Hello Everyone….my hopes are that all of you are having a great new year.
With spring just around the corner I am gearing up and getting ready. This past summer my wonderful bride and I went to the local county fair. While there we came across a nice lady selling worm farms, she showed how useful they are at turning your kitchen green waste into very rich in nutrient compost for the garden or house plants of all kinds.
My wife wasnt all that interested in them, but I took a closer look. Being at a cost of $100 bucks I decided to pass and enjoyed the fair.
After a few days of pondering this new found wonder I decided to do a bit of research of my own about raising worms and the bennifits.
So after closer studies I decided I had to have one for a much healthier garden.
I used a cooking thermometer to show the temp. in the farm as they like it best between 40 and 80 degrees.
The top bin is the last bin that was added, you can see some worms,tea bags, and shredded news paper. Worms consume every part of the bedding,food and composted leaves that are added as a bedding for them.
The next level show partially composted bedding and food. Notice the green beans, they will wait until they break down before consuming them. I have found that blending the green waste up into very small pieces they consume it very fast.
This next level is almost complete with maybe one more month to go and it will be ready to be harvested.
And this last bin is about a week away from harvesting the castings. Now the interesting part of seperating the worms from the castings is you simply put the bottom bin on the top bin with the cover removed and they retreat to the lower level because they hate any form of light.
The bottom of the unit is a collection tray for the highly wanted “verma juice/tea”, as the layers drain they collect here and can be drained through the spigot on the bottom. 
This type of farming is a must for gardeners of all types.
I hope in the future this catches on and being self sustainable is a common place amoung more people.
Thanks for looking and please leave some feed back.
Cheers.
Jim
-- JTC
7 comments so far
MsDebbieP
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13909 posts in 2140 days
hardiness zone 5b
posted 133 days ago
My gardens will have to suffer. ... I just can’t do the wigglers. Sorry gardens.
-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)
Jimthecarver
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107 posts in 665 days
hardiness zone 8b
posted 133 days ago
I know its not for everyone, getting past the grossness of it did take a little bit but after I saw how great it is to have them. I laugh at myself now.
Maybe just trying some castings under each plant before they go into the ground. Its simply amazing what happens and how happy they are. :-)
-- JTC
Dez
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19 posts in 961 days
hardiness zone 9
posted 133 days ago
As kids we raised a ton of worms, not for the garden but because we sold them to the fishermen! Dad cut a couple of 55 gal drums in half and we filled them with dirt and a few worms, fed them all sorts of things including bacon grease and cornmeal, newspaper, food waste etc.
My little brother and I could make $.50 to a $1.00 a dozen! It bought candy and pop from the local store 2 miles down the road (we would ride the horses or walk, picking up pop bottles to cash in) as well as helped to pay for our shoes and clothes taking a little of the load off our parents! It felt so good making our own money!
justjoel
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897 posts in 1521 days
hardiness zone 7a
posted 133 days ago
If I had some indoor space that didn’t get down to below freezing for weeks at a time in the winter, or 90+ for more than a month in the summer, I might try this.
But my cousins and I did the same thing in the summers as you, Dez – also collected crawdads from a creek and sold a few of them for bait too – steelhead loved’em.
-- There's a box?
OttoH
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133 posts in 1179 days
hardiness zone 9
posted 133 days ago
Great worm farm there, I have been looking at an in ground worm farm being in a part of the world that hardly ever sees freezing temperatures
-- My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view. ~H. Fred Ale
Radicalfarmergal
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3982 posts in 1403 days
hardiness zone 5b
posted 132 days ago
My outdoor compost piles serve as my worm farm. When I take out a forkful, I can see dozens of worms wriggling in the loose soil. Vermiculture or worm farms are a great idea for apartments and places where a compost pile isn’t available or feasible. You get to decompose much of your kitchen scraps and paper wastes (newspaper and other clean paper), significantly reducing your household waste, and you get great fertilizer in return. Your system looks great, Jim! Enjoy your worms and all the benefits they bring you. If you can raise enough to spare, worms are a great protein source for chickens in the winter.
-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi
Jimthecarver
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107 posts in 665 days
hardiness zone 8b
posted 132 days ago
My idea for having this stackable unit allows for easy removal of castings to use for tea. We have an outdoor worm bed as well, I am hoping that the 15 pounds of worms that was put in there multiplies greatly and then relocate them to the wicking beds in the green house.
I have big plans for spring, hopefully it will work out as planned and there will be some pictures to show.
Thanks again for the comments ….lol @ Ms Debbie, so are we to guess you didn’t bait the hook? :-)
-- JTC