CrimsonEcho said:

Yes. I just started my worm bin inside.

This is a very basic rig that i put together. By put together i mean i drilled a few holes on a fermentation bucket and covered it with cheese cloth to prevent the worms from leaving.

View attachment 871182View attachment 871183

Detailed pics of each bucket will be posted once i harvest it. But you see there are 2 buckets stacked on top of each other. The top one has holes at the bottom and the lower one has a big hole in the middle to catch any leachate which there hasn’t been any. But still it isolates the bucket and helps with keeping critters away.

View attachment 871184View attachment 871185

This is how the material inside looks. The thing is i don’t use paper for bedding. I have a big bag of unfertilized peat so instead i use that so the look can be deceiving. I fed them 4 times till now and i was taking it a little slow and giving them some time to adjust. After i harvest this batch, which should be around 15 days or so i’ll go full strength feedings.

Now this material looks very dark and smells just like rich forest soil. This batch was mostly the results of the learning curve. I gave too much food, the slurry was kinda thick and went aerobic it went over 32C in an 18C environment etc etc. Some mistakes were made but even after that the end material looks and smells amazing.

I’ll both share what i do with you and keep a journal to remember what works and what doesn’t. The end game here is to create high quality worm castings from this simple bucket system i can keep near my kitchen. Next step is to try and do a run using only castings and see what kind of results i get. There’ll be vids, pics, feeds, cocoons, sifting etc etc. I’ll try to document every step along the way and try to learn and share.

Anyway, its gonna be fun.

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CrimsonEcho said:

Yes. I just started my worm bin inside.

This is a very basic rig that i put together. By put together i mean i drilled a few holes on a fermentation bucket and covered it with cheese cloth to prevent the worms from leaving.

View attachment 871182View attachment 871183

Detailed pics of each bucket will be posted once i harvest it. But you see there are 2 buckets stacked on top of each other. The top one has holes at the bottom and the lower one has a big hole in the middle to catch any leachate which there hasn’t been any. But still it isolates the bucket and helps with keeping critters away.

View attachment 871184View attachment 871185

This is how the material inside looks. The thing is i don’t use paper for bedding. I have a big bag of unfertilized peat so instead i use that so the look can be deceiving. I fed them 4 times till now and i was taking it a little slow and giving them some time to adjust. After i harvest this batch, which should be around 15 days or so i’ll go full strength feedings.

Now this material looks very dark and smells just like rich forest soil. This batch was mostly the results of the learning curve. I gave too much food, the slurry was kinda thick and went aerobic it went over 32C in an 18C environment etc etc. Some mistakes were made but even after that the end material looks and smells amazing.

I’ll both share what i do with you and keep a journal to remember what works and what doesn’t. The end game here is to create high quality worm castings from this simple bucket system i can keep near my kitchen. Next step is to try and do a run using only castings and see what kind of results i get. There’ll be vids, pics, feeds, cocoons, sifting etc etc. I’ll try to document every step along the way and try to learn and share.

Anyway, its gonna be fun.

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PlumberSoCal said:

Very cool. Last summer my supply house gave me 3 new bathtubs that were scratched. I thought about using them as either raised beds or a little aquaculture. Then I saw an article on raising worms in 'em. I have a perfect North facing wall of my garage although it does get hot here in late summer, 100+ for several days to a week or more so I'm still undecided. I may do a wood box buried in the soil to start as I'd hate to ruin one if the aquaculture pans out.

A couple weeks ago a neighbor gave us their old green house, 8' x 16' with actual hard panels and weights several hundred pounds even framed with 3/4" PVC pipe and those tubs might be better served keeping the humidity level up this summer while I play with aquaculture.

IDK yet as the area we'll be placing it isn't ready and it's still sitting in our front yard in two pieces. Hell, I've even been thinking of making two greenhouses out of it.

When I finally figure it out and get it all done I'll post as it will have lots of babies. Still thinking about it. I'll take a couple of hits and think about it and procrastinate some more.

