Vermicomposters Unite! Official Worm Farmers Thread

stoned-monkey

Well-Known Member
Worm farmers AND bokashi composters, do you put meat in you bokashi then feed it to your worms?
Seems like a no-no but if its organic compost then maybe.
 

Buck Twofifty

Active Member
I use 25 G fabric pots loaded with aged horse manure, and amended with kelp meal, neem cake, Cascade Minerals basalt, malted barley flour, spent mushroom substrate(horse manure/vermiculite), oyster shell flour, and meal worm frass, load with 3,000-3,500 red worms, then cover with straw. This is my standard procedure for making EWC. However, since I am fortunate enough to have approximately one dozen- 3 cu ft bags of meal worm frass on hand, I am currently aging a 25 G fabric pot filled with mostly frass, some canna scraps and stems, straw, and I will amend with the standard inputs before populating with 3k-3.5k red wigglers. As the horse manure has produced results that blow away even the best bagged castings that I have purchased, I am interested in finding out what kind of quality results are obtained from using the frass as the bulk of my starting material, rather than the horse manure. If anyone has any experience doing something similar, I would be interested in hearing about it. Thanks.
 

thump easy

Well-Known Member
I use 25 G fabric pots loaded with aged horse manure, and amended with kelp meal, neem cake, Cascade Minerals basalt, malted barley flour, spent mushroom substrate(horse manure/vermiculite), oyster shell flour, and meal worm frass, load with 3,000-3,500 red worms, then cover with straw. This is my standard procedure for making EWC. However, since I am fortunate enough to have approximately one dozen- 3 cu ft bags of meal worm frass on hand, I am currently aging a 25 G fabric pot filled with mostly frass, some canna scraps and stems, straw, and I will amend with the standard inputs before populating with 3k-3.5k red wigglelrs. As the horse manure has produced results that blow away even the best bagged castings that I have purchased, I am interested in finding out what kind of quality results are obtained from using the frass as the bulk of my starting material, rather than the horse manure. If anyone has any experience doing something similar, I would be interested in hearing about it. Thanks.
I met a real big guy Xxxx Man Buds from this forum i drove up north with jozikins and fucken blew me away 120 fucker off of like a few plants i think like 2 but i could be wrong i asked him how he sead with horse shit and kelp i couldn't fucken believe it.. By the way Hope Things panned out tree man!!!!! Best of luck. But ya fucken blew meaway
 

Avant_Gardener

Active Member
I'm using Coco Coir with saw dust, I found a clean organic "free" supply of saw dust but it's from Cedar trees. My question is . Will Cedar saw dust be too strong for a worm bin?
 

getogrow

Well-Known Member
Worm farmers AND bokashi composters, do you put meat in you bokashi then feed it to your worms?
Seems like a no-no but if its organic compost then maybe.
If you ferment the meat with bokashi for a week or so then yes , the worms will eat the meat before any problems occur. I never have a lot of meat leftover but im sure the bokashi would pre compost it for you to put in the bin.
 

getogrow

Well-Known Member
Anyone made their own worm farm , cheers j
Yes. Very easy and almost free. 1- 20gallon tote to start......drill very small holes in it everywhere. Get you a bucket of water/any water.....start tearing up newspaper and throw it in bucket of water. wring the paper out so its about 30% wet still .....fill the bottom of your tote with the wet newspaper. Throw a lil food on top of the paper, then cover the food with more paper and put the worms in....bin is done.

Food= any kind of green leaves , leftover food and a scoop of dirt/any dirt. grass clippings, trim, flowers, any veggies , even if starting to rot, bread.
Keep out: any foods with a lot of oil in them , meat and cheese. (meat and cheese are fine but take too long to compost so it will start stinking if you use too much) oil will kill them.
tips: if they are grouping up at the top of the bin , they want out which means something is wrong in there, its usually too wet or too dry add stuff to make it right. (you'll learn QUICK)
the bin should be around 50% brown/dry material and 50% green/wet material. Browns: paper, dry grass, dry leaves, wood dust , anything "dead". Greens: anything alive...leaves grass and leftover foods.
the bin will take care of itself mostly. you start with paper and food and end up with pure castings made BY YOU.

(do not try to name the worms .....way too many HAHAHAHAH)
 

getogrow

Well-Known Member
I'm using Coco Coir with saw dust, I found a clean organic "free" supply of saw dust but it's from Cedar trees. My question is . Will Cedar saw dust be too strong for a worm bin?
it will keep out a lot of pesky knats but im really not sure on using cedar. i cannot see a reason why not. something worth looking into. if it was me i would just do it an see what happens......i have never lost a whole worm bin in over 10 years.
 

crittertime

Active Member
Can we revitalize this thread? I just started worm composting last week! Paid a guy on Craigslist $8 and he scooped out red wrigglers from his compost bin to fill 32 oz can for me. No telling how many there are, but they seem happy -- no smell, no escapees, just rotting food and worm poo. Problem is that my house's waste outpaces these worms' appetite. So I ordered 2250 more online yesterday to hopefully turn all our cardboard and food scraps into the good stuff :P
 

getogrow

Well-Known Member
Can we revitalize this thread? I just started worm composting last week! Paid a guy on Craigslist $8 and he scooped out red wrigglers from his compost bin to fill 32 oz can for me. No telling how many there are, but they seem happy -- no smell, no escapees, just rotting food and worm poo. Problem is that my house's waste outpaces these worms' appetite. So I ordered 2250 more online yesterday to hopefully turn all our cardboard and food scraps into the good stuff :P
your on the right path ! order more worms .....them guys are quick too.....couple months each time. you'll have a giant pile of the good black gold. They also breed very fast , so that should be your last order. The bigger your bin the more worms will breed, the more food in there the more they eat instead of breed but trust me ,. if you keep um happy you will never run out and youll be able to start 50 more bins with your own worms if ya wantt.
 

getogrow

Well-Known Member
egg shells take forever to break down , so dont use as many or crush them real good first. Potatoes want to grow in the bin so you may want to break them up a lil bit first. whole Onions like to hang around long enough to stink.....quarter them before putting them in. meat and cheese is fine but same thing it takes too long to break down an will cause stink...avoid.
 

crittertime

Active Member
egg shells take forever to break down , so dont use as many or crush them real good first. Potatoes want to grow in the bin so you may want to break them up a lil bit first. whole Onions like to hang around long enough to stink.....quarter them before putting them in. meat and cheese is fine but same thing it takes too long to break down an will cause stink...avoid.
Thanks so much! Will you give em citrus? I'm juicing limes every week :P From what I've read, there seems to be a divided house on sharing peels with the worms
 

loco41

Well-Known Member
Can we revitalize this thread? I just started worm composting last week! Paid a guy on Craigslist $8 and he scooped out red wrigglers from his compost bin to fill 32 oz can for me. No telling how many there are, but they seem happy -- no smell, no escapees, just rotting food and worm poo. Problem is that my house's waste outpaces these worms' appetite. So I ordered 2250 more online yesterday to hopefully turn all our cardboard and food scraps into the good stuff :P
I just set two more new bins up a couple months or so ago. Trying my homemade compost out as the bedding on these new bins and things are going well so far. I'll post some pictures of them currently sometime soon as I love seeing what other people have going as well.

I also just mixed up my first attempt at making some bokashi bran. Doing a really small batch for now but plan on feeding most of this bran through the bins. Anyone using the bokashi bran in the bins on a semi-frequent basis?
 
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