Posts Tagged ‘worm’

Another Attempt

Gardening, Herb, Fruit and Vegetables, Worm Farm/Vermiculture | Posted by Dean
Jan 20 2008

Well today I found a number of very healthy looking Blackjack Zucchini seedlings. My head said walk away you know that is your nemesis plant. However, my heart said you can grow these. So I now have another lot of Blackjack Zucchini to try my hand at. I have decided that I will be potting them in some temporary pots tomorrow.

The temporary pots are recycled pots for larger plants in the garden. This will give the plants something to grow in and prevent getting root bound in the current seedling tray. It will also the easy transportation of the plants to Wollongong next week. Once in the Gong I will be performing another recycling tub conversion to a planter.

In order to make a few changes to this attempt I have bought a bag of Debco Organic potting mix. The reason for going with this alternative planting medium is that I wish to eliminate the RichGro Pro Mix from being a potential contributor to my previous disastrous attempts to grow this plant. This medium is coarser and does not contain the soil wetting agents or slow release fertiliser that the Rich Gro does, however given that I will have an abundance of worm juice and vermi compost that should not be a problem.

Why will I have an abundance of the worm produce? I will be deploying a second worm farm in Wollongong. In fact I am seriously considering going larger and marketing the worm juice and compost. That does need a considerable amount more investigation. However, a second farm is a certainty. The construction of that farm is yet to be decided. I am considering the Cheap Worm Farm Construction idea, but that is largely dependent on the above plans.

From this article there are two things that are certain:

  1. All attempts will be made to grow these plants successfully, I am sick of having a nemesis, especially one that I enjoy.
  2. I am yet again in need of more worms.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
7 Comments »

Maggot Wars: The Worms Strike Back

Cat and Pest Control, Gardening, Worm Farm/Vermiculture | Posted by Dean
Jan 06 2008

One of the less pleasant jobs that I completed today was checking on the status of the ongoing maggot war that all began when there was a disaster in the worm farm caused by the infamous green bottle fly and a piece of unidentified Christmas meat. After the hideous task of manual removal last week, that claimed the life of my new gardening gloves, I decided to see the current state of affairs. I hoped that the below was true for the worms.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them. – from “For the Fallen” by Laurence Binyon

Upon opening the Can’O'Worms I could tell from the smell that there were still maggots present in the system. I was expecting this as I was sure that I had not eliminated all of the scourge last week. I though was happy to see a number of worms attacking the decaying mangoes, peaches, and plums that were casualties of the recent warmth in Sydney. There were a lot of worms present on the top layer considering the inherent lack of material for them to live in. It would appear that not only have the worms withstood the invasion of the maggots, but indeed flourished and multiplied significantly in numbers. Below is a picture of the magnificent worms fleeing from the light.

Worms Wonderful Worms

I then thought that I best check the second layer. Again I was ecstatic to see nothing but worms tilling this layer. Just last week this layer was the most maggot infested of the three layers in the system, though that was moved around last week anyway. This layer looks to be very rich in nutrients and will be a great source of fresh planting materials very soon. A great result for the worms, however the stench was noticeably stronger.

After taking a few breaths and preparing myself for the likely sight on the next layer I checked it. To no great surprise I was greeted with a terrible rank stench and a cluster of horrid maggots wriggling around on the lowest layer. The image below shows these despicable critters doing nothing but gorge themselves on what would otherwise be good quality worm food.

Maggots

On closer inspection though I saw that the worms were playing stockman and had corralled the maggots into a small area within the third layer. Worms truly are an amazing creature.

I have thus deployed the milk soaked bread trick once more. Basically the idea is that you soak bread in milk and once it is milk-logged place it in the worm farm. The maggots take to this like a fly to honey and in a few days you can easily remove them and elimate the problem. This trick gave me very limited success when deployed last week. I believe this was due to the large size the maggots were that prevented them from traversing through the system to the waiting trap. As such I have made it much simpler for my prey to be lured by placing the soaked bread directly onto the cluster of maggots.

Weapons of Maggot Destruction

So with luck in 2 to 3 days I should be able to easily eliminate the majority of the remaining maggots from the worm farm. If I can do that I shall claim victory and have a celebratory drink of a Little Creatures brewery product.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
7 Comments »

The Ongoing Maggot War

Cat and Pest Control, Gardening, Worm Farm/Vermiculture | Posted by Dean
Jan 01 2008

Today I performed the horrid task of removing maggots from the worm farm. As mentioned in my Disaster in the Worm Farm post these horrid creatures invaded over Christmas and quickly became the dominant critter in the worm farm. As per the advice of a number of sites I placed milk soaked bread in the farm. This produced limited success. I though will try it again next week to hopefully remove the remaining pests.

I was thus expecting to turf an incredible amount of material, if not the lot. I was thus pleasantly surprised to see that the worms were launching a fight back. There seemed to be an abundance of worms, so I suspect they have managed to breed over Christmas which is great news. The worms had in fact almost taken over the top and bottom layers, thus banishing the majority of the maggots within the second layer.

