I?ve got a worm farm at home that looks sorta like this:
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At the moment, I?m strictly in the collecting/harvesting phase, not the actual farming phase. I get one of the upper containers that has lots of little holes in the bottom which I?ve filled with fruit and vegetable scraps. They are mainly lettuce, cauliflower, and cabbage leaves, with some pumpkin, apples, and bananas, but mainly green leafy vegetables. I know not to add citrus, pineapple, or meat ? well understood. I then cover the whole lot with a hessian (burlap?) sack. I?ve placed this worm collecting/harvesting box on the ground just near my old empty compost bin, and I pour a whole watering can through the hessian sack every day or so, which soaks through the food scraps and through the holes in the bottom, then into the soil. I?m figuring the scraps won?t get too water logged because of the adequate drainage. What I want to know is, will the worms in the soil eventually wriggle up through the holes in the bottom of the container, into the worm box? Any advice here? The reason I?m doing it this way is because it doesn?t cost me any money at all, even if it takes longer.
I=92ve got a worm farm at home that looks sorta like this:
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At the moment, I=92m strictly in the collecting/harvesting phase, not the actual farming phase. I get one of the upper containers that has lots of little holes in the bottom which I=92ve filled with fruit and vegetable scraps. They are mainly lettuce, cauliflower, and cabbage leaves, with some pumpkin, apples, and bananas, but mainly green leafy vegetables. I know not to add citrus, pineapple, or meat =96 well understood. I then cover the whole lot with a hessian (burlap?) sack. I=92ve placed this worm collecting/harvesting box on the ground just near my old empty compost bin, and I pour a whole watering can through the hessian sack every day or so, which soaks through the food scraps and through the holes in the bottom, then into the soil. I=92m figuring the scraps won=92t get too water logged because of the adequate drainage. What I want to know is, will the worms in the soil eventually wriggle up through the holes in the bottom of the container, into the worm box? Any advice here? Anything that will possibly hurry them along? The reason I=92m doing it this way is because it doesn=92t cost me any money at all, even if it takes longer.
Depends on the type of worm you have. Redworms are the composting worms and live near the top of the soil and work laterally. Earthworms work vertically.
You should have some starter worms to ensure a good supply; with all you are doing, they will multiply fast.
If you have horse manure around, the worms that work in that are redworms, something I found out from Doug (in link below) before I bought some from him.
Go to:
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an article about redworms and some good links to excellent information.
if you have vege' gardens already then like us you could do away without the worm farm, cutout the middle man. have your composting worms in the gardens and tuck your kitchen scraps under the mulch daily, that way the benefits are where they are needed, the castings the wee all in the garden.
no extra cost at all this way except for snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,
len & bev
-- "Be Content With What You Have And May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In A World That You May Not Understand."
To explain things a bit better, I'm harvesting the worms for my brother's chickens, as adding extra protein to their diet makes their eggs taste so much better. Basically, I'm an egg-aholic.
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Everything I've done so far has not cost me one red cent, and I'm going to stick with this. Eventually, I'll probably keep the castings and liquid fertiliser, but this is more of a secondary issue. Taking into account what scraps I've added to the worm box so far (that has holes in the bottom, hopefully for the worms to crawl through), is there anything I can add/do that will "more stongly" attract the worms to the surface? If there's any advice, I'd strongly consider it. I'm hoping to lure the worms into the box a bit faster (if at all?), although I'm guessing it's still a slow process. Any specific pointers?
What's with this 'chickens' business? Don't you mean chooks? As someone raised on a poultry farm, I believe it is my duty (as it is for all Ockers) to educate people to make sure thay know the difference between chickens and chooks.
In your earlier post, you didn't mention any real soil in the bin, just a whole lot of scraps. For that box set up, I've found that you really need to have a good fibrous moist soil and then to the top of that soil you then add the scraps. You've got to bed your worms in first before you start feeding them.
