Global Worming

“Want to make a worm farm?

Worm farming is a simple way of turning vegetable and fruit scraps into a great potting soil or soil amendment for your garden or house plants. It can be done year round, by apartment dwellers and home owners. Worm farming is particularly useful for people who would like to compost their food scraps but do not have space for a backyard compost bin.

Here is what you need to get started:

Container of wood or plastic. We use a sturdy plastic container that is about 7 inches deep, 9 inches wide and 14 inches long. The measurements are not real critical. This just happens to be an easy size for us to keep around the office and carry to presentations. If you are going to keep your worm farm inside, you will want it to be water tight. The worms are going to be happier when kept in the dark. (Kind of like some folks around here.) If your container is clear, wrap it with newsprint or place it in a cabinet or a opaque container to seal out the light. Make sure that the place you find to store the bin is away from vibrations. Worms will try to pack their bags and move to better digs if they are too near a source of vibration.

Worms.

We really suggest that you use red worms. They are also called red wrigglers or manure worms. Do not use earthworms or night crawlers. They just are not cut out to do this job.

Bedding material.

Start with some shredded newspaper, moistened, not wet. Use the black and white pages. The classified ads are good, as are the stock market reports. Don't use the colored ad pages, it just makes the worms want to go shopping and you want them to stay in your box and convert the vegetable scraps. Add a couple of handfuls of garden soil, not potting soil, and a couple of crushed egg shells. Keep the bedding damp but not sopping. The moisture helps them to breathe, but too much water will drown them.

Food.

You can feed your worms fruit and vegetable scraps and starchy scraps, like bread, oatmeal, and pasta. You can even feed them grits if they are southern worms, like ours. Do not feed them too much acidic foods, like citric fruits, coffee ground and tea bags. They do best with a pH between 7 & 8. You can use egg shells to balance the effects of coffee grounds, orange and lemon peels. Make sure that the eggshells are cooked before adding them to the worm farm. If they are not from boiled eggs, you can cook them by putting them in a cup of water in the microwave. Never feed your worms meat, poultry, dairy products, or salty food , like potato chips. These will create odors and attract insects. Your worms will eat about half their body weight each day. Take this into consideration when you are deciding how much food to add to the bin.

Worms require oxygen so keep the lid partially open to allow air to circulate. You should also turn the bedding with a trowel periodically to improve air circulation in the farm.

Worms will function very well at room temperature. Keep the farm temperature between +40 degrees F and +85 degrees F. Remember that heat will build up quickly in the farm if it is left in the sunlight.

Red worms reproduce often. Small, oval shaped cocoons in the bedding indicate that nature is taking its course. Cocoons may contain several baby worms and will take several weeks to hatch. Watch for tiny white worms. Poultry egg shells added to the bedding will provide calcium the worms need to reproduce. Don't worry about red worms taking over the estate, their population is limited by the size of their environment.

Farming worms:

Place the damp shredded newspaper with the garden soil and crushed egg shell in the container. Don't pack it down. Add the worms to their new home. If you leave the lid off and the light on, it will encourage the worms to investigate the new digs. Don't forget to add some worm food before you move the bin into the dark. You know you can get real hungry after the lights go out. Don't worry if hard foods don't disappear right away. They will have to soften through natural decay before the worms can eat them.

Do not over feed the worms. Overfeeding can lead to odor problems. As your worm population increases, you can add more food per day. Burying the food in the damp newspaper will keep mold from growing in the worm farm.

If your bedding is too wet, add some dry bedding, leave the cover off for a few days, or carefully drain the water off. If it is too dry, add some cool water and leave the farm loosely covered.

Soon you will notice an increase in the worm castings in your worm farm. This makes a great natural fertilizer. And all it cost you was a little time and some stuff that you were going to toss in the garbage.

When you see that bedding is no longer identifiable, you will want to harvest. Worms cannot survive in their own waste. Now if you are raising worms, you harvest the worms. We harvest the castings. The choice is yours.

Some folks sort the worms out of the castings and put the worms in fresh bedding. We have other things to do with our time and prefer a split harvest method. It helps if you have trained your worms ahead of time for this harvest method. To train your worms, you start feeding them at only one end of the bin. Do this for about a week. (Worms learn pretty fast.) Now take the bedding/castings out of the end of the farm where you were not feeding them and add it to your plants or garden. You will be removing about half to two thirds of the bedding/castings in this step. You will lose some worms, but those were the ones that were not very smart. Remember you trained the others. Place the remaining bedding/castings in a container while you scrub the bin and fix new bedding. Prepare this bedding the same way you did the first time, damp newspaper, crushed egg shells, and a handful of dirt. Now add the worms you trained, castings and all onto the fresh bedding. Feed and you are back in business. I have found that the worms will move out of the old bedding in a couple of days. If you want a cleaner farm, you can remove the old bedding in a few days.”

