DIY Worm Composting Bin to Rehab Your Garden

welcome to the Leah Andrews show I am so happy to have with Rachel Singletary the worm lady of Fort Myers and she is going to show us today a little bit about how you can incorporate using worms and worm castings into improving your soil so welcome Rachel so so happy to have you here today thank if you're trying to be here how did she get involved with worms that's kind of an interesting thing for a woman to get involved with um at first I had a local bait dealer who needed a new worm producer so I started raising worms for bait and then I found out about the value of worm castings in using in the garden and for environmentalist so I stopped selling bait worms and now I give classes to homeowners gardeners schools on how to raise their own worms and worm castings so that they can use the worm castings in their garden and it's considered organic and the schools are not allowed to use pesticides or commercial fertilizers but worm castings are safe so you're telling me here in Southwest Florida around a lot of our properties is this really sandy not nutritious soil so you want to number one use a lot of mulch forget the rots forget the manicured lava white rocks any kind of stone don't put your grass clippings out at the curb or your leaves if you're lucky enough to have a tree that produces leaves rake all of that up and make sure you keep it in your flowerbeds and give the native worms a place to survive in your own yard we do have native worms in Florida people don't believe it but that's because they never see him because the poor worms don't have anything to eat if you're not giving them a lot of shade and a lot of food to eat so we do have native worms but you can also use non-native composting worms to make your own worm castings and that is what we have here okay so my motto is I've got worms you need them too and I live in North Fort Myers on 10 acres and you're inside of our worm bin house and the name of our business is pine forest fruit and flower farm because we do grow a lot of fruit trees and lots and lots of butterfly plants with flowers for bees as well as butterflies and birds so you're here to learn about composting with worms so one thing you can do you can just listen to this simple video and learn everything you need to know or if you're more of a scientist and you want to know more of the scientific basis behind using worms you can read this book teeming with microbes and it will explain to you all about the soil web world we all should have that soil web world in our yard but because we have fill from construction and sand that's natural in Florida we typically do not have good soil so in addition to using the mulch and the grass clippings you want to use some other form of humic acid and worm castings are full of humans now this is a bag of worm castings it's in a ventilated bag and inside is a cereal bag that has just one staple in it because you want these worm castings to stay alive they are full of literally billions of microorganisms and that means amoeba fungus nematodes and not bad nematodes good nematodes mushrooms billions and billions of organisms inside this one little bag now you only need about a tablespoon for a tomato plant okay or bell pepper whatever you're growing so even though this is a small bag it will go a very long way you're not buying a 40 pound bag of commercial fertilizer full of fillers you are buying strictly worm castings which is worm poop but it has been eaten by the worms Luther hundreds and hundreds of times and it's full of all these good bacteria okay so I have a question so would you do would you supplement with other kinds of fertilizer is this all you need with mulch I would I would just use this either this or if you're gonna use commercial fertilizer don't mix it with the castor because the commercial fertilizer is so full of salts that it's going to kill a lot of these organisms so you don't want to mix and match because you're going to end up wasting some of your castings okay and I'm going to backtrack a little bit of why this is so important in Chinese medicine we have this concept of the Jing which is our vitality or our essence and if we're not eating it doesn't matter how we eat if we're not eating food that's produced on soil that has nutrients and it's alive then we're not going to be healthy we're not going to get any of that vital energy from these plants because they don't have it to get sure that this is the foundation of what all of us need to be doing even if we were just backyard gardeners and or trip on a commercial scale absolutely and the beauty of composting with worms is that you already have everything you need to feed them in your kitchen oh well you're not going to throw away your food scraps one of the worms favorite food is melons this is a little it wasn't ripe enough typically I would just feed them the rhein here is an over ripe papaya there's coffee grounds with the paper anything that ever used to be paid good the can eat here's an overripe black sapote e so don't be afraid of feeding them overripe food if you have a crisper and you've gone on vacation and you've got moldy squash or lettuce it's turn to mush you can feed that to the worm oh wow they're not going to be the least bit no not at all egg shells are wonderful everything