No till soil and worms

[Pat Puffer]

I kept African Nightcrawlers and Red Wigglers separately, until I got lazy and just decided to keep the populations in the 45 gallon notill fabric pots I grow in. I also added some local earthworms from my backyard to the mix. If you want to keep them happy, add a thick mulch layer like wheat straw, because it breaks down quickly, and add your normal weekly topdressings under the mulch layer, and water your plant through the mulch. Another trick is to buy the wheat straw bale before the rain, and keep it outdoors. When the sun dries it out, there should be mushrooms sprouting out of it with lots of mycelium running through it. When you break it up, spores will be flying. Break that up and add it to the pots. The worms go flipping crazy. They crawl into the mulch. I have a constant supply of castings, and the thick mulch layer keeps my roots cool...in fact, here's my Ace Seeds Zamaldelica (zamal pheno) a few days after the garden hit 118f!

Nice Sativa ya got there

 

[greenjeans]

I'm not sure what happened to one bin - checked this morning and a whole bunch of worms cowering along the top of the bin and another whole slew of them dead and slimy laying on top!!! It either got too wet or I put too much old rolled oats in and it fermented - all I know it stinks and killed a bunch of hard working worms!!! I hope it doesn't jump to the other two bins. I dumped the bad bin into my outside compost and hopefully nature can cure it.

 

[gr865]

I'm not sure what happened to one bin - checked this morning and a whole bunch of worms cowering along the top of the bin and another whole slew of them dead and slimy laying on top!!! It either got too wet or I put too much old rolled oats in and it fermented - all I know it stinks and killed a bunch of hard working worms!!! I hope it doesn't jump to the other two bins. I dumped the bad bin into my outside compost and hopefully nature can cure it.

When I was raising worms I would get old veggies from the produce dept of a local store, they would let me go through the bin and get the veggies that had reached their expiration date.
I got all the leafy greens, root veggies, basically everything but stuff that would overwhelm like beets, onion, and the such. Everything else in the bins went to hog farmers.
I would go and get anywhere from 15 to 50 lbs of produce. I had a large commercial grinder, that I would coarsely grind the veggies, pack them in one gallon square containers and freeze. On the morning of a feeding, when I had 44 OSCR Jr's, I would remove a 10 gallons of frozen veggies and when I got home from work I would add the defrosted veggies to green waste (shredded leaf and grass waste). The amount of green waste would vary as I used it to control the amount of moisture in the batch of feed, too damp/more green waste, not moist enough/back off the amt of green waste.

I learned my lesson on feeding and moisture during my second season of operation. I had at that time maybe 8 of the OSCR's, and I was given at least a dozen pumpkins, well I knew the herd loved pumpkin as I had given them some in the past. I overdid it, I ground all of them more than normal so it was kind of fine and I did not mix it with any green waste. Divided it between the 8 bins and sure enough. Too much moisture and too much food at one time. When it was time for their next feeding I opened the bin and what was left of the herd was on the lid and the bins stunk of spoiled pumpkin and dead worms. Was a very sad day, I lost 80% of my herd around 100 pounds of worms.

I rebuilt my herd from the remaining 20% and purchasing a couple of pounds of stock. It took me another 2 years to build up to the 44 bins but when I was totally up and running I was able to harvest around 50 or so lbs of cured VermiCompost and 60 to 80 pounds of worms every two to three weeks. I sold the compost, worms, vermicompost tea and OSCR's at farmers markets. This was a great second income, but when I left that part of the world I could not take it all with me so I gave all of my bins but one to the kids at local Boy and Girl Clubs. Went to their meeting a taught them the basics and helped them get started. One thing I taught them first off was the recipe for disaster:

Too much feed = BAD
Too much moisture = BAD

That was almost 20 years ago and that one OSCR Jr. I brought with me is still producing vermicompost to this day. Not the original worms but their offspring. I no longer mix food stocks, I only use green waste, have 4 stand up static bins 4 foot by 5 foot. All VC is now use in my garden/potted plants and to make compost tea.
Here is some info on the OSCR Jr.

Startup Instructions | Klickitat County, WA

Once you have your OSCR Jr. worm bin constructed, follow these instructions to start composting with worms.

www.klickitatcounty.org

Just had some time to tell a story.
Hope y'all enjoyed.
GR

 

[greenjeans]

Yeah - I hear ya - I think part of the problem was excess moisture and the rolled oats was the type that is pre sprouted or something and then rolled - my son had it and thought it smelled funny - I probably should have just pitched it into the bush!!! So back to kitchen scraps, leaves, shredded newspaper and a bit of grass and some sand for grit. Not a huge loss but now my shop stinks!!! Hope the weed smell covers it up soon!!!
I've been at this for about 25 years now and every now and then you get a real weird one.