The second layer stunk to high heaven, thankfully my nose was blocked and I could only get a hint of the stench. and was by far the most empty. This is due in no small part to the maggots physiology that is simply made to chomp through materials. Unfortunately, their produce is pretty useless in it own right, although the worms process that further. At any rate I spent an hour or so going through the semi-decayed materials and removing any maggots, or suspect materials (including a tetra pack that some put in there). I believe I have removed 80-85% of the infestation. Which is great news.

I have also reorganised the layers so that the bulk of the processed soil is once again on the bottom layer. The second layer has a considerable food source on offer and the top layer has some scatterings. I will be slowing the feeding down until I am confident the worms have managed to win the war against the horrible maggots.

I am though much more confident that the worms will endure and commence producing large volumes of compost and worm juice soon. I am in need of more worm tea as I have today exhausted my bottled supply. I felt it best to fertilise and water everything today due to the warmth of both yesterday and today. The spinach had wilted significantly during the day, however after the watering and fertilising is looking fantastic once more.

On the water front I am essentially out of rain water. The great weather of 2 to 3 weeks ago has ceased. I am hopeful though it shall return shortly. I thus have had to resort to mains supply today to water the plants. I am still watering from a watering can though to ensure that I do not overwater due to a never ending supply of water.

I will keep you up to date on how the worm farm tracks over the next week or so. I am confident that I have largely restored the balance to the ecosystem, however the war is not over. Not yet. I will also be posting a blog in the coming days of a fantastic fly control system that is available from the big kids toy shop that is both economic and environmentally friendly.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
2 Comments »

Cheap Worm Farm Construction

Gardening, Worm Farm/Vermiculture | Posted by Dean
Dec 19 2007

Many of you no doubt have seen my recent Worm Farm and The Many Gifts of a Worm Farm articles. Also, as you may have read I am considering a second farm, however being budget aware I am not too keen to fork out for another Can’O'Worms. I have though found a nice way to build a worm farm that is both inexpensive and reuses one of the most common and hard to dispose of storage boxes, the polystyrene box.

The polystyrene box is great when moving breakables or shipping items that require insulations, such as tropical fish. However, once empty can become hard to dispose of and becomes nothing more than a nuisance. Even when broken up it consumes a large volume of space in the bin, and due to its inherent construction, it also consumes space in a landfill for years to come. As you can tell I am quite passionate about this as we have a number of these stored for the pending move and I know that once we have moved that we will have these things hanging around for months to come. I am thus quite looking forward to reusing these as a worm farm.

The idea has come from the Worm Farming article posted on the City of Ryde web site. The approach takes advantage of the longevity of polystyrene. The irony is that this is the facet that makes polystyrene a menace to the environment and is being used to assist the environment. By reusing these boxes we can improve our own gardens and reduce landfill. Surely that is a win all round.

Basically, the construction is simple. The steps are:

  1. Obtain 2 polystyrene boxes of the same width and length.
  2. Obtain 1 lid that will fit the boxes.
  3. Carefully pierce holes in the base of 1 of the polystyrene boxes.
  4. Place the pierced box on top of the other. The base box will collect the liquid fertiliser, or worm tea.
  5. Build up a 10-15cm bedding of shredded paper, leaves, and finished compost.
  6. Add 1000 worms. Check out “the big kids toy shop” (Bunnings), your local garden centre, or Google worm farm to find out who sell worms in packets suitable for worm farms.
  7. Cover the farm with damp hessian, paper, or carpet scraps. This locks in the heat and moistness, whilst blocking out the sun.
  8. Wait a few days, and then begin adding food scraps etc.

I would suggest that you could add more containers as needed, however given the dimensions of most polystyrene boxes that would be a lot of waste.

I am considering constructing one of these in the coming days. Especially since Hamper King delivered frozen hampers in polystyrene boxes on the weekend that are superflous to our needs, and the current stack of cardboard, we have a heap of food for the worms to process. If I proceed I will post pictures as a step by step guide.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
8 Comments »

The Many Gifts of a Worm Farm

Gardening, Worm Farm/Vermiculture | Posted by Dean
Dec 18 2007

Worm Juice

During recent posts I advised that I had used some of the composted materials in recent plantings. All of those plants are taking off. However, the rich compost is only part of the benefits of worm farming. The second benefit is the natural liquid fertiliser that is produced. This morning I decided that I would bottle that rich source of nutrients into some empty soft drink bottles.

So I went to the worm farm with two 2 litre Coca Cola bottles and one 600 mill Lipton Red Tea bottle. The idea was to drain the worm farm tank into the smaller bottle then fill the Coke bottles. Quickly I filled the 2 Coke bottles and had to get another 1.25 litre Coke bottle. That too was promptly filled, however the drain rate from the farm was greatly reduced. I then drained the remaining worm juice and half filled the Lipton bottle.

So I now have just under 5 litres of rich and natural liquid fertiliser. That will last for some time as I will be diluting it in the watering can. In fact, by the time I get through the current stocks I should be able to perform a new harvest.

Addendum
Tonight I have used some of the worm juice on the plants. It stinks to high heaven until diluted. I shall let you know the outcomes, especially around my struggling zucchini seedlings. With luck the burst of nutrients will see those plants turn around and become strong once more.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
4 Comments »