except meat fat and dairy okay it's what you're going to feed your worms and you do not have to grind it up in a blender now if you do grind it up in a blender obviously the worms are going to be able to eat it faster because worms don't have teeth but they do have a gizzard and they do have other organisms in the worm band that break the food down for them first okay okay so so this is the recycled filing cabinets and on top are is window screen and you do not have to have that on your worm bin but the reason I do is because of soldier flies okay soldier flies are large flies they don't bite but they do make in your compost pile whether it's a regular outside compost pile or whether it's a worm bin now those are not harmful but they do compete with the food supply in the worm bin a lot of people raise soldier fly larvae in their worm bin intentionally to feed their chickens so they're not bad but they do become very very highly populated okay so I use the screen now this is the cover to your worm bin you want your worm bin to be dark because worms like darkness okay so you keep it covered that way it's dark that way the worms can come up to the surface and eat inside this worm bin we have lots of undigested food that you can see oh look at all these worms but this proves how happy these worms are to eat leftover coleslaw okay and I said no me no fat no dairy but if you have a little bit of fat such as salad dressing and this was a little bit of sugar and vinegar in this particular coleslaw only licked it but they loved it and you can see that I also have citrus a lot of the worm internet sites will tell you no citrus I use some because my worm bins are big okay I know yep I see these other little creepy crawlies you see and I'm going to show you some you're gonna see earwigs okay and these do not bite these are also decomposers so what you want to remember is that you have other critters in the worm bin that eat the food source first here's a good example of them eating your cardboard top so once they start eating the cardboard you just mow it under okay you also have beetles you don't want roaches and you don't want ants okay but you do have lots and lots of pill bugs let me see and people know pill bugs by different names sow bugs Roly Polys and these are beetles and they're not roaches people think they're roaches but you can see here how many worms there are around the cantaloupe yeah and there's a beetle you can use gloves of course and I used I use gloves if I'm not using my garden trowel you don't want to use a garden shovel or a garden Spade but a garden trowel you can use to dig in your worm bin and you're not going to hurt the worms okay okay so this worm bin obviously has plenty of food in it but I'm pumped in do you want to feed how much do you want available worms eat one half their body weight every day so if you consider that you've got larger worms and then you've got little tiny baby worms so what you want to do this is more of a teenager okay you have some that are the size a piece of thread okay so what you want to do is bury the food you don't want to just put it on top of the bin okay if you do that you're gonna attract roaches and ants yeah so you want to bury the kitchen scraps and you want to come back in 24 hours and if the wet soft food is gone then you feed them again so there's plenty of soft food left in here so I won't feed them today okay so you want it to look like this when you're when you come in like to have some non-food yeah if it's hard food like if you put a broccoli stalk in that is not going to be eaten for several days or maybe a week depending on how many worms you have in your bin you want your worm bin to be crowded because you want the worms to be able to find each other so that they can mate oh they have to hang out they are both male and female uh-huh and here is a band around near the head section which they don't really have a head but they do have brain cells so we call this the head and as they crawl you can see this band it's called a claw tell'em and even though a worm is both male and female they need another worm to mate with so when you find two worms tied together and I'm not they are mating oh well so I tell people to close the worm bin up turn on some very white yes and light a candle and let the worms have their privacy and they will each lay what looks like a chicken egg and they back away from the knob that each leg chicken egg but it's the size of a tip of a pencil okay and they're amber in color typically you will have most of the eggs in the fall and winter and springtime they tolerate heat very well these are African night crawlers and they have no problem with our heat in Florida so you actually different breeds of worms depending on where you live in the country um yes and you know a lot of people want red wigglers which I started out raising red wigglers summer bait yes and you can use red wigglers for composting but the African night crawlers are bigger and therefore they eat more therefore they make more castings and your worm bins will be more successful okay but they're not like the Africanized bees where they're gonna attack you not at all you're not going to get bit by anything in a worm bin even if you were to get ants you they would not harm the worms of course you could get stung yeah so