MY WORM BUILDING MADE OF RECYCLED MATERIALS

Reuse and Recycle at its best! My building I harvest all my worms in, and the building I make all my worm bins in, Is made from 95% left over and reused materials and it looks great TOO!

My building is 16′ wide X 24′ long, the doors and windows were either given to me by someone, or they were bought at yard sales by us.

3 years ago we completely gave our house new siding,windows,doors,electical,etc 75% of the siding was left over from doing the house, so I only had to buy 200 sq ft of siding to complete the building.
I also needed to buy the cement mix to mix my cement. I can’t remember but I think I got 12 bags of cement. When I got to the electical, I was able to get a (breaker)panel box from my brother-in-law, the one that was in our house was too big, I only needed a small one for a building of this size.
For safety reasons I did not want to save money when it came to wiring the building, I bought the wire and the fixtures.

Well there you have it!! The cost of this building to me so far, I still need to do work inside,is $500.00.
WOW! Yes $500.00 dollars, The point I am getting to is (REDUCE,REUSE,,RECYCLE) And look at the great stuff you can do with Recycled Materials.

Till next Time….

Jeff

Written by Jeff on August 17th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on About Earthworms and Composting with composting worms and Friendly Worm Guy Store and News and Worm Stories.

(Giant Sunflower) 8.5′/2.6 METRES AND COUNTING.

Thinking of some fun stuff to do, I decided it was time to start tracking the growth of our GIANT SUNFLOWER,

My mother (Suzanne) and myself standing beside the 8.5′ Giant Sunflower.

In the last week this Sunflower has took off like crazy! So it was time to start tracking the growth of this Sunflower, Yes it is being fertilized with Worm Castings. Today I got the tape out, 8.5′ tall, the flower has not started to develop yet, and we still have alot of growing season. Who knows, this thing could hit 12-14′ we’ll have to wait and see!!

I will update again in a week! please follow this post, it is going to be fun!

Jeff

Written by Jeff on August 6th, 2008 with 3 comments.
Read more articles on About Earthworms and News and Worm Stories and playing around.

Reader Questions! #1

I am a new worm farmer and you have answered my questions before when no one else did, thank you.
My self, my wife,Tonsie and our friends Mike brown and his wife, Mary, formed a partnership and we are now worm farmers. We have a newly build worm bin that is 3 feet by 6 feet and we have 3 lbs. of European night crawlers. The bin is made out of plywood above ground and is 24 inches deep.
I did’nt say we were big worm farmers at this time but we will be.
I have a couple of questions for you, I hope you have time to answer.
1. How can I seperate the castings from the vermicompost to get pure worm castings? (I saw your machine, us geting one like that would be difficult at best.)
2. We plan on selling both bait worms and castings. How many lbs. of worms will we need before we can start marketing the worms?
3. How many bins 3? by 6? will we need to start producing enough castings to start selling?
4. I guess I am asking you how many lbs of worms do we keed before we really are “Worm farmers”?
5. I plan on ordering more worms in September, if I order from you how am I assured that I am getting pure European Night Crawlers and not a mixture of Reds and Euros? (They will be shipped to Washington State.)

thanks
Rod

Rod has asked some Great questions, That I and alot of other worm farmers thought of before they started in the worm business.(I am sure) I will try and answer these questions as well as I can, He has asked five questions, I will asnwer them in order that he asked them in order from 1-5
1) Seperating worm castings is a job in its self, I seperated my worm castings by hand for a year or so before I got my Fanning Mill, even with the fanning mill the vermicompost needs to be on the dry side before the fanning mill can do the Great job that it does. So it really depends on how much investment you would like to, or can put into the business, you can also buy a rotating worm harvester, that is fairly costly. the final worm castings needs to be screened through a 1/8″ screen.
2) This is a hard one to answer, I would try to keep a stock of 100 lbs of worms, just for worm casting production alone, If you are planning on being a player in the castings business.
As far as how many worms to sell worms, It would be nice to have a stock of 100 lbs or more, if you get very busy, this # is not very much.
3)Your worm bins 3 by 6 by 2 feet deep are a great size for worm beds, not too big, not too small, A very nice size to work with.
When stocking a worm bed like this,the rule is 1 lb of composting worms to 1 sq ft of surface area in your bin, so the surface area of your 3? by 6? worm bed is 18 sq feet.
So you should be stocking this bed with 18 lbs of worms, If you would like to start slow, I still recommend starting with at least 10 lbs.
4) When are we worm farmers?? haha..
When do you think you are a worm farmer? I think if you have worm beds 3? by 6? you are already a worm farmer,I am sure I have alot of customers with a few pounds of worms calling them selves worm farmers, this is a matter of opinion depending on each individual.
5) I have purchased my original stock from reputable worm farmers, They have been in the business for a long time. I do mix my worms (reds and euros) for casting production only, To keep the worms seperated as to each breed, the 2 breeds need to be a far distance away from each other, along with well made beds to keep the 2 breeds apart. Also another thing to keep in mind is, when making outdoor beds and your plans are to maintain the pure breed of worm, you need to have something between the native worms and the soil that you have just made the bed in, remember your native worms will enjoy eating the bedding you added to your nice pure breed of worms you are going to add to that bed, thus mixing the worms up.