If I read your earlier post correctly, you have the box next to your compost bin and are trying to herd the worms into the bin so you don't have to buy any. It's easier to just have a dig around in the bottom of your compost bin and find some worms (use the compost ones, not any earthworms yu may find as common earthworms don't seem to like the richness of those bins) and to then add them to the bin and put it back into it's configuration and then cover the whole lot or stick it in a shady spot.
The red wrigglers is the sort I've used in that exact same style of bin and the only problem I had with them was the occasional stampede.
I've found coffee grounds are very popular with the worms - they seem to love a caffeine fix.
This site tells you what works in Oz and the point the site makes about horse poop is also a good one - my worms seemed to also like horse poop. I naow just breed my worms up in my Geyde bins:
Don't, let them do it. Just dump all your organic trash into a pile in their compound. that will create a "compost heap", which will bring worms, which the chooks will scratch up.
The problem with worm farms is that they are a lot of work for little worm production. As pointed out, ground worms are not suitable for worm farms. Native ground worms go deep and transfer stuff up and down. Worm farm worms stay shallow and work close to the surface.
a more efficient way might be to cover an area of the chook pen (sequentially) with something such as heavy cardboard or even tin or something like that (having made sure the ground is damp first), & when lifted later (weeks??) there should be worms just under the surface (as well as slaters etc) eating the decomposed organic matter there. this is what i have found happens in my chook pen if anything gets left on the ground for a while & there seems to be a permanent worm station under their water bucket.
with the compost idea, the chooks might well just scratch it to bits so you don't get the peace & quiet needed to attract the worms; or, the chooks might eat something that gives them food poisoning if it's been there for a while (not very likely i don't suppose, but certainly possible). anyway, it just sounds like work to me :-) i know that quite a few people dump their kitchen waste for the chooks but i'm not sure it results in more actual worms & so forth.
i recently found out our local butcher gives away (free) the gack cleaned out from the bottom of the meat mincer each day. so we've started getting a bit of this from him (the chooks love it, naturally). o.p. might like to see if his local butcher does this too. i must say their first lot set them off into a frenzy of laying & they're keeping it up - don't know if it was good timing (just recommencing after winter & it would have happened anyway) or if a few doses of hardcore protein's really done them some good laying-wise. :-)
i am just thinking that if o.p. wants more protein for the chooks, there are easier ways :-) a free - range worm farm would be excellent, but (ime only) more for the good it does in soil improvement & making soil improvement products from the worms, rather than the worms themselves - i think of worms as a bit too precious to use for chook food
that's right - they will only breed to fit the conditions. certainly if they are constantly removed more will replace them, but it's a bit slow i reckon. i would try to think of an easier free way to get more protein for the chooks. kylie
Aye, well, as a non-Ocker, I need some educatin'. Hmmm....chickens are livestock and chooks are like part of the family and valued beyond their production? Just a guess, I guess.
Please, perform your duty. I pray I don't regret this.
You're right there; I haven't put in any soil/fibre/etc. I've only added food scraps. What do you suggest I do here? I can easily add soil, newspaper, egg cartons, mixture of the above, etc. If I've got BUY something.....not gonna happen. I'm prepared to do what I can, but that stops short of forking out money to get it working.
I use an old laundry tub for water and that and under the flat feed trays that I use for scraps are both good places for worm gathering. Move them and the girls dive right in.
another good protein scource is to just tie up and bit of raw meat in the pen above where they can pick ay it and let it get fly blown. The maggots drop and the girls gobble them apparently. I've not tried it yet but always mean to do so.
Just giving them bit of mince meat in some pollard would also work as a good protein source.
Nah, not the case at all Charlie. I like my chooks and have great difficulty in killing them and really get the spews if a fox gets any but they really are all about production rather than pets.
You won't 'cos I'll be both polite and civil (although I couldn't say the same thing about the last discussion I had on this topic with a USian. But then he was an obnoxious drongo and you aren't).
As I mentioned, I was raised on a poultry farm and each year we would get a delivery of chickens. This involved preparing the brooding house for them as chickens are tiny fluff balls that need constant heat and they stay that way till they develop feathers at which stage they become pullets and no longer need heat and then once they start laying they become hens or chooks. You'd call the tiny fluff balls chicks. The only use I've ever heard of chicks here has been as a reference to young female humans.
