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TOPIC: Worm farm help

Worm farm help 9 years, 9 months ago #1

Julie Knol
OFFLINE
Seed
Posts: 1

Hi Dan,
I try to use all my vegetable peelings and egg shells in my worm farm and if I have excess I put in my compost heap. I have not long started my worm farm and still wondering if I am getting it right, but I am trying. Maybe you could help with a query, when I put the worms and dirt or castings (what came in the box) into my worm farm. Is that the worm casting that come with the worms, do I have to take some of it out to use in my garden. If I do, how do you separate it from the worms and do you know how long it take to get worm wee. I only started with 500 worms but have got more as the food was getting mushy and mouldy before it was eaten. Thank you for taking the time to set up this forum, I hope more people come on board.
Julie

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Re: Worm farm help 9 years, 9 months ago #2

Dane Pickering
OFFLINE
Resident Arborist
Posts: 31

Hi Julie,

That is great to hear about how you are recycling all your food scraps into the worm farm and compost heap.

Worm farming is a skill you will pick up over time, it does not happen overnight. Stick with it and you will constantly learn along the journey.

When you purchase worms they will usually come contained within some kind of castings or bedding. When adding into your worm farm, simply add on top and spread out a little on top of your existing food/bedding. You dont need to take out or dispose of any of the castings.

The time taken to get "worm wee" will vary significantly on what goes in, whether or not the worm farm can take on water when it rains. We dont get a great deal of "worm wee" out of our worm farm, though we dont put a huge amount of food/scraps in and it is stored undercover.

If the food is getting mushy and mouldy then it may be sitting there for too long before the worms are eating it, as you said you have a compost heap so adding a little extra to the heap wont hurt. The rule of thumb is to try and have no more than a 2cm covering of food for the worms. You can also try to maintain a cover over the top of the food to encourage the worms higher up. Worms dont like light at all. We simply use 5 or 6 sheets of damp newspaper folded over. We keep this constantly damp, and eventually when the worms start to eat it, we break it up and leave it in the worm farm and they will eat it.

If you have any other questions we would love to be of assistance.

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Re: Worm farm help 9 years, 6 months ago #3

Alice R

Hi Dane,

Do you know much about the QLD Earthworm leech? We have found around 20 leeches in our worm farm, which are green and ugly things and I picked them out.

They might be an earthworm leech from QLD as far as we've read on the internet. We've added dolomite, and I've also added a fair heap of soil to try and get the water content back down to more earthwormy levels. We likely did overfeed them for some time, but I don't think that has necessarily hurt them... I probably don't use the worm casings often enough to stop it turning 'sour' according to one site.

Can you offer any further info about this beastie, or point us in the right direction?

PS: sorry, we haven't talked to our neighbours yet about our big casuarina, although we're getting there!

Thanks a bunch,
Alice

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Re: Worm farm help 9 years, 5 months ago #4

Alice R

OK, so here's what we did. I'm just a beginner, but these are things that have worked well for us so far.

--- Too high in acid

The farm smelt 'sour' to me. This has been mentioned as a BadThing. ie: if castings have been there too long, sometimes they will be too acidic.

* solution: add dolomite. I threw a good handful in for good measure and stirred well. Apparently, leeches hate dolomite too.

* More research indicates eggshells will also keep acid levels down. We don't put onions, garlic or citrus in, but it's worth mentioning they're very acidic and should be avoided.

* I'm also planning to cycle the castings more often.

--- Pick out leeches

* During stirring process of all layers, I carefully picked out twenty leeches. This is an ugly process, and I wear decent, thick, waterproof gloves. Leeches are hideous things. Some people talk of throwing them in a bucket of dolomite, but at first I just put them in plastic in the freezer so they died more humanely. I don't bother anymore.

--- Farm is too wet

* Dry out the farm - leave lid off on a warm day so they go to the bottom of the tray and scrape as many castings from the top layer as possible. Remove any shelves beneath and rest the affected tray on the liquid level only.

* As the affected tray was then rather low, I actually watered this down to try and flush through some of the castings and the acid content. This might not be the best approach, but the acid concerned me. I left this tray at the bottom with no castings touching the floor above. I scraped channels in between to aid water flow. Added other trays back on top so the acids didn't go back into the food.

* Finally added sandy, dry soil. This balanced up the mix and aids worm digestion anyway. In a few days, the trays smelt much more earthy and fresh. This seemed to be one of the most important parts of the process.

--- After another week, I stirred and checked all layers, finding only 3 leeches that were put in the dolomite bucket.

--- This takes some time

It is also worth mentioning - i don't have children or pets. While I find the worms a little hard of hearing and somewhat difficult to train, I am very fond of the creatures and pay close attention to their needs. If I had a lot less time, I'd probably just throw soil and dolomite in there, and hope for the best.

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