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  • From: Todd Lister <toddlister1 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Worms and manure
  • Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2010 07:51:32 -0500

My enclosure is 3x9 ft.It is made with three courses of 8x16 blocks. This makes a good insulation barrier  for temp transfer with the air pockets. It is assembled on an old piece of 1/2" rotten plywood. I use Red Wigglers which will not abandon the compound as night crawlers can. This is also controlled by keeping food available to them.
Luring them out after three months of eating is simple. Stop feeding them for a few weeks, open the side of the enclosure, make a pile of fresh food available immediately adjacent to the openning and in a few weeks all the worms will be in the new pile. At this point I open the side up wide and go to town with the wheelbarrow. Now I shovel the new pile of food containing thousands of worms back into the closed up bin and continue to load it with food for a few and a half months. I feed them about once a week. Very rewarding to have piles of castings for my babies.
Check out Worm Power. Will Allen is a retired NBA player who has established an incredible operation in Milwaukee where he raises worms and has put many inner city folks to work with it and has fed countless with the veg farms he operates. I took his class a few years ago at the Georgia Organics annual conference. Very easy to do. Cost $49 for two thousand worms when I started. I probably have a gazillion by now. This is sustainability.
Hope this helps.
http://www.agriview.com/articles/2010/02/04/features/feature01.txt
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/growing-power-in-an-urban-food-desert

Todd


On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 7:07 AM, <DFORD8N AT aol.com> wrote:
How do you lure a worm?
 
Tom in WV
 
In a message dated 3/4/2010 7:32:13 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, toddlister1 AT gmail.com writes:
Worms can mitigate the nasties better than anything else. You let them finish digesting the set amount of manure, lure them out to a different, fresh pile and what remains will be REAL. It is a cycle you employ the worms to complete without continuing to add fresh nasties. Same as if you fed them veg matter.

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Celeste Illgner Havener <chavener AT uwyo.edu> wrote:

Very interesting conversation on the GAP concerns, thanks for bringing it up.  So here’s my question.  Barring becoming solient green distributors  and one has a nice supply of manure (horses), if one uses worms do digest the manure, how do you harvest the casting w/o contamination of fresh manure.  I haven’t really used worms so just wondering.

 

Celeste

High Horse Farm

Laramie

The snow is melting; but more tomorrow

Greens and chard started in the high tunnels


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