No ANZAC worth their rural background would ever have called a chook or a hen a 'chicken' until we began to take onboard USian English (too much Yankee TV no doubt). I think this usage started first with ANZACs picking up the marketing lingo of eating 'chicken' which is what the meat is universally advertised as being here now although when I was young it was always 'chook' and the only way you got to eat it was if you killed it yourself or got it from a neighbour or somesuch. I know as a child our butcher never ever had chooks for sale.
You're right there; I haven't put in any soil/fibre/etc. I've only added food scraps. What do you suggest I do here? I can easily add soil, newspaper, egg cartons, mixture of the above, etc. If I've got BUY something.....not gonna happen. I'm prepared to do what I can, but that stops short of forking out money to get it working. ______________________________________________
You must have some decent soil like stuff aroudn somewhere either in the bottom of your compost bin or in a veg bed or in a flower bed or under a bush that has been shedding lots of leafy stuff. Just pick some soil that looks good and fibrousy and put it in the bottom and see what worms arrive in it where it currently is if you want to continue to experiment.
Politeness 'preciated, but have your way with me, when needed. :-)
It dismays me that so many of the people living on my part of the planet engender this attitude of disdain with so many that live on other parts. But one must consider that the vast majority are products of a public education system that is a disgrace. I too am a product of that system, but had the sense to, in utter disgust and disillusionment, walk away from university and pursue my own continuing education. Not highly profitable, in a financial sense, but well worth making the choice and I sleep well most nights, at least as well as one fast approaching geezerhood can sleep.
I find that those of you (at least the usenet folk I read) in Oz seem to exhibit a level of literacy and comprehension and curiosity that is not the norm, at least in my limited experience, for many of us here.
For good reading and wonderful understanding of the usian method and working class folk, and those who abuse this class, Joe Bageant is worthwhile. I think he has done a tour in Oz. Lots of essays and reader responses.
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Thanks, and I have one further question. I take it that chooks are hens only? What of the roosters, that we always butcher/ed young, what are they called? Does "chook" cover them? It's not clear to me.
Same here, regarding the butcher's shop. Like you said, many had their own and/or friends/relatives that supplied live chooks. Some of my earliest memories are of my tiny grandmother removing the head of a chook, and the smell of frying chicken, er, uh...chook....or boiled chook and noodles. I also remember seeing her strip the undeveloped eggs from the innards and cooking them with noodles. Good eats.
Here we go with the continuing edgycation.....ANZAC...which led to further study and thought and more to come in the near future. I find myself the jack of all and master of none with this learning and cultural stuff. :-)
i think chook is a general, collective term so you could include your rooster, particularly if he is sensitive, reads literature, & wears sandals . i tend to call mine (collectively) my "chickies" although i don't know why. my rooster is not a "chickie" i don't suppose, but tbh i don't really consider him much (he's just an oversexed freeloader, really).
anyway, what i was going to say is that there's a johnny cash song which states "the father hen will call his chickens home" which strikes me as absurd every single time - 1: roosters aren't hens 2: roosters don't care for the wellbeing of their offspring (or even seem to know who they are).
(there's another song about a cowboy who, once on the saddle, used to "go gay", which also cracks me up, but i'm getting increasingly off-topic, as well as revealing to the entire gardening world my new-found infatuation with johnny cash after a lifetime of ignorance ;-) - although i have seen brokeback mountain so... um.... kylie
Sounds like one of those hippie Californicator roosters ;-) Here in the US, they market something called "Smart Chickens" (a processing trick)....perhaps thats where they end.
Yeah, I've heard that the males of some other species are considered similarly. And "chickie"....hmmmm, wonder what Fran thinks of that?
Roosters, I have found from my chook raising days, are a necessary annoyance and many the foul tempered and aggresive rooster has become "chicken and noodles" or "chicken and dumplin's". I don't know what ya'll call that combo, but never mind the terminology, some real comfort food, IMO. And one derives satisfaction from eating something that spurred him only hours previously.
