Worm Man's Worm Farm

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I get so many questions about raising mealworms on oat meal.  I hadn’t ever tried it before so we put it to the test.  We filled one of our standard beetle breeding bins with dry oatmeal and we gave the usual slices of potato to the mealworm beetles.  The beetles did their thing and laid eggs.  The eggs hatched into mealworms at the usual rate.

I found that we didn’t get as many worms as we did with wheat bran. I also found that the oatmeal was difficult for the worms to navigate through.  At the end of a two month period we had some large worms in the bin but not the many thousands we would have had in bran.  The worms that were there(several hundred) were big and weathered.  They seemed strong but were not as active as in wheat bran.

I also varied this technique.  I placed them in an oat and wheat bran mixture.  They fared much better in this mix than oats alone.  I also gave them cooked oat meal to see how that would work.  They loved it.

My conclusion?  Use wheat bran and mix in a little (not oats) but chicken layer mash.  This works best and you will have huge quantities and quality of worms.

The bedding we sell at Wormman.com is a mixture of worm chow, wheat bran and layer mash.  No secrets!

Do you raise chickens?  Are you looking to lower your food bill while also providing top quality food for your poultry flock?   Do you have a pile of chicken manure that you don’t know what to do with?  I have the solution and it’s called the Soldier Grub.

Soldier Grubs are the larvae of the Black Soldier Fly.  They adult is a wasp-looking thing that does not sting but does looks scary at first sight. The are a purplish black and naturally inhabit many states in the U.S. but are in abundance in the South East.

Soldier Grubs are great composting creatures.  If you have enough of them they will devour all of the food you provide for them. They are fond of Human food scraps just like compost worms or Red Worms but they also do something that regular composting worms don’t and can’t do; The can eat chicken manure while it is still fresh.  Soldier Grubs will turn that fresh chicken manure, which is usually a problem for many people who have a flock of chickens.  The manure smells, attracts flies and needs to sit for a while prior to being used in gardening.

Soldier Grubs will eat that manure and turn it into usable castings in a matter of days not months.  The larvae crowd out other larvae like that of flies which can be a nuisance.  The Black Soldier Flies will emerge and fly off but not before laying more eggs in fresh manure to keep the cycle going.  They do not carry any disease dangerous to Humans that we know of so they are not disease vectors like flies are.

Now for the best part…Soldier Grubs can be fed back to the chickens and they will thrive on them.  Soldier Grubs contain protein and calcium and other vitamins and minerals that chickens needs to stay healthy and make eggs.

So now you get the full picture.  Soldier Grubs will eat chicken manure turning it into garden fertilizer and then  you can feed the larvae to the chickens to supplement food costs and to provide much needed nutrients and calcium.

We haven’t found  a downside yet.

You can get Soldier Grubs at Wormman.com, SoldierGrubs.com or other participating retailers.

Compost naturally heats up when it is piled high with food scaps, livestock poop, peat moss and straw. It can get so hot that it steams in the dead of winter.

What causes that heat in the first place?  We investigated and have some answers for you.

The heat generated by compost is actually caused by the microbial breakdown of organic material.  The amount of heat generated and the time it takes to get past the heating stage varies based upon a number of things:

1.  How large the pile is.

2. Outside temperatures

3.  What the carbon to nitrogen ratio is. This is not as complicated as it sounds.  Carbon is the brown stuff used in a worm bin and nitrogen is the green stuff like grass clipping used in your pile.

The perfect ratio of carbon to nitrogen should be approximately 27-1, meaning 27 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen.   I’ve listed some common compost pile ingredients and their carbon to nitrogen ratios.

The best thing to do is balance as best you can to attain that 27 to 1 ratio.

High C:N ratios can be decreased by adding grass clippings or manures. Low C:N ratios may be increased by adding paper, straw or peat moss.

