DanielYKL

I know what you are thinking. “He blogs about socio-politics, he blogs about food and now he blogs about worms!”

Why worms? Who would in their right mind would blog about WORMS? And who would read?

That’s the whole idea about blogging, isn’t it? To share your thoughts, opinion, ideas, beliefs, interests, hobbies or whatever, so that your blog is not only limited to your own niche of readers. It’s all about sharing to a wider group of readers.

To answer the above, why worms? Hmm!!! Why not? Please read more about Worm Compost or Vermiculture here in my earlier articles. Thanks.

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To all Worm lovers or Vermiculturists!

About 3 weeks ago, I did a harvest on my worm compost. I’m not into a big scale like others or in any kind of business. It’s just something that of interest to me. So don’t expect much. I’m not an expert on vermiculture but “I did it my way,” and it works well for me.

This is the compost after more than 3 months. First I spread it all out on a big piece of old plastic shower curtain.

As you can see the worms are in there with the compost.

So what I did was separate or to pick out the worms from the compost. It’s not that difficult as the worms will group together if you leave them out in the open. Then from there, you just grab a whole pile of them and leave them on their own and they will all roll into a ball. Look at pics below.

You see, the worms will gather into a ball or should I call it a ball of worms!

So, in the meantime, I have a some veg, dried leaves and whatever as long as they are organic on the containers. Then I released the worms back into it. And start the worm compost all over again.

The compost are really good fertilizer. I gave the compost to friends and it was so precious to them that they only used it on their herbal plants and vegetable plants. And  flower plants. My worm compost are 100% organic. I only used vegetable scraps, fruit skins and cuts or dried leaves. No oily food or cooked food. No citrus fruits such as lemon, orange, etc, the citric acid will kill the worms. And spicy stuff such as garlic or chilli. And no MEAT! Fully vegetarian. So I guess they are ovolactovegetarian or vegan worms.

I gave the compost to friends and it is so previous to them that they only used it on their herbal plants and vegetable. I might sound crazy, but that’s the way to go. After all these worms are nature’s friends and they have a part in God’s plan for a better environment. It’s God’s way to cultivate the earth!

Note: Please wear gloves when you are harvesting the compost. I know, I know I should have done that. Sorry!!!

Hi to all who are interested in the Vermiculture/ Worm Compost.

If you need to get hold of some of the worms to start your own worm farm or to get the just the worm compost as fertilizer - here are some info.

My friend started this Vermiculture project about 2 years ago. And I just joined him about 3 months ago. We are not doing this as a business as in “business” - but rather as an interest.  We are cultivating the worms in his backyard.

Again what is worm composting?

Worm composting is using worms to recycle food scraps and other organic material into a valuable soil amendment called vermicompost, or worm compost. Worms eat food scraps, which become compost as they pass through the worm’s body. Compost exits the worm through its’ tail end. This compost can then be used to grow plants. To understand why vermicompost is good for plants, remember that the worms are eating nutrient-rich fruit and vegetable scraps, and turning them into nutrient-rich compost.

So if you need to buy some worms or just the compost, we will be happy to help.  Email me, danielykl@hotmail.com and i’ll get in touch with you and give you more details. By the way, the CAP is also doing this project.

                                                                                              Here is a way of building your own worm farm out of reused and recycled materials.

You will require:

Old carpet or sack if available (optional)
Three phone books or some bricks
1 piece of corrugated iron 600 x 600mm
3 or 4 car tyres of a similar size
35 Saturday newspapers (approx)
1 small container ( to collect liquid)
Old onion sacks or shade cloth
Lots of tiger worms
1 close fitting lid (a piece of wood with a rock will do)
Operating instructions for your tyre worm farm

Place the corrugated iron on top of the telephone books - two books on one side and one on the other to make a slope.
Stack the tyres on top of the corrugated iron. Dig out a hollow for the container to collect the worm tea which runs off the iron.
Fill the bottom tyre with bedding material (shredded paper and some soil) and add the worms (250gms)
Feed regularly with kitchen scraps and keep the mixture moist to touch.
Keep the worms covered with newspaper, cardboard or carpet, then place the lid on top to prevent flies getting in.
Make sure the bedding for your worms is always moist - you may need to add extra water every two or three weeks in the summer, depending on how moist the scraps are that you feed them.
As the tyre stack fills up, this normally takes several months, you slide out the bottom tyre and empty it of worm castings/vermicast. The paper in the tyre will probably be full of worms and can be replaced as is, used in your garden or compost heap, or given to friends to start new worm farms.
The empty tyre is now ready to be re-used. Stuff it with fresh, moist newspaper and place on top of the tyre stack. The nutrients from your kitchen scraps are now available for you to use in your garden and the number of your worms will have increased.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Feeding organic waste to worms gives people an effective and easy way to turn food scraps into a rich fertilizer. Adding worm casts or worm tea (liquid produced in the composting process) to the soil promotes soil fertility, moisture retention, and encourages plant growth. Worm composting is easy and fun and can be done indoors or outdoors. All you need to set up your worm farm is:

A container
Bedding material
The worms
Suitable food
Make your own worm farm

A worm farm is an ideal way for pre-schools and schools to reduce food scraps from their waste. It is also an excellent way for children to learn about nature, recycling and the environment, and makes a fascinating addition to any schools science or environmental curriculum. Try making a worm farm out of recycled tyres.