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eirI said:

Beautiful. I sometimes sprinkle a little corn that I dried and mashed. Little herms love it

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PlumberSoCal said:

Very cool. Last summer my supply house gave me 3 new bathtubs that were scratched. I thought about using them as either raised beds or a little aquaculture. Then I saw an article on raising worms in 'em. I have a perfect North facing wall of my garage although it does get hot here in late summer, 100+ for several days to a week or more so I'm still undecided. I may do a wood box buried in the soil to start as I'd hate to ruin one if the aquaculture pans out.

A couple weeks ago a neighbor gave us their old green house, 8' x 16' with actual hard panels and weights several hundred pounds even framed with 3/4" PVC pipe and those tubs might be better served keeping the humidity level up this summer while I play with aquaculture.

IDK yet as the area we'll be placing it isn't ready and it's still sitting in our front yard in two pieces. Hell, I've even been thinking of making two greenhouses out of it.

When I finally figure it out and get it all done I'll post as it will have lots of babies. Still thinking about it. I'll take a couple of hits and think about it and procrastinate some more.

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CrimsonEcho said:

Cool man. Free swags raining down on you

Keep us updated and if any questions pop up hollar at us. This thread is as much as about you as its about me. Here we can experiment and fail and learn. Or hopefully just succeed but where is the fun in that

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PlumberSoCal said:

Lot of work yet to do. From clearing the area of weeds, removing a rock pile, lifting both sections over a 6' fence and dragging them some 70' to its new home and then reassemble and installing the panels, running electricity and water... I'm gonna take a couple more hits. Hey, it's raining today and I don't work on Sundays.

Thoughts on raising worms just from my research with no actual experience. The larger the surface area the better production and ease of keeping. Worm production produces a lot of moisture and having a drip hole in bottom is important and will produce worm juice for tea. A raised area on the bottom helps keep the worms drier. An aquarium under gravel filter plate might work with a screen over it to keep the worms from escaping.

If you don't over feed and add dry paper often it might work but at that size you'll need to keep an eye on it.

Adding layers of burlap between food has been reported to work well.

This will be interesting.

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CrimsonEcho said:

I don’t envy you on that part. Ita definitely backbreaking work. But still at the end you’ll have a free greenhouse. Pretty rad if you ask me

Yeah on the scale you are talking about all these aspects are important. When this micro bin gets anaerobic or gets overly moist i just add some peat and give it a good fluffing and voila its gets back to normal. Is it the same on a bigger scale we’ll see.

No leachate from my bin by the way. I think you have to water the bin to get that but i don’t. I started with a wet bedding and they get all the water they use from the food slurry. It works, its pretty moist in there. But of course outside is a different beast.

Do you have any farms around? That much space will need regular feeding i think so a steady source of manure would be nice. At first i covered my bin with burlap but burlap lets critters in and the sole purpose of covering for me was to keep them out. But in your situation it’ll probably work well. Aerating the pile, leaving worms some place to lay eggs and hide.

They use 1/4” and 1/8” screens to seperate worms and cocoons from the castings so you can get an appropriate mesh screen and use it to keep the worms in. The seperation will be a bitch imo. I got shit ton of cocoons in there and i don’t know if i’ll be able to seperate all.

You? You’ll probably get a free seperator donated to you by gawd herself

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PlumberSoCal said:

I've got a client with horse property in Valley Center, 20 minutes drive North who gives me all the manure I can haul away. Gotta be careful not to use the stuff after de-worming. I don't want that in my garden either as it will kill all worms.

To set up a worm farm here is also a lot of work. My soil is clay and rock. That rock pile I mentioned I need to move was from turning soil last year. I've literally removed thousands of pounds of rock through the years from 100+ pound boulders to mainly fist size 3-5 pounders. Flipping nightmare.

I doubt if I'll get to the worm farm until after harvest this year when the temp finally drops. Ive got the wood, mainly 2x4's and 2x6's but it will have to drain into the soil so I plan on adding a gravel bed under a screened bottom. Lot of work and these days I'm finding I have a favorite chair and a favorite bong.

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CrimsonEcho said:

Horse manure is the shit (literally and figuratively). I read they love living in that stuff too. Like straight horse manure without and bedding or anything but yeah worm medicine may harm them.

I’d just get a machine in there to dig a trench and cover the bottom with gravel as you said and build a wooden structure to keep them in. Its hardwork for sure. But i think it’d be worth it.

