Shredded paper and cardboard, egg cartons, ripped up newspaper, receipts and envelopes should all be a regular part of the worms diet. Crushed egg shells also add grit to the worm farm which helps the worms digestion. Be aware many brands of tea bags are made from plastic, check your brand before adding to the worm farm.Ĭhopping your food scraps finely will speed up the process and avoid food rotting before the worms have a chance to eat it.įinely chop egg shells, or dry them out and crush to a powder – these will help balance the acidity in the bin. Roughly 50% food scraps and 50% paper or cardboard is the magic formula for worm farm success.įood scraps, aged lawn clippings, tea leaves, coffee grounds, and vacuum cleaner dust – almost anything organic. We have put a list together of what to feed your worms in the TOP TIPS PDF download. Those worms would produce 100 tons of castings - the equivalent of spreading two-thirds of an inch of manure on the surface.Worms can eat most things you can eat, with a few exceptions. Ray Weil, a University of Maryland researcher, once estimated high-quality soils no-tilled for more than 20 years likely contain 2,000 pounds of earthworms. The number of earthworms in no-till fields is the best indicator of soil life. The bins contain what looks like pitch-black dirt, and occasionally a worm glides to the surface, visible for a second before sliding back into the bedding. The lights in the room are kept on 24 hours per day, and the temperature is 72-78 degrees F year-round. Each bin contains worm bedding/feed and over 6,000 worms.
Large bins line shelves on either side of a central walkway. “We call this the worm room,” Arbucias says, standing in one half of a barn converted to manage the thousands of worms. He’s hoping to expand production to 2-2.75 million pounds of worm castings in 2023 and refurbish the former hobby farm where the worms reside. While most castings are sold by the truckload to soil blenders and then repackaged to smaller bags for small gardeners, some have been sold to no-tillers looking to boost fertility, retain water and improve soil structure in problem land areas.
The co-owner of Lush Farms in Watertown, Wis., uses them to produce a million pounds of worm castings per year.
0 kommentar(er)