if you end up with ants because you overfed them fruit and they like the sugar yes and the ants show up then you could even either use a ant bait such as right away which is boric acid yes or you can use diatomaceous earth oh and you would just put the dice mr. thin or you can sprinkle it and it does not harm the worm oh if you're going to use boric acid then you would put that in a mayonnaise lid and put it right on top of the bedding and then put your lid back on okay now you see a lot of seeds yes and what is wonderful about a worm bin is it it's a fabulous place to germinate seeds okay so if you want to germinate seeds you want to put them on the sides so that when you feed the worms you're not disturbing your newly rooted seeds okay now these are all pumpkin seeds and the worms are going to eat this and the other critters I fed them pumpkins because of all the excess pumpkins from Halloween and Thanksgiving yes and they love pumpkins they love watermelon and they love cantaloupe okay so that is and then I also use a commercial feed which is made by Purina and I sprinkle it on top it's basically like a chicken mash but the reason I use it is because I have so many worms yes a homeowner would never need to buy that okay unless they just want to supplement it if they're going on vacation or something they could leave some extra corn mash or cornmeal on top of their worm bin and throw in a little bit of extra paper okay now I want to show you how to make a worm bin for your home so if you're a homeowner that wants your own worm bin you can get a 30 33 gallon bin from anywhere Walmart the dollar store you want it to be fairly sturdy because as the worm bin becomes more and more castings it's going to be heavy so if you're a one-person family and you barely ever cook then an 18 gallon bin would be big enough if you're someone that cooks most nights of the week then you want to have a 30 or 33 gallon bin and how big assessment this is 30 so you want to start out with shredded paper and most people have a shredder in their home and so you want to use that shredded paper I have plenty of paper if anybody needs extra people collect it for me from work or whatever they want to know can you use newspaper and absolutely you can use newspaper instead of shredded paper okay you don't have to worry about the ink it's made with soy these days not lead so it's not harmful to the worms I also mix it the shredded paper with moistened peat moss and the best price on peat moss I have found is at Home Depot I get a huge bin peat moss this is three three point Q but feet it only needs a little bit and you soak it in some container and you fill it up completely with water and the peat moss and you want to soak it for three or four days if you're in a hurry then you can soak up faster than that now you smell a little bit of odor there that shouldn't be there but my husband was helping me and he didn't realize the water had been sitting there for a few days and he cooked me some new people in it and so it has that smell but if you soaked it three to five days it's not going to have this okay so so we've got this pre-moistened peat moss and it's very wet and then we're just going to mix it and this is where it's perfect to get kids in the neighborhood to help you and they love to get in there and mix it all up and there's nothing in there that's gonna hurt them if you're squeamish you can wear gloves but you want it to be really really wet and you're going to fill the worms the bin completely with paper first all the way up and then add the peat moss I like to do half and half if you wanted to you could do all paper you would never even have to do the peat moss and it is Canadian peat moss and this is like eleven dollars at Home Depot it cost about eighteen dollars at the garden stores so don't don't go there right if you decide you want worms I teach people I tell them to bring their bin and I provide the bedding for them so that when they leave with their worm bin it is the right consistency of wetness okay the one thing people do wrong is they keep their worm bin to dry worms need moisture to breathe so your warm bin has bedding has to be damp you want it to be the consistency of a wet sponge okay okay and then you're not going to use the lid to the band you're going to use cardboard okay and you're going to put the cardboard just inside the batting on top just to keep it dark and damp you need to keep this in some form of shade Lanai is perfect just make sure that it never gets direct sunlight or you're going to bake your worms people want to keep it outside that's not a good idea because birds are going to find it raccoons are going to find it yes and rain it's going to throw your bin a lot of people put holes in their bin I don't do that anymore that was for aeration and you just don't need that they're getting plenty of air and you're not going to grow mold because you're not using the cover you're using this and about once a week you're going to come along and you're going to squeeze your Betty and we're not going to take the time to make this whole bin right now but you're going to squeeze your bedding about once a week okay and you want to be able to elicit about five to ten drops of moisture okay and this is before you put the worm Center this is this is if we were making this