Via the Fort Collins worm exchange list, I came across this offer from John Anderson, the Colorado Worm Man (whose website is currently down).
My offer still stands for those who would like to exchange 3hrs work at my worm farm for a starter batch of worms and what ever knowledge you can absorb from my experience.
Now, on the one hand, 3 hours of your time, especially if you need to drive to Fort Collins from elsewhere, can be more expensive than just buying the worms yourself. But, on the other hand, you get the chance to ask John questions, see how a large scale operation works, and head home with a batch of worms for your self. When I toured his worm farm a year ago, it was quite eye opening.
If you’re thinking about keeping worms and have some time, and if Fort Collins isn’t too far away, you should contact John (cowormman at Juno dot com) and see about setting up a three hour learning experience.
August 30th, 2010
I just saw John Anderson, the Colorado Worm Guy, at the Colorado Permaculture Convergence today, and he let me know that he has a new site. It’s cowormman.org. Make sure you visit and check out all the information he has.
August 22nd, 2010
I recently had a question from a reader, Laura:
I have enjoyed your newsletter for about three months. It has been very helpful, and now i am ready to get some of my own. I don’t know if this is the correct area for questions, but I would like to purchase my worms locally. Meaning, I don’t want them shipped. Do you have any ideas that I have overlooked? I am in Denver, Colorado. I can travel to Boulder, no problem. please let me know what my next step would be. I have a proper home ready, just want them local.
I responded:
I’m so glad that you’re ready to strike out on your own and try some worm composting. The first thing I would suggest is to go to your library and check out a copy of ‘Worms Eat My Garbage’ by Mary Appelhof. It was very helpful to me as I started my worm keeping. (Or you could buy it, if you wanted to.) Then, I’d go here [to a list of Colorado redworm vendors].
And call around to see which vendor has the best price and the easiest pick up for you. If you find one that you like, or one you don’t like, or one that is not on the list, please let me know so I can update the list!
The reader ended up deciding to go with John Anderson, the Colorado Worm Man, as she had met him a number of times. She was looking for a worm club in Denver, but I’ve not heard of any “worm support groups” down there.
Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have and I’ll do my best to answer them!
August 20th, 2010
I had a call from someone who read my blog a while ago; I’m sorry, I forgot to note her name.
Her child was using redworms for a school science experiment, and had finished the experiment up. They were looking for a good home for their redworms now. In particular, she was concerned about polluting the environment with her worms.
Though this is an issue in some environments, Colorado is not one of them. I counseled her to dump her worms in the compost bin. There, they’ll either thrive, if they get enough food and the conditions are damp enough, or die, and add their nitrogen to the compost.
August 10th, 2010
I have been on the hunt for alternative sources of bedding. I usually just use leaves, but last fall I didn’t pick up enough leaves to handle the three worm bins I have a hand in. So, given that I now have a lawn, I thought I’d try grass clippings.
First, off, I knew that fresh grass clippings are not a significant source of carbon–they have a C:N ratio of 20:1. But I figured I could dry them out and have a ready source of bedding for my worms.
I looked around the internet. The folks over at Redworm Composting say “yes but”. These posts on GardenWeb states that grass clippings never lose their low c:n ratio. However, this book on composting has dried grass clippings in the “brown” category, as does this article.
What to do? I decided to ask an extension agent: “How long do grass clippings need to dry before they are considered a ‘brown’ in terms of composting?” And the answer came back:
It usually won’t take longer that a week, depending on the environment. Getting them off the lawn, especially if it is irrigated, into a “holding area” would hasten the process.
Excellent. Now that I knew the grass clippings were really a “brown”, I needed to dry some out and try to use them as bedding.
I did this by laying some grass clippings out on a tarp (you can see some sticks that got caught up in the clipping gathering process).
Grass clippings on tarp
This location probably gets about 6 hours of direct sun a day, and by the end of 10 days, the grass clippings were pretty dry. I did end up turning the clippings every 3-4 days, and was surprised by how green the grass was under the top layer.
Then I added the grass clippings to a worm bin I had.
Grass clippings in worm bin
Thus far, I think that grass clippings are a substandard bedding. They take some time to prepare, and they definitely tend to clump in the worm bin. In addition, they don’t seem to hold water very well. The grass clippings dry out and get all white, as you can see below.
Grass clippings going white
So, the lesson to me is that I need to do a better job of picking up neighborhood leaves this fall!
July 30th, 2010
One of the things I didn’t think of when brainstorming what to do with redworms was to use it as a supplemental source of feed for chickens. Luckily, some other folks have thought about it. Here’s a good page with some suggestions. If you are at all familiar with worms, you can skip the first 2/3rds of the page–it’s only the last section where the author discusses how to use worms to feed chickens. He has 4 suggested ways to integrate worms into a chicken system, including building a wormery with various sections that would allow the chickens to eat some worms and not others, and drying the worms using them as a protein additive.
I was talking to someone a few weeks ago who said that worms contained a fair amount of zinc, and that zinc is helpful for egg production. I wasn’t able to substantiate the first statement (though it looks like too much zinc is toxic to E. Foetida). As for the second, I found this reference stating that “normally, 15 to 30 grams of zinc are added to 1 ton of feed”.
