Worm Farm: Benefiting from the Earth
“Eeeeeek! Worms!” You can hear the children screaming now. You can imagine some girls squirming in disgust and or fear as a couple of bad boys nudge worms in their faces. This practice can really scare a kid and might even develop phobia when they grow older. But what about the worms? How do you like it when giant human faces keep looking and screaming at you? Imagine the shock those poor worms might have had. This could be a familiar scene in your own worm farm as an elementary class conducts a field trip in your farm.
Okay, that scene may be a little bit out there. Especially, if your objective really is not a large, commercial farming project to begin with. Starting small is not a problem with worm farming. You can create a farm even if you’re living in a small apartment or a small house. It is an ideal project for anybody who loves gardening.
The process of worm farming is simply letting the worms convert scraps of vegetables and fruits into ideal potting soil. It’s like creating your own compost with the help of worms and minus a large space. As mentioned earlier, you only need a fraction of space to create your own farm unlike composting where you need a backyard space to throw in your food scraps and allow the pile to become compost.
To being your worm farming experience, a good container which measures 7 inches deep would be needed. Also, it would be ideal if you could get a 7-inch deep container that is around 9 inches wide and 14 inches long. There’s really no standard with this kind of thing but in my experience that size is a good one to start a worm farm. Just make sure you select a non-transparent container since worms tend to like it more dark places.
The worms you will be using are not the standard variety of earthworms. Earthworms are actually not suitable for farming. The best ones would be compost worms, tiger worms or red wrigglers. Once you have your worms, you create a bedding material on your container from moistened newspapers. You then add garden soil on the bedding and if you like some crushed egg shells. The container should be kept damped. Avoid adding too much water or else the worms will drown. Also, keep the lid of the container partly open to let the air in. Place the container away from sunlight since the temperature inside the container can heat up pretty bad especially when left under sunlight.
What you can feed the works include vegetable scraps and fruit peelings. The worms seem enjoy servings of food that are really starchy so bread, oatmeal, and pasta would be great as well. Just avoid feeding the worms’ highly acidic food like citrus and onions. Tea bags and coffee grounds can be added to the worms’ diet. Never feed them meat or poultry. Salty foods like junk foods are also a no-no in the worms’ diet. Placing these kinds of foods in the container can create odors which might attract insects in the tray. Worms consume half their body weight each day.
Once you have your worm farm set up and have your worms munching away on their food, you can wait until the worms create castings. The castings or vermicompost is a soil-like substance that you will be using as fertilizer for your plants. This will be great for potting your plants and if you have a vegetable garden put some in there as well.
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