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Gregory Amos
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Joined:
10/10/2011
Last Updated:
19/01/2012
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Bogotá, Colombia
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Cool Temperate
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Worm farm

Posted by Gregory Amos about 12 years ago

Home-made worm farm

During my 2 PDC, one statment I often heard was: "Improve your soil". Indeed, the soil is where your plants grow, where water is retained, and where the micro-organisms develop.

There are many simple techniques to improve a soil, and one of them is using worm compost. "worm compost can hold 4 times its water volume" I wrote from my first PDC. So that's quite useful where I live, with an amount of precipitations of 500 mm/year.

There are many kinds of worm farms, and I chose to build one with horizontal separation, in OSB panels. The length: 120 cm, the height and width: 60 cm. So I might get quite a big amount of compost.The price: 40 Swiss francs (around 30 euros) for the panels, and 35 swiss francs for the worms, Eisenia foetida, I bought from a farmer (vermisuisse.ch). There were around 2 kg of worms (with earth), which represents more or less 1000 of them. I feed them with kitchen scraps.

I had tried with another kind of worm: fishermen-worm (Dendro... veneta) but they are not so good, as they are slow to eat kitchen scraps.

Here 2 pictures of the farm, which is in the cellar, so the temperature remains constant, though lower than worms' optimum.

 

 

P1190008 P1190009

Comments (2)

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jordan lowery
jordan lowery : nice job, a couple tips if you don't mind.

get some mulch on those worms. i use fall leaves. they use this with the scraps for digestion. and it produces better castings from my experience.

your doing good by starting them in a corner rather than filling the whole left side. which is what most people do. your worm population will grow faster this way.

when the bins are full and deep you will get better results from multiple worm species. some like the deep thick castings and also help aerate the lower sections. where red worms will usually stay near the top.

your plants will be happy when they get some of those castings, and if you do things right you'll have more than you can use in no time.
Posted about 12 years ago

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Gregory Amos
Gregory Amos : Thanks for the tips Jordan,

I was wondering if I should mix the scraps with the earth, but your idea of putting a layer of fall leaves (and there are plenty of them now) is the best solution!

Which other worm species do you recommend?

All the best ;)
Posted about 12 years ago

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