It looks like some backyard chicken keepers have investigated redworms as a supplemental protein source. At the bottom of the post, AK-Bird-Brain runs the numbers, and concludes that, given the amount of food scraps (20-25 lbs) one would have to feed worms to get 1 lb of extra worms a day, one would be better off just feeding the scraps directly to the chickens. This makes sense the me–the only situation where I can see coming to a different conclusion would be if:
- you wanted the castings for your garden or to sell and
- you had access to a large amount of feedstock that chickens might not eat (chicken manure [here's a post describing such a system], other manure, hair, etc)
I also found this table of chicken parasites that can be transmitted via worms (though it says earthworms, so I’m not sure it applies to redworms). Some other posts in the backyardchickens site also implied that chickens don’t like the taste of redworms, either.
What do you think? Do any of you have experience using redworms for supplemental nutrition for chickens?
July 20th, 2010
A few months ago, I moved. Rather than try to move my previous worm bin, I decided to try a different type of worm container–a 55 gallon drum. A quick google search found someone who sold 55 gallon drums, and I bought a couple. I wanted plastic, but he didn’t have any, so I bought 2 steel 55 gallon drums previously used for holding orange juice. (It’s amazing what you can fit into a tiny sedan.)
Basic setup: I filled the bin with a couple of bags of leaves I had retrieved from curbside last fall. I put in some water. I also drilled five drainage holes in the bottom of the barrel. The barrel came with a steel top–I put that on top to protect the worms and retain moisture, but I leave a crack so that some air can get in and out. And then I put in about 10 gallons of worms and vermicompost. You can see the lid on the lower right–I put a rock on it to deter critters.
Barrel o worms
While it was chilly but not freezing this spring, the barrel seemed to work fine, as you can see from this photo:
Worms in a barrel
However, as we head toward summer, I’m a bit worried. The drum is black, so any sun really heats it up. And the worms can’t easily retreat into the earth, as they could with my previous worm bin. I recently moved it to a shadier area–I hope that helps the worms a bit.
Last I checked, the worms were doing alright, and I even found a cocoon:
worm cocoon
The reason I wanted to try this is that 55 gallon drums are pretty cheap ($20 each, I think) and readily available, and I thought these would be a fun container to use when vermicomposting large amounts of atypical feedstock. That is, things like dog and cat poop, or human hair. I want to play around with them, and yet be able to use some of my worm castings on food plants. These containers seemed like a great way to segregate such feedstocks. I still think there is promise in these, but do want to see how the worms survive the winter months.
However, the downsides of the 55 gallon drums are many:
- Unless I cut a hole in the bottom, I will have a hard time incrementally removing worm castings.
- They are hard to move around–even 30 gallons of worms and vermicompost weigh a lot
- They don’t drain well–although I could have helped this by drilling more holes
- Worms can’t retreat out of them–again, more holes and placement on dirt would help.
- As mentioned above, they heat up.
After a few months of worm keeping in a 55 gallon drum, I noticed the local recycling center was selling soil savers for half price, so I bought two. More on that later.
July 10th, 2010
When we last talked to Mike, the Eldorado State Park employee with the human waste (aka poop) problem, he was attempting to introduce redworms into the system. He was planning to start small and see how the redworms reacted to the environment they are in.
I followed up with him in mid June (the start of the really busy season for Eldo) and he had this to say:
The worms are pretty doggone happy. There’s the can where they get raised
in cardboard, soil, and food scraps, and that population is doing well. I
was initially worried about the worms in the sh***er because I couldn’t see
them – but with some excavation, I found them down about a foot in the pile
of poop and wood chips. They’re thriving.
I’m still a little gunshy about introducing the effluent to some worms. I
guess they’ll turn their noses pretty quick if they don’t like it.
The temperature in the experimental vault is rising slowly (90 degrees as
opposed to 60 for the control vault). I’m doing the humanure approach and
adding plenty of greens and sawdust. Honestly, it’ll probably take years to
get that pile cooking – it’s a giant mass of dead, anaerobic, cold waste.
My (adapted) plan at this point is to keep at it with worms and the humanure
approach. Best case scenario: Some combination of heat and osmosis will
start drawing water up into the pile to get hot and evaporate. Worst case
scenario: thermophilic & vermicular composting produce wastewater that
beneficial for vegetation and I can start using that “waste” water in the
park for new plantings, etc.
In short: Worms alive and well, and the sh***ers are learning adventure in
progress.
It sounds like he’s mixing it up–along with the redworms, he’s doing some humanure composting (probably based on The Humanure Handbook–well worth a read if you haven’t checked it out).
I’m thrilled that this experiment is going well. Will keep checking in with Mike in the future.
June 30th, 2010
This conference in North Carolina has been going on for 10 years, and had 116 participants this year. Wow. More here, including some names of worm farms around the country.
June 20th, 2010
I thought this article about a Durango farmer, who is also running a cafe named Evening Star’s Local Farm Food Café (where does she find the time!), was interesting because it references closing the cycle of nutrients that so many restaurants leave open. From the article:
It’s a “green” cafe, George says. She uses compostable plates, napkins and cups. Patrons who bring their own fork will get 25 cents off their order. Food waste goes into George’s vermiculture (worm) bin for later use in fertilizing crops.
The whole article is here.
June 17th, 2010
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