Large Scale Worm Farm - Just Getting Started
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ค. 2024
- First look at the beginnings of West Mountain Organic's commercial worm farm.
After two months of letting worms grow and reproduce it's finally time to start expanding the farm. That means it's time to move worms from the 'nursery' zone up to the front of the farm where the good feed is being placed.
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If you would like to support our worm farm project you can by doing any of the following things!
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You can also become a Patron and receive a discount on our worm castings as well as other products in the future: / wmowormfarm
We also have an Etsy Store: www.etsy.com/shop/WestMountai...
Tools and instruments used at the worm farm:
Compost Thermometer: amzn.to/2OOFjrh
3-in-1 PH Meter: amzn.to/2S3m13a
Better PH meter: amzn.to/31wjSQI
Soil Moisture Sensor: amzn.to/39cZ5UN
Hand Cultivator: amzn.to/39bm031
Short Probe Thermometer: amzn.to/37aoxsR
Helpful products for starting your own home worm bins and making them thrive:
Coconut Coir: amzn.to/31uSTVN
Kelp Meal: amzn.to/31wWC57
Peat Moss: amzn.to/31DGU8j
Diatomaceous Earth: amzn.to/2Uw1LZJ
Neem cake: amzn.to/2tx9SKm
Oyster Shell: amzn.to/2H7jEpD
Crab Meal (a great source of Chitin): amzn.to/2SmPHY0
Note: A lot of the above products are great as additives for help your worms thrive and create the best worm castings for you.
Worms of course: amzn.to/2SqvekZ
Some more useful items:
Paper and Cardboard Shredder: amzn.to/39e6L9l