“Most animals get worms at some point in their lives. The key to successfully getting rid of worms and preventing their return is a healthy immune system. The common types of intestinal worms are tapeworms, roundworms, hookworms and whipworms. To see if your animal has an of these worms, as well as other intestinal freeloaders like Coccidia and Giardia, take a fresh (gathered that day) fecal sample in to the vet clinic, where they will float the fecal sample and look at it under the microscope (another type of test, called the smear test, is also sometimes done). Your vet can tell you if you animal suffers from any or all of these nasty parasites. Heartworms are a completely different type of parasite and are not covered in this post. How do you know if your animal has worms?? A heavy infestation of worms will leave an animal unthrifty looking - pot-bellied, thin or rough hair coat, dull eyes - the worms have been using the food that has been put into the animal for their own growth, and the animal can't utilize the nutrients. You may see parts of worms in your pet's stools....rice-looking moving segments means tapeworms, long spaghetti-looking things usually means roundworms. Your pet can get these worms from a variety of places - mother's milk, eating fleas, infested dirt, etc. It is a good idea to get your puppy or kitten tested ASAP, and your adults tested every year along with the physical. Always test before treating. Some ideas on worming using herbs and other gentle things are listed below - I would always try the natural way before resorting to the chemical, unnatural way. Never ever EVER go buy a chemical wormer without asking your vet - those wormers sold in stores can kill your pet as easily as it kills the worms.

1) Black walnut hulls, wormwood, clove buds and sage. Ask your homeopathic vet about supplementing a diet with these ingredients.

2) Grapefruit seed extract and kyolic garlic. Both given daily helps in worming your animal, among a host of other things. Fresh garlic can be substituted for kyolic garlic.

3) Parsley water - put one bunch of fresh parsley in one quart purified water, bring to a boil, simmer for 3 minutes. Let cool. Throw out parsley. Give one tablespoon of parsley water per 10 pounds of body weight to your animals once or twice a day.

4) Pumpkin seeds, freshly ground. Try to grind up pumpkin seeds finely right before feeding as opposed to grinding them several days in advance. If you must grind them in advance, keep them in a sealed container in the freezer and take out a day's portion right before feeding. You don't want moisture to enter the seeds. The seeds need to be raw, not baked and salted. Give 1/4 to 1 teaspoon per meal to your animal, depending on size (a cat will get 1/4 teaspoon, but a German Shepherd would get 1 teaspoon). This is effective
against tapeworms and very safe.

5) Sufficient Vit. A. Pitcairn comments that a long-term deficiency in Vit. A can result in worm reinfestation in otherwise immune animals. Vit. A can be supplemented by a good quality cod liver oil and adequate sunshine exposure.

6) Some homeopathic remedies are indicated for intestinal worms. Ask your homeopathic vet about Cina (wormseed) and Filix Mas (male fern).

7) Sometimes the addition of roughage helps carry the worms out of the tract. Try giving high roughage vegetables like grated raw carrot, turnips or beets. You may recall that the best way to feed vegetables is to puree them in the blender - however, since we are using them in a different manner here (for roughage as opposed to getting nutrients from them) grating is preferred. You will most likely see the grated veggies coming out in about the same state as they went in:)

8) Diatomaceous Earth. I have a separate post on DE, so if you are interested in learning more about it, please let me know. The info on DE is rather long, and I didn't want to take up more space on this post:)

9) Wheat germ oil can be a great tapeworm inhibitor. Get an organic cold-pressed bottle at the health food store and give in the same amounts listed above for pumpkin seeds.

10) Vegetable enzymes, such as the enzymes found in papaya and figs, can eat away at the outer coating of tapeworms.

11) Fasting is another great idea for getting rid of worms, as the lack of food weakens them. A 24 hour fast once a week for healthy adult animals helps clear out the digestive system. If your animals is not healthy, however, consult a vet about fasting, as it can be contraindicated. Same for kittens and puppies.

12) Herbal wormers are available in a variety of places. Read the labels carefully and follow the directions. I am hesitant to give a wormer that includes onion, as onion causes Heinz bodies in the blood which may lead to anemia in dogs and cats. Consult your homeopathic vet if you have questions.

The basis for getting rid of worms once and for all is a healthy system, which means feeding a good diet. A species-appropriate diet of raw bones and meat and vegetables with no grains or dairy goes a long way to help an animal regain health. Worms seem to like foods like fats, sugars (which means grains and fruits), eggs, and whole milk, so make sure to exclude these foods when trying to get rid of worms. Reintroduce eggs, fats and fruits after you are sure the worms are gone for good. It is best to worm your animals, wait 3 weeks and test for worms again, as some worms may hang on. The animals can then be treated again if need be.

If you have questions about starting a natural diet, please see Feeding Naturally in the links above. A healthy diet is the foundation for health for your animal. Some of you will notice a lot of mucous discharge with the feces when starting on a natural diet. This is a WONDERFUL thing, as the mucous that lines the gut is being expelled. Mucous in the gut is crucial for a worm's living and breeding - without lots of mucous the worms will die. I am always so pleased when I see mucous in one of my animal's feces!”

“peps is going to have a hissy fit.”

“I hurt old man stovie's feelings, awww.”

“Maybe, but Crash Bang will like it.”

“I like that one.”

“a lot of the trollish posts on tt are like that.”

“We have redworms all over the place here. It's pretty scary when I clear some compost out of the bin; it's mostly worms by the time stuff reaches the bottom.”

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Red…… Wigglers!
The Cadillac of Worms!
The Cadillac of Worms!


Season 3, Episode 22

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