One other approach could be just digging a trench and covering the bottom with gravel and just dump manure in there. The worms will not leave if the compost is stable and filled with digestable material. This is a very random approach tho and the quality will not be consistent. I personally wouldn’t do this but people do. Just an idea.

Ah i got a lazy boy, a vaporizer and netflix for contemplating on these future work filled days. Love contemplating.

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CrimsonEcho said:

Horse manure is the shit (literally and figuratively). I read they love living in that stuff too. Like straight horse manure without and bedding or anything but yeah worm medicine may harm them.

I’d just get a machine in there to dig a trench and cover the bottom with gravel as you said and build a wooden structure to keep them in. Its hardwork for sure. But i think it’d be worth it.

One other approach could be just digging a trench and covering the bottom with gravel and just dump manure in there. The worms will not leave if the compost is stable and filled with digestable material. This is a very random approach tho and the quality will not be consistent. I personally wouldn’t do this but people do. Just an idea.

Ah i got a lazy boy, a vaporizer and netflix for contemplating on these future work filled days. Love contemplating.

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PlumberSoCal said:

The good waste eaters won't survive in my soil. I've added leftover red worms from fishing many times. I do have a lot of earthworms obviously adapted to my soil but they don't compare to the worms bred and sold to breakdown waste. I compost all food waste, no meat, bones or oil of course. Maybe a trench with gravel and manure would work fine. Horse manure from a known source is the best. I use a lot of it from lining grow holes and trenches for peas and beans, mulching plants to tea. Really amends clay soil. It is the shit!

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eirI said:

Ya just from experience if you start seeing your worms ball up it’s time for adjusting your temp if doing indoor or making sure not over feeding which causes all kind of bugs to mold etc.

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PlumberSoCal said:

The good waste eaters won't survive in my soil. I've added leftover red worms from fishing many times. I do have a lot of earthworms obviously adapted to my soil but they don't compare to the worms bred and sold to breakdown waste. I compost all food waste, no meat, bones or oil of course. Maybe a trench with gravel and manure would work fine. Horse manure from a known source is the best. I use a lot of it from lining grow holes and trenches for peas and beans, mulching plants to tea. Really amends clay soil. It is the shit!

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eirI said:

Ya horse shit what ever is in it it’s good manure.

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CrimsonEcho said:

Man have you seen insect frass. The soldier fly larvae or something. They devour meat. But also you can experiment with worms too. That shit is a bit complicated. Truth is meat decomposes and very rapidly too and worms don’t have anything against it i think. The problem with it is it may smell or become very rancid and produce bad bacteria but if you have sufficient number of worms and if you cut the meat into little pieces for faster decomposition. Maybe it’ll work. Who knows?

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PlumberSoCal said:

I've read some folks add meat but being outside with coons, opossum and rats I don't want to attract any more. We have chickens and I fight rats all the time. Can't poison as the chickens would eat 'em and be poisoned and I have no desire to poison any other wildlife like our birds of prey. Last summer we had a group of Redtailed Hawks hang out until Thanksgiving. Indoors it would be nasty and I wouldn't even consider it.

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CrimsonEcho said:

Thanks for the tip.

Over feeding is one of my minor concerns as i don’t produce that much waste. I know a little coffeshop from which i get discarded espresso. I got my kitchen scrap. Mostly a little carrot, cucumber stems, peels of fruits etc. And i love tea, so there is discarded tea leaves. Black and green mostly. But all in all not that much food is being wasted over here.

Also started a leaf compost in another fermentation bucket. Its going well i think. I had bunch of dried leaves and now after trimming there will be more. So i put them in there with some of my used mix and microbes are just went nuts in there. After 4 days, there is a very big difference.

I also give oatmeal. They love grains that much is clear to me and produce very rapidly with this regimen. When i put the worms in, being an obsesive guy that i am, i washed the worms with warm water. This may not be ideal still all but 3 survived this process. 250 worms was my order. This way i made sure there weren’t any bad eggs or anything in the bedding and this is also how i made sure no cocoons were in there. But now cocoons everywhere and the worms really put on mass after grains.

I’m gonna feed them a mix of grains, aloe vera, coffee, tea, carrots, abv, cucumber stems and leaf compost to lure them into their new container so i can harvest more easily. We’ll see how it goes. In 15-20 days.

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