I grow mine in the garden... as it never freezes, I don't really need a separate place for them. I find them in the potted plants all the time

hey mouse what do you use to sift the soil? i was just gonna go through with my hands just wondering how you do it, maybe to make it faster?

healthy plant and great bait for trout fishing next spring. the trout parts are good for your spring grow.

Pardon my ignorance, how do these work castings compare to the commercially produced product ? Can I assume the commercial castings are 'clean' that is, free of insects ?

MM, I had planned to move our PM thread to a public forum, however these posts pretty much cover what we discussed!

Thanks bud.

Doobie Brother: I believe most commercial composts and fertilizers are either baked or, more likely, steam treated to a high temperature to kill of any seeds, microbes and soil diseases.

Home'grown' castings would not be sitting around as long and might have more microbes active, which is quite good for the soil system. I have read that worm castings can have 9x more microbial life than the input, i.e. the worm composting process harbors more in the compost.

Another obvious advantage is having control over exactly what is going into your compost.


OG: I have a few different buckets vermicomposting, to make sure I don't lose my whole team of worms if I mess something up. So when I want to harvest some, I'll stop feeding one bucket for a week or so, put black plastic with holes over the top of another active bucket and dump the un-fed stuff over the top. The worms will naturally migrate down where the food is over a couple days.

If you're really interested in getting everything out, the next step would be to take the mostly worm-free compost, wet it to hatch all the eggs over a week or two, then repeat the plastic process. I don't believe baby worms are going to harm a healthy plant system, so I don't bother too much with making sure it's totally clear.

Hope that's something helpful

Ascended, thanks for the info, much appreciated. Looks like I am going to have to hit the library for books on composting!

HAHAHA!! Fucking funny!!!!

Try red wigglers, they're the best worms.

Get tem at your local bait shop.

I got to try this worm farming thing. I had to think maybe the "go fuck yourself" term of endearment haha originated because of worms in a donut shape fucking themselves...hehe Seriously though, 3 worms can do the job? Say its about 18 gallons volume to be reconditoned. Can I expect them to mutiply fairly quick because of a larger volume? Does temperature or anything else influence there behaviours, mainly reproducing and eating? I know I am resurrecting this so I will listen to whomever wants to chime in.