bed today completely we would have it completely mixed up before we ever add the worms okay okay so then people say how many worms do I need if you cook every day then you want to bet a pound of worms but you're never going to need to buy worms again because they're going to reproduce and as long as you keep them fed and keep them in the right environment you're never going to have to buy worms again and in terms of pricing like you're making this for a customer how much would you charge to make someone a permit if it included the ban it would be $37 okay that's very yes so maybe you're talking about you're having you're providing nutrients for your yard and definitely for that price amazing compared to like buying fertilizer absolutely okay so this is how I separate the worms so if somebody calls and says they want to buy a pound of worms I go in the worm bin and I just literally pick up mounds of worms and existing bedding because I want to be able to give you bedding that is already full of billions of organisms so when you add the worms and the bedding your bin is good to go it's already full of organisms but first I am a big recycler some people would say I'm a hoarder but actually it doesn't make sense to buy things when I can reuse so my friends keep coffee containers for me so these worms have been in here um I got about an hour and a half so I'm going to come in here and I'm going to grab them by the handful and then I'm going to put them in the coffee can and I already know what does coffee can ways so I've got the worms and I'm going to it's usually about group five great big handfuls two to four hundred worms depending upon the size you're going to get different size worms and then they're going to be weighed and you're going to get a pound of worms and then I will put the bedding in with the worms so that you've got that established bedding already so I've got a customer coming later and so that's why these bins are sitting here under the light so that I can weigh the worms and have it ready for her now if you're going to separate your worms from your castings in about four months this is also a good way to do that okay this is how you would separate your own castings to apply to your garden yes and how often um it depends if you start out with half a pound of worms and you're probably going to have castings in five to six months okay if you start out with a pound then you're going to have castings in three to four months and you know their castings and they're ready when you can pick up and it's like coffee mmm okay and we'll go out to one of the existing bands and I will show you what castings look like after they're ready and after they have been harvested and me as a commercial worm thrower I use a commercial center so my husband made me this there's many types you can buy on the market but this is really is yes so all you do is take some of your castings and it's on Karger cloth which if you're familiar with sifting for gold up in North Carolina it's the same principle and then he used a reciprocating saw so that this goes back and forth and then you end up with a better quality product and then this is still a good product but it's got a little bit of undigested food in it so I will use this in my own yard okay and then for the average homeowner if you don't if it's a beautiful day outside like today you don't have to do it inside underneath the lamp you can take it outside and if you'll follow me I'll show you this so if it's a beautiful day and you'd like to go outside and harvest your worms it's a great way to get the kids involved and you would just take your words out of your worm bin with the Betty and just put it on top of a work station this is just a cardboard table and then this is about the amount of worms and worm castings you want and you can see the worms are here and I would do this a little bit in a sunnier area right now we're shaded but if it's a beautiful day and it's in the 70s and 80s and the sun is shining then you're going to have the worms go down you're going to hit the plastic and they're going to stop and you're going to scoop the castings off the top and then the worms are going to be at the bottom and you're going to take your worms and you're going to put them in a brand new band that you already have ready now I did see a couple of eggs in here it's not quite cool enough for a massive amount of eggs thought they disappeared on me but you can see the Roly Polys and that type of thing so that's that's another option of how to separate your worms from your worm castings and now if you don't want to go through this whole process if you're not a do-it-yourselfer you can also purchase them already sifted from you absolutely we sell the castings by a pound bag here's one of the sound bugs I was telling you about that is called a pill bug or a roly-poly but you can buy them from me I sell them by one pound three pounds and five pounds and then I have some customers who are have a larger piece of property and they will buy a 20 pound bag or bucket so this is another example of recycling this is a bath tub this would make a fabulous worm bin so don't think that you have to go buy bins if you're riding down the road and you see deep drawers or a bathtub or a washing machine tub whatever this is a fabulous worm bin now this one