The Earthworm Experiment

What I Do When My Worm Castings Look Like This This is a handful of (mostly) finished worm castings. Other than a few bits of organic matter here and there, the castings in this bin full of European Nightcrawlers are ready to be harvested. It's taken about 3 months to get my vermicompost to achieve this beautiful, rich "chocolate cake" consistency but it's right on time to fertilize my warm-weather crops when I plant them out in the garden. The only thing that I have left to do before I can use my worm castings is to separate the worms out of them.  These are 3 methods that I use to separate compost worms from their castings, and 2 methods I'll never use again: Method #1: Horizontal Migration My European Nightcrawlers would migrate from the finished castings into the newspaper bedding. Horizontal migration is a popular technique used by worm breeders to get compost worms to come out of their castings naturally. It's the least stressful method for the worms b

I Have WORMS!! European nightcrawlers to be exact and I couldn't be any happier to finally have them! This is my 4th time now trying to raise worms. It's the 1st time that I've actually had success raising them though.  I've loved to garden and fish since I was about 8 years old. The idea of having an unlimited supply of organic fertilizer and bait with a small investment has been an interest of mine since I was old enough to have to pay to finance my hobbies.  One day I found an article in an old gardening magazine about a man who made a decent living with a worm farm that he maintained with a very broad spectrum of organic materials. (Most of which I could get my hands on for free.) Since I was young and practically knew everything about the universe and its workings, I skimmed the article, prepared a bunch of the materials, and ordered a pound of red wigglers to put into my worm bed. My problems were solved!  Except they weren't... Mistake #1 Do

Nobody Wants a Skinny Worm! Not the gardener. Not the fisherman. And surely not the fish!  A big, fat, juicy worm or nightcrawler will simply eat more waste, produce more nutrient-rich castings, and look way better wiggling on the line than one that looks dehydrated and half dead.  Even though the list of organic matter that you can feed to your worms is seemingly endless, the answer to producing plump, healthy-looking worms and nightcrawlers isn't simply just to feed them more. Studies and accounts of home and commercial worm farmers alike almost all fall in line with composting worms only being able to eat their own body weight in organic materials a day at best. Feeding them more than that can actually make them sick, make their bedding sour, and even kill them! Since feeding worms and nightcrawlers more to fatten them up isn't really a healthy option, that only leaves the questions of what to feed them, when to feed them, and how to feed them. This 5 ingr

Spring is quickly approaching here in Central Pennsylvania. Post-holiday clearance displays are being replaced with seeds and bulbs for the upcoming growing season, and anglers are getting in line to get outfitted for the highly-anticipated first day of the Pennsylvania trout season. (April 4, 2020, in my area) It doesn't matter whether you need nutrient-rich, organic fertilizer (worm castings) for your plants, or a fat, wiggling bit of enticement on the hook, making a breeder jar to have access to a thriving, healthy population of worms or nightcrawlers is going to be very beneficial to your springtime hobby. The Basics of a Breeder Jar for Red Wigglers or Nightcrawlers There are many styles of worm farms available for sale commercially, and quite a few DIY worm farm tutorials that all work just as well. Most of the products and plans available can get a bit pricy to populate with enough worms or nightcrawlers to do the composting that needs to be done though. (My first