OT makes the world go round, at least revolve around the garden in a loose sense, imnsho. In other words, who cares. I saw brokeback and found it both a wonderful, and wonderfully produced, story, though disturbing on several levels. Needless to say, the film received a lot of vilification round these hear parts.
AFA Johnny Cash goes, you caused me to recall an incident that Lovey and I have laughed about often over the many years.... and we just had another goodun about it. THanks.
In high school, we took a trip from our rural town of 800 to Kansas City for a day of eating, movie, shopping and general sophomoric posturing. FIrst time many of us had been there.
At the movie, the class clown in my girlfriend's (now wife) class thought he spotted Johnny Cash in the front rows and at the end of the movie dared Lovey to put on his cowboy boots and go get an autograph. My wife is shy, but a dare does something stoopit to her brain. So, she puts on the boots, swishes down the aisle and in this gawdawful Okie accent asks the supposed Mr. Cash for his autograph and when this guy turned around, lo and beshit....it *was* him. The poor girl was mortified and turned and ran. So, we have a kind of fondness for him.
THough not a big country music fan, here is one of my Johnny favorites.
:-)) You should know by now Charlie, that I am not at all backwards in coming forward. If a face needs to be ripped to shreds IMHO, I'm prepared to stand toe to toe and try to rip as hard as I can.
Do you remember when you were in school, how you knew all the kids in the years ahead of you and probably knew (roughly) where they lived and who their siblings were, what businesses their parents owned etc but you'd be hard pressed to identify too many of the kids in the years below you?
Well the US is the world equivalent of those big kids and the rest of the world is equivalent to the little kids.
The US is ubiquitous. It fills the news, it fills the airways, it fills usenet.
Culturally and politically its a REALLY big kid and to us little kids, it also frequently appears to be a bully that sometimes looks after us and sometimes bullies us, but most of the time just doesn't even notice us, or, if it does, it thinks we're some form of sub-species about which it knows nothing and doesn't want to know anything.
That analogy isn't meant to be a criticism. It's just a reflection of the sheer size and importance of the US in the world stage.
But one must consider that the vast majority are
I too am a product of our public education system and I have to say that I have nothing but praise for that system (with the exception that it didn't offer Latin and I always wanted to do Latin). I still remember nearly all of my teachers with great fondness as they were nearly all inspirational and interesting.
My older sister went to a relatively exclusive private girls school and my parents wanted me to go to the same place but I wasn't going to tolerate that for one moment. There were no boys there and the students all had to wear hats and gloves as part of their uniform and to wear their uniform in an 'approved' fashion (so no hitching up of the tunic over the belt till it just skimmed one's arse). I was an arse skimmer uniform wearer and got that down to a fine art, so the public education system and their slack uniform standards and boys and rough and tumble playgrounds suited me much better than the parental first choice.
Hmmm. I think I'd tend to agree with you about the comprehension and the curiosity. You'd rate the highest by 6 dozen country miles as showing the most curiosity of any USian I've ever come across in all the years I've been reading ngs.
I tend to be selective about whose posts I always/sometimes/never read and I know I have a preference for reading those people who do have a decent level of literacy and there are certainly many USians in the literate group who I do read.
for later when I have more time (I can only see usenet by dialup so prefer to read when I can use the satellite broadband connection). What I did read was most interesting and I look forward to next time I can get in there for a good rummage through it and a good cogitate on issues raised.
Chooks is generic, like 'cattle'. Although usually (in the past I currenlty have no rooster) when I've had need to refer to one of my roosters it has been along the lines of "that mongrel ****ing bird....."
Yup. I used to grab those developing eggs when I was a kid and put them in mud pies. We had enough of the laid ones not to need to use the ones from the innards.
Do you still remember that distinctive smell from a chook being degutted? I can smell it now as I'm typing.
:-)) ANZAC is one of those terms that is evolving and has now developed a meaning something other than it's original meaning.
These days 'ANZAC' is little more politically correct than 'Australasians' which used to cover Ockers and Kiwis. If I used that I might upset George and he'd legitimately be able to criticise me for acting like the big kid.
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