doesn't have worms in it but what it does have is absolutely beautiful Kassadin hmm and if you smell that and touch it it just smells like wonderful rich earth yes it does and literally billions and billions of the organisms are inside of there and that's what you want for your yard okay and as I said before you can just put it around the plant you don't even have to rake it in you can water it in or mother nature will water it in okay and then the plant is going to use the contents of the castings as the plant needs it okay and then I have some questions on that so I have a few questions we inherited a property that was a rental property so the land wasn't well taken care of so I have a few plants here that have some issues so this is a sugar apple that is in a pot and she's not very happy not happy at all something's eating on her and then she's got some deficiencies you can tell by the leaves so you should get good results with your castings you don't have to worry about burning with castings like you do with commercial fertilizer but you do want to be stingy with them to some extent so a pot that size I would use about a quarter cup okay and then as you see the response of the plant you can either use less or more tomatoes and peppers are going to use a lot less castings than trees and then how often for a tree would you do it um monthly monthly until you start seeing some good response okay and if you use your mulch and your grass clippings and the castings then you're going to start creating your own web world and eventually you're not going to need to add castings to that section it's already gonna have its own little web world growing so it really it's like probiotics absolutely where your body is what you're doing so you you're gonna make it so that they have their own culture to do their own thing and this is another plant that I forgot the name up and it's also the same thing I could put some warm castings around it and see if it kind of it reminds revives and it looks like it's either burned or something a critter is eating on yet I can't tell ya and then I have here a goji berry that has this powdery mildew kind of stuff on it and so I we always recommend that you use the least amount of pesticides so start out with making your own soap solution and make sure you don't use dawn or any kind of soap that has degreaser in it because you will burn your leaves and this is one time that you can use the cheap dollar store so in the container and you can google it it's just a couple of tablespoons per quart of water with maybe some added canola oil or vegetable oil so that the soap will stick to the leaves okay wonderful so apparently you can recycle everything old aquariums find it use this is like brewing equipment here so what this is for is for Burma tea and a lot of people want to know how to make warm tea you can do it easily by getting a five-gallon bucket use four cups of castings and then fill the bucket with water and put in a couple tablespoons of molasses get an aquarium bubbler and bubble the solution for a couple days you'll start to see it bubble and that means so organisms are eating each other the bacteria and the fungus and then after about 48 hours you take that team and you dilute it further with water and then you spray it on the leaves of your trees and your plants orchids roses etc and it's a very nutritious plant food and it's a media it's going to be a foliar feed that's faster than using the castings in the soil a better another way to make it is with an old aquarium same thing a bubbler and then for a commercial tea you would use a larger container like this and you of course would be more ballasts more water more castings but buyer beware don't buy tea or castings that you do not know the origin up because if you think about it the tea and the castings are full of organisms if they are in a enclosed plastic container you don't know how long they've been there and you don't know how long it's been since they've had oxygen or moisture and organisms so the moral of the story is know where they came from or better yet create them yourself by feeding on your kitchen scraps which is virtually cost-free so it's an easy way to compost much easier than composting the old-fashioned yeah absolutely Florida is to pot or too cold or too wet or too dry as we all well know and you need moisture and heat for composting with words the words do all the work for you and no simply no shoveling no turning just feeding on your kitchen scraps and I'm always available to answer questions I have a website Florida native plant seems calm and my number is there my address my contact information and if you're interested in butterfly plants or seeds native plants native seeds those are also on their website and we're going to take a look at that right now too into a little walk in one in a little piece of your 10 acre garden

Channel: Lia Andrews

Views: 187,610

Rating: 4.8509569 out of 5

Keywords: Compost (Material), Garden (Industry), Gardening (Interest), Flowers, lia andrews, rachel singletary, pine forest fruit and flower farm, la111, cinnabar acupuncture, judith andrews, the lia andrews show, organic gardening, natural fertilizer, Do It Yourself (Hobby), Green

Id: jeJML_oE9Mo

Length: 33min 45sec (2025 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2015