Worm Farming|Start a Worm Farm

Should you plant baby worms in the ground and water them so they grow big and tall? You got it! What? You don't buy that? Alright, you got me. Actually worm farms are just a form of composting. Normally,in a properly maintained compost pile, bacteria cause the waste material that makes up the pile to eventually decompose into a material that can be used as a fertilizer and garden soil amendment. In a worm farm, the worms process the waste material into that finished material much more quickly and efficiently. If you're following closely here, you may have figured out that when I talk about worms "processing" the waste, it means that the final product is actually worm poop!

Not to worry, it doesn't look or smell like you might expect. It's an odorless, hummus-like material, and as stated earlier, it's a great fertilizer. Worm farm owners usually don't call it worm poop, though. More technical terms for it are "castings" "vermicastings" and "vermicompost". As you might expect, worm farming is called vermicomposting.

Besides the fact that the worms will provide you with this great fertilizer, worm farming can also reduce the amount of garbage your household sends to the dump by over 40 percent!

You could get lucky if you do that. But it's unlikely that you have the right kind of worms living in your garden. The typical earthworm likes to live fairly deep in the soil because that's where they find the kind of food they eat. In a worm farm, the soil is not that deep. Plus the waste material you'll be putting into the farm isn't what these worms normally eat. So while they probably will eat some of it, the whole worm farming process will be much less efficient, and probably only as good as a normal 'non-worm' compost pile.

The worms that do good in worm farms are called red wigglers or redworms. If you wanna get technical, they're Eisenia foetida. They like to eat the waste material that we put into the worm farm, and they like to live nearer the surface. So if you plan to start down the vermicomposting road, and you'd like your worm farm to live up to all the good things you've heard, get these worms. If you can't find a supplier locally, there are mail order/Internet companies that will be glad to send you some. Almost all the materials involved in starting a worm farm can be scrounged if money is tight, but getting the worms is really one place where you should be prepared to fork over a little bit of cash.

You can more or less feed the worms anything you'd throw into a compost pile, but you do need to take a few precautions. Don't put animal products or waste, green grass clippings, citrus fruits, onions and garlic or pineapple in your worm farm.

Animal products can attract pests like rats, plus there is a slight chance that the end product would contain pathogens. The worms don't like onions and garlic and may try to escape the farm if you include them, and pineapple contains an enzyme called bromelain which will kill the worms.

Otherwise, include most types of organic waste such as egg shells, hair, paper, leaves, vegetable peelings, stale bread, egg cartons and other cardboard, tea bags, and just about anything else you'd normally compost.