I hope this answers some questions, I would really like to hear back on this one, There are alot of great ideas and methods of worm farming out there, So lets hear your comments

Jeff (The Friendly Worm Guy)

Written by Jeff on August 3rd, 2008 with 3 comments.
Read more articles on About Earthworms and Composting with composting worms and News and Reader Questions and Worm Stories.

Worm Beds and Harvesting Worm Castings

In this post you will see some of my worm beds, and how I harvest my worm castings.

Here is one of my Worm Beds. It is 8′ long 3′ wide, This bed is used for Worm Castings production for the most part. These beds are harvested and rebedded on a monthly bases. The bedding is pre-composted, These beds are housed with Red Wigglers and European Nightcrawlers.
I take the used up Vermicompost and screen it through a 1/4″ screen, which seperates all the larger worms from the small worms and worm cocoons(worm eggs)and the worm castings.At this point the larger worms go back into this same bed to produce Worm Castings and alot of egg cocoons to be harvested again in another month.

In this pic you can see the Vermicompost on the floor after being screened through the 1/4″ screen.
The pile on the floor, as I said before is all the little worms, egg cocoons, and the Worm Castings that were in the 18 cubic ft worm bed.
At this point this pile of vermicompost is left to sit for a week or two before it is moved out to the Old Fanning Mill, to produce the final product (Worm Castings)
Here is the link to my Harvesting video.Over at my Worm Farmer friends website www.redwormcomposting.com.Harvesting Worm Castings

Here is a picture of my Worm Castings after they go through the old Fanning Mill, Bagged up and ready to be sold to you people to make all your plants grow like never before. Check out my PROMO ITEMS at the top of the page.

Written by Jeff on July 21st, 2008 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on About Earthworms and Composting with composting worms and Friendly Worm Guy Store and News and Videos and Worm Stories.

ABOUT EUROPEAN NIGHTCRAWLERS Raised By The Friendly Worm Guy

The Slogan (it’s a EUROPEAN you’re A SEEIN’ That’s catchin’ all the FISH!!) Was created by my wife Lorie. In an effort to bring attention to this very NEW to North America, Fishing and composting worm The European Nightcrawler. (Eisenia hortensis)

Mass of European Nightcrawlers(Eisenia hortensis)
I have been raising The European Nightcrawler for 4 years now, In the past 2 years I have raised two breeds, The European N/C and the Red Wiggler (Eisenia fetida).These two breeds mixed in large composting beds work very well at producing quality worm castings, My beds are 8″-12″ in depth, the reds are the top feeders. example ( the reds are composting in the top 3-4″. The Euros are composting from 4-12″ levels of my composting worm beds) Both these breeds work very well on their own as well, at all levels of the composting bins. I have also been told by a number of people, that the Reds will take over the beds( out number the Euros ) over time, I have not seen this happen as of yet, This past spring I would have said those people were right, I had greater #’s of reds and less Euros, In the last month or two now, the euros have came back in big #’s and there is now more euros in the beds then reds. Yes readers now you will think I have just been picking out the reds, this is not the fact. These beds are for producing Worm Castings, I harvest the worm casting and I return the stock of worms from each bed back to their same beds,To compost the new bedding I have just added.
As far as taking care of each breed, All I had read about the euros, and their want to crawl, out of the beds, bins etc. Is wrong in my opinion, I have had alot more problems with the Red Wigglers crawling, then I have ever had with the European N/C. On another note: It is hard to kill Euros, and in the last few years I have found my self a couple of times trying to keep the reds alive. example, The Euros take change in their environments better then the Reds do. I am not sure why the Red Wigglers are still known as the best composting worm in North America. I am sure in the not too far future we will see the European N/C gain alot of ground in the composting field. There is also Millions of Fisherman out there that think the Reds are just not big enough to use for fishing. Where as the European N/C can grow to 5″ very easily, in a composting bin, and close to the size of the Canadian N/C if the Euro has space to grow.

These worms produce quality WORM CASTINGS

Please Check out the Promo I have going at the moment on these quality Worm Castings.

The Friendly Worm Guy

Written by Jeff on July 18th, 2008 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on About Earthworms and Composting with composting worms and Friendly Worm Guy Store and News and Worm Stories.

HEAT!! Time to build a Wood worm bin, To help keep your worms on the cool side.

WOW! Sure has been awhile since I have been able to write! I have a day or 2 to get a couple posts out before we get into July.

First I will talk about wooden worm bins, Wood worm bins keep worms much cooler then the plastic bins in summer temps.

These bins are now For Sale at Friendly Worm Guy. go to Our Products