A container
You will need to get one or more suitable worm containers, which can be either plastic, wood or metal. Use your imagination and recycle an old bath tub or wooden box, a plastic basin, bin, or crate. Worm farm containers can either be bought from your local hardware store or garden centre, or you can make your own out of recycled materials. Wooden containers provide good insulation, and because they are absorbent, excess moisture in the wormery may be less of a problem. Plastic containers are convenient but have a tendency to keep the compost too wet at times. Experiment and find out what works for you and your worms.

Bedding material
Worms require moist bedding in which to lie and lay their eggs. Shredded paper with a couple handfuls of soil is ideal.

The worms
The type of earthworm suitable for farming is the tiger worm Eisenia fetida. This species prefers to live at or near the surface of the soil or compost and does not burrow into the ground. Tiger worms especially like to eat moist organic matter such as food scraps.

Food
Worms are omnivorous (eat both plants and meat) so most organic waste can be fed to them. They will eat most kitchen waste - including vegetable and fruit scraps or peelings and shredded paper.

Suitable food:
Handy towels
Tea bags/leaves
Grinds/filters
Bread scraps
Cereal
Ice cream
Biscuit crumbs
Meat
Fish
Dairy products
Unsuitable food:
Onion and Garlic
Spicy foods
Citrus or acidic fruit should be given in small quantities only (e.g. lemons, oranges and kiwifruit)

Here some photos of the worms in my compost bin. You have to really squint your eyes to be able to see the worms - sorry!

You don’t have to be a college graduate to know that worms, which devour organic matter and deposit “castings” that aerate and enrich soil, are good critters to have in a garden. So it makes sense that a college dropout and his partner used this common horticultural wisdom to develop TerraCycle, an organic liquid plant food derived from what the company affectionately refers to as “worm poop.”
      Tom Szaky(the dropout), 25, and Jon Beyer(who graduated in 2005), 24, were freshmen at Princeton University when they founded TerraCycle, Inc., in 2001. Today, the company cooks up close to 200 tons of worm poop a year in a 20,000-square-foot industrial building in Trenton, New Jersey. The result of this brewing process – similar to the methods a home gardener might use to create compost or manure tea – is an organic, nutrient-rich liquid fertilizer that, according to studies by Rutgers University, performs as well or better than more-popular commercial brands. Roughly a million bottles of TerraCycle fertilizer were shipped last year to store across North America.
      The seeds of TerraCycle were planted when Szaky, now chief executive officer, saw how well a friend’s houseplants flowered after they were fertilized with worm castings. Excited by the possibility of growing a business out of such prosaic raw material, he teamed up with Beyer, now chief information officer, to develop the initial product line and write a business plan. Their plan won several contests and prize money. With addition capital from “angel” investors, manufacturing and marketing of the product began in a Princeton basement.
      Growth for the company has been phenomenal – about 400 percent a year for several years running. In 2004, they abandoned the basement and moved into the Trenton factory. By 2008 they plan to expand into another building five times as large. But this is more than just another story of young entrepreneurs barely out of sneakers hitting the big time. TerraCycle bills itself as a new style of business: an “eco-capitalist” that makes money while having little or no negative impact on the environment.
      At the top of the long list of the company’s eco-friendly practices is packaging its products in reused soda bottles. The idea came of necessity: Before they attracted investors, Szaky and Beyer couldn’t afford to buy new bottles for their product, so they took empties from neighbours’ recycling bins and accepted donations of bottles from local organizations. Now the company purchases 20-ounce soda bottles from recycling centres for 2 cents each(compared to 5 cents for a new bottle, and 10 cents for those made of 100-percent recycled materials). Even after the bottles are cleaned, using a special washer loaded with eco-friendly detergent, Szaky says the cost is still less than buying them new. The company also buys bottles from school and charitable groups, using its Bottle Brigade program to both promote the products and encourage participants to learn more about the benefits of recycling.
      Besides the bottles, TerraCycle uses other materials usually considered candidates for the landfill. In the beginning, they fed their worms with waste from the Princeton dining halls. Now millions of worms, in four worm composting locations around the country, are fed waste from large-scale food-production processes, including the spent hops from beer-makers. The resulting worm castings are shipped tp Trenton for processing. The company tops its bottles with spray nozzles that other manufacturers have rejected, and most of its shipping boxes are rejects from other businesses as well. The company’s Trenton facility – which boasts a workforce of 50 during the peak bottling season – had been an abandoned newspaper distribution warehouse.
      This year the company will start marketing a potting soil mix ( package in recycled gallon-size milk jug) that incorporates the solid worm castings strained out after the fertilizer brewing process. Plans are also in the works to reuse the bottle cap in some way, perhaps as small packages for garden seeds.
       “One of the really exciting thing about TerraCycle is that we can save the world and make lots of money and make great products at the same time,” Szaky says. We’ve created a viable business by doing not just the right thing, but the best thing we cab possibly do.”
     
     
      

My friend Richard asked permision to use the coconut tree in  front of my house as a his “Worm Compost Project.”  What he did was built a fence or box around the coconut tree. And then trimmed the leaves and coconuts from the tree and just throw them into the bin or box.  And then he released “worms” into the box. I understand that the worms are special breed of worms. In due time the worms will chew through all the leaves and branches and whatever is there and leave behind it’s droppings. And in three to four months, we will have the best natural fertilizer.