I get many questions from people who want to produce worm castings for houseplants or for spring gardens but who live in cold climates.  They ask if they can compost indoors year round without getting fly and gnat infestations in their compost bins and without using stinky manure.

The answer is a big YES.  You can composting in your house and you can do it without smells and pests if you do it right.

Supplies you will need:

1.  12 Gallon plastic storage bin with a lid.

2. Drill

3.  Dry Newspapers

4.  5 cups of peat moss or coir bedding.

5.  2 cups of garden soil (for grit and microbes.

6.  250 to 500 red worms

7.  Food Scraps.

Drill holes around the upper rim of the bin for air and also drill holes in the lid.  Just drill all you want to create good air flow.

Rip newspaper into strips and then soak the strips until they are soaked.

Soak the peat and then squeeze the peat until it is just moist but not dripping wet.

Mix the peat and the newspapers together and add the garden soil to the mixture.

Add the food scraps to the mixture in the bin and burry them beneath the bedding.

Add the worms and place the lid on the bin.

That’s it.  As you generate food scraps bury them in the bin to eliminate odors and to stop flies and gnats from getting at the food and laying eggs.

After 30 days or so you should check the worms to see if it is swarming with baby worms.  When you see baby worms remove the breeders you started with and start a second bin.

Stop feeding the babies in the first bin and let them eat all of the food as they grow.  When you no longer see visible food and when the bedding is sand-like you can harvest the worms from the first bed and use the castings for your plants.   Use the worms to start new beds.  You should have plenty of worms by then to start a couple of bins.

Please write with your questions. There are so many variations on how you can harvest and feed that I want to cover them but I don’t want to drone on and on in this post.  Thanks!

Ken

2009 was one of the worst years of my life.  I spent New Year’s Eve and the first day of 2009 living in my unheated and non- insulated shed. I had a fight with my wife on New Year’s Eve and left the house instead of fighting.  Three days later my dog died.  Two days after that my wife’s van died.  The nation’s economy hit the skids and my business started the long road down. Bad news started on day one of 2009 and didn’t start to turn around until about November.  I know…too much information. “TMI” as my kids say.

I type this today as I sit in my house next to a roaring fire and a loving wife. My kids are playing nicely in the other room and all is well in 2010 so far.  I hope this is a taste of what 2010 will be like.   We have a new dog too.

I am working on some videos concerning different facets of my business.  I’m also working on some cool videos about things like step by step growing guides for bugs.

I’ve also started some work on videos for things like growing orange trees from seed and that sort of thing.  Not really our normal stuff but stuff that I find fun none the less.

I’m going to start a video tomorrow where we take three different types of composting worms and place them in containers with the same bedding and food and we will check on them weekly for a month and then I’ll count the eggs and baby worms in each container to see how many we get per container.  I’ think I’m going to us 25 worms in each container.

I may also do this with mealworms to see exactly how many worms a mealworm beetle actually makes.  That should be fun.

Have any ideas for videos or projects?  Post those here and if we pick your idea to make a movie or a project out of you will win free worms or beneficial insects of your choice.

Have a great 2010 and thanks for reading my blog.

Ken

Coir bedding is a fantastic alternative to peat moss.  The peat bogs are being depleted quickly and this is resulting in an altered ecosystem where peat bogs are being farmed.  Coir is a great alternative because it is renewable. Coir bedding is actually a product that comes from coconut shells.  The result is a great product that does what peat moss does buy at a lower cost both in money and in impact on the environment.

Mix Coir with slightly aged manure as you would with peat and your worms will respond with glee.  Composting  with Coir as worm bedding will also leave you with excellent worm castings.

We are playing around with the idea of offering free ebooks for a majority of our products. Those ebooks would contain instructions, pictures and videos of care information for the products.

I’d like to hear from you. The ebooks would be sent to you after you place an order for live crickets, mealworms, red worms, african night crawlers, fish food worms and so on.

Let us know what you think.
Thanks!
Ken

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