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Earthworms - Our Livestock Addition
in 2014
I recently ordered 2 LBs of Red Wiggler
Earthworms to add to the GrailQuest Farms collection of
pets, livestock and assorted critters.
My wife, Debi, was not wild about the new project, but she
found it less objectionable than the Black Soldier Flies I
had been talking about ordering.
As it turned out, Black Soldier Fly larvae were in among the
shipment of earthworms so I got a bonus, and she had yet
another strange organism to contend with.
I'll get to the earthworms in a moment, but I feel Black
Soldier Flies are worthy of a paragraph before delving into
vermiculture. These flies are not your pesky, disease
carrying, buzz around your face insects like the common
housefly. They prefer to fly at night and don't really want
to get into your house. The adults have no sting, or eating
mouthparts, so they don't bite or vomit on your food like
common flies. All they want to do is reproduce, laying eggs
in refuse too foul for earthworms (discarded meat and dairy
products) and producing hundreds or composting grubs to help
break down what would otherwise be a smelly place for
houseflies to breed. Unfortunately for Black Soldier Flies,
they are kind of big and black and scary looking (they look
like wasps at first glance), so many are killed by humans in
a case of mistaken identity. When will we learn to use
violence as a last resort and appreciate diversity in our
world?
Back to the worms...
They arrived in a fabric pouch filled with surprisingly dry
peat moss. The instructions said to moisten the peat moss
right away to revive them while preparing to relocate them
to their semi-permanent homes. I emptied the pouch into a
plastic tote and added a cup of water from the Koi pond and
mixed it with my hand. The worms were none too lively, so I
feared I'd spent $40 on a mass of dead and dying worms, but
they came around slowly but surely.
In my typical fashion, I set about trying multiple
approaches to what should be a very straightforward activity
of raising worms. I bought 2 10 gallon plastic totes and
drilled several 5/16" holes in the bottoms and the lids. I
wetted a combination of peat moss and leaf mold from around
the property and put it in the totes between a third and
halfway to the top. We had been saving an empty coffee can
full of vegetable scraps, peelings and coffee grounds, which
I split between the 2 containers. I then added the worms, as
equally as I could, to the bins.
I could, and perhaps should, have stopped there, but I
decided to create a "bulk" bed in the pole barn. I laid out
a 10'x20" tarp and put dry peat moss, shredded leaves, a
half bag of spoiled oats the goats wouldn't eat and the
stalks of the cardoons I'd pulled up (a nasty vegetable that
obviously requires a more accomplished hand than mine to
render it edible) a few days before. I wetted it and turned
it repeatedly and left it to soak. In case you don't know,
dry peat moss, while absorbent after it is moist, is highly
resistant to wetting, choosing to let the water run through
while it floats on top, dry as ever, mocking your attempts
to moisten it. My advice is mix it till you get frustrated,
walk away and let it sit for a day and then see how it
looks.
I added a couple of handfuls of worm filled compost from the
previous bins and folded the tarp up kind of like a burrito
and let it sit for a couple of days. When I opened it up, I
saw a white fungus or mold had started growing on the oats
and the pile was heating up quite a bit. I didn't see too
many worms, but the BSF (Black Soldier Fly) larvae were
wriggling about joyfully in the warmth of the liquid that
had leached out to the edges of the pile. I was worried that
I'd cooked my invertebrate charges, but they apparently dove
to the bottom of the pile and waited till the pile cooled,
because a week later I unfolded the tarp and there were
several worms on top guiltily retreating back into the pile
from the glare of the light. Whew!
While this was going on, I also added a small handful of
worms to the gravel grow-bed in our new Aquaponic system. We
hadn't added the fish yet, but were cycling water pumped
from the koi pond through the grow-bed to allow it to
establish a thriving colony of beneficial bacteria before
adding the fish to the system. It was interesting to watch
the worms find their way down into the cracks and crevices
between the 3/4" pink granite gravel. I am counting on the
veracity of what I've read about earthworms breathing
through their skins and being able to absorb oxygen from
well oxygenated water. They have proven to be pretty
resilient so far and I'm eager to see how the plants grow in
the "worm tea" the grow-bed should contain.
Not content to let sleeping worms lay, I also ordered a
Worm FactoryŽ 360 from a company called Nature's
Footprint. The Worm FactoryŽ is a multi-tiered vermi-composting
system that allows you to add kitchens scraps, paper, even
dryer lint to a neat little plastic module that can live on
your patio, deck or even in you home. As layers are filled,
new ones are added and the worms migrate upwards to work on
the fresh materials, eventually leaving lovely pure "black
gold" in the form of worm castings in the original tier. The
value of worm castings is well known to experienced
gardeners as they contain 5 times the nitrogen, 10 times the
potassium, 7 times more phosphorous, 1.5 times the calcium
and 3 times the magnesium of what the worm ingested. Add to
this the many beneficial microorganisms added on the trip
through the worm's gut, and you have a "super food" for the
soil and your plants.
Maybe I shouldn't be so delighted with our latest
experimental livestock, it's not a particularly
sophisticated hobby, but I genuinely look forward to taking
out the scraps to the composting worms now, and seeing them
thrive and multiply. I've never enjoyed taking out the trash
this much!
Glenn Harper |
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