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market-farming - RE: [Market-farming] Rain, worms, etc

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  • From: "Paul A. Bock" <bockpa AT plesh.com>
  • To: <sharon_d AT excite.com>, "'Market Farming'" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: RE: [Market-farming] Rain, worms, etc
  • Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 14:05:41 -0400

"I see a lot mentioned about using red worms (?) for composting.......is there a di fference between those, and the worms I see in the soil? We seem to have plenty of those around, but was wondering if there is a difference?"

The red wigglers or red worms you see mentioned are a medium sized worm that loves partly rotted/composted manure and kitchen scraps.  the worms in your soil, which is a good indicator of good soil properties, are different because they live in burrows and pull down green leaves, etc. to eat in their burrows.  They tend to favor a different diet.  Whereas a red worm can be happy as can be living entirely in a manure pile. 

I have heard that even within red worms themselves, they get diet specific as they mature.  For instance if a batch of worms that is used to eating manure is put into a bin with kitchen scraps, they won't find much to eat.  But it there is a good enough worm density (worms to volume of bedding) they will breed and lay eggs.  When those eggs hatch and start eating the kitchen scraps, those new worms will have their digestive tracts set towards eating kitchen scraps. 

I am playing around with mushroom growing and vermiculture.  So I can take materials to be composted, grow mushrooms on them, be able to harvest the mushrooms and then feed the worms the mushroom substrate.  Potentially you could sell mushrooms, worms, and vermicompost. 

I got interested in the mushroom growing side of things when I discovered that mushroom mycelia are good at breaking down the woody parts of plants, the lignin.  Certain strains of mushrooms grow well on wood and sawdust.  I have been hesitant of putting sawdust or wood chips directly onto my garden because I hear the decomposition of woody sources pulls away a lot of the available nitrogen in the soil.  Of course my Dad made some good soil out of many tons of wood chips added to his sandy soil in NJ, and he never had a problem with a nitrogen deficiency. 

 



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