Vermiculture

[ronthepon]

Originally Posted by anglepose

He He
We got a compost heap when ever i open it to dump the garbage in the lid packed full of literly hundereds of worms and loads of centipedes and wood lice and if i want more worms i just rake the leaf littter out from under the shed and the are hundreds of them. there like theese dwarf hamster some one i know had they have like 5 babies a month they went on holiday came back and poof! at least 50 dwarf hamsters.

Loose the centipides and wood lice!

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by ronthepon

Loose the centipides and wood lice!

I definately agree! Vermiculture is concerned with constructing artifical habitat for worms that excludes the flys, bees, centipedes, etc. while providing ideal earthworm conditions.
Your wormified compost pile means you have starting stock for the vermitorium.

[anglepose]

OK so i have to go out in the rain with fly swat to swat loads of centipedes after i hand pick them out from the worms. Are the maggots i found in the bottom anygood for my heap of goo

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by anglepose

OK so i have to go out in the rain with fly swat to swat loads of centipedes after i hand pick them out from the worms. Are the maggots i found in the bottom anygood for my heap of goo

No need to swat anything. I get the sense you have in mind using an existing pile, which is fine but not the containerized vermiculture I mean to promote. This link I gave earlier in the thread outlines vermiculture in containers.
http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s...ormcompost.asp

Web Search ResultsResults 1 - 10 of about 17,806 for vermiculture

[anglepose]

alas i have crated a worm farm and an experimental worm farm just like it described however it is my firstt day and the farm may not look complete since it is not

Attachment 611
above is a photo of the main worm farm layer 2 bedding (i found by layering the beding with the compost you get a better finish


Attachment 612
above is my experimental worm farm with its cover taken off as you can see there are a few layers to see wich they like best

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Turtle

Mmmmm...eizer tock, oder eat zie verms. Better yet, have the worms eat your garbage!
By the by, did you know Charles Darwin's last major work considered the lowly worm in great detail?
http://pages.britishlibrary.net/char...uld/mould.html

Didn't Darwin say earthworms added 1/4" of topsoil to the planet a year???

I started with a shop bought three tier "Worm Farm" and a big pile of worms.
Anyway i never did get it to work properly.
You could buy earthworms for the garden or for fishing

I ended up with a compost bin outside my kitchen window.
I would toss all my kitchen scraps and stuff retrieved from the Frig "Crisper" (better named "Rotter").
What the Possum didn't eat at night the worms ate.
I added lot of paper and cardboard too and occasionally yard sweepings and some manure.
After 12 months I started a new pile at another window.
My fist pile was now mostly compost and earth,and worms.

I had to pay to have my garbage collected (I was on acres) so instead I turned kitchen waste into soil with no effort.

these days I am experimenting with compost teas and kitchen scraps go into that.
but I do throw out a lot of paper mmm

In Australia there is a Giant Worm, mostly in Victoria.
Very little is known about it.
It can often be located by the noise it makes burrowing through the soil
SEE
http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dse/nrenpa...3?OpenDocument

There are around 1,000 species of native earthworms in Australia. One of the most spectacular is the Giant Gippsland Earthworm; at over a metre long it is one of the largest earthworms in the world.

[Turtle]

I just finished watching an interesting news story on a young man in Oregon who is going big with worm poop. He dropped out of college and he's already a millionaire. What he and his compatriots have done (they said he has 2 Phd's on staff) is to develop a water & worm poop mix fertilizer which they are bottling in old plastic pop bottles & adding a sprayer top. It is cheaper than other fertilizers & the first bottled product ever marketed for which the bottles are not all the same type!
They already have the product in several big-box stores across the nation as well as many smaller outlets.
I'll check the news stations page & see if I can find a web link.

PS Here is a link to the product from worm poop called Terracycle:
http://www.kgw.com/frame.jsp?sid=htt...erracycle.net/

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Racoon

I would like to buy a nice pre-made fabricated device, with bottom trays to simply remove the "end product" without having to dig, and move everything.

You can buy a three tier plastic worm farm here in just about any nursery
You harvest the 'juice' from it ever other day. One tier is active where you put your scraps (on top) the next partially decomposed the bottom worm castings ready for the garden. The worms follow the food.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Turtle

. He dropped out of college and he's already a millionaire.
PS Here is a link to the product from worm poop called Terracycle:
http://www.kgw.com/frame.jsp?sid=htt...erracycle.net/

Sounds like a big business.
Good for him

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Here councils re-cycle all plastic bottles. In one state (SA)there is a 5c deposit on all bottles

[Ganoderma]

very cool stuff. i experimented with this a while ago in a slightly different manner. i keep a lot of reptiles and amphibians so i had a lot of vivariums. i had a phelsuma (day gecko) enclosure running for 6 years with full plants and animals. the main bugs were red wigglers (thanks to a bait store) and sow bugs. fertilizer for plants, eat dead bugs/poo, aerate soil, and provide food for lizards. it was so successful that from 2004 till the end of 2005 i did not add anything but water. the lizards ate the bugs and the cycle continued.

there is also research on using fungus are composters. oyster mushroom is of special concern, it is great for composting cellulose. it is also being researched for cleaning up pollution. see Paul Stamets. I am thinking of experimenting with using mushrooms as a primary decomposition then moving it on to invertebrates and worms. Anyone try this?

i am curious why the want for removing wood lice (aka sow bugs/pill bugs)? they are excellent decomposers and will stay in the top area of the worm farm. i would think that any effective organic decomposer would be beneficial provided it does not prey on other live animals.

i have also recently being playing with snails for decomposing, but it is apparent that they are rather picky eaters, even the giant land snails....