that is a question way out of my league. I have started adding calcium dust that I make from egg shells since I was worried about them having enough grit in their gut. I also purchased some worm food which I understand helps them with other necessary nutrients and minerals but I'm not sure I have seen any significant difference in populations as a result. Sorry I couldn't help. Thank you for watching and for taking the time to comment.
Thanks for answering. I will trial some different feed spots and see what happens.
oh gosh your voice is messing up at 13:50
Interesting.
freeze the carrot first, it works for me
Thanks for the tip. I cooked them in a crock pot last time I had some and that worked well too. Thanks for watching and for taking the time to comment.
They do self regulate and if you are only processing your own waste and getting all the castings you need, you want a stable population, castings finish much faster if the worms aren't producing cocoons. Throw the lid away and cover the bin with landscape fabric instead. The worms can breath and keeps gnats and flies out. Compost the food first.
Thanks for the comment. I used to just put a sheet over them but I have to be careful about animals getting into the bin since it's outside. Long term I want to build a lid with mesh but that part of the project is still in queue.
Do they not get too hot in the summer months? It gets up to 100 degrees here in the summer. I would love to have an outdoor bin, but I dont think they would survive.
This will be my first summer in this bin. So far we have hit 96 but it usually stays cooler in the shade so I have them under a roof. I did start adding moisture more often since it dries out faster lately. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment.
Nice video
I have 4 containers and hundreds of thousands of worms because I just empty and mix stuff in from my juicer + dry leaves. Im thinking I can just cut some big holes in the bottom and stack the containers and let them migrate but I need their p00 :D
I tried that method without success. I stacked the bins with large holes in the bottom and only fed on the top bin. I still had a large population of worms that just stayed in the bottom bins. Even today, only feeding on one side I still have hundreds of worms on the non-feeding side when I sift for castings. Some worms must not like to venture too far from home. Thank you for watching and for the comment.
Do you have freezing temps in winter?
I do. We live at 6k feet in western Montana. My compost pile, really just a pile of spent mushroom strata and is covered with snow all winter long, maintains a worm population year round. The worms in bins stay in the heated bath house, 50°F or better, through the winter.
Thank you for the reply. Great to hear about other climates. Here in FL we didn't even get a hard freeze this year so they stayed warm. If we do dip into the 40's it is for a very brief time and in the day we are usually back up into the 60-70 degree range. For us I generally worry more about the heat. It has been very hot and humid this year and this is the first year they are out in the open. So far there is so much material in the bed that it seems to regulate the temp well and much of our "heat" is from the humidity and the "feels like" factor.
No holes in the lid
Good question. The boards don't cover the whole bed so the end is open. The shower curtain is also short so lets air in from the end. The boards helped keep the racoons from getting in there until I can make a proper lid. Thanks for watching.
FYI: the worms eat bacteria. Bacteria eat sugar. Bacteria love banana and melon. and which is why the worm are on food that have high content of sugar.
Agree entirely. I also feel like softer foods break down faster so they favor those. They cluster in old avocados too. Thanks for watching and for taking the time to comment.
14.19 voice over seems weird
Yes, sorry about that. After trying to fix it for over 4 hours I gave up. It sounded fine in the editor and every time I rendered the video it came out messed up.
I’m going on a year and over half… Experimenting… My worms eat everything meat dairy everything…
Thanks for the comment. I have seen other videos where people have fed them everything. I guess anything that can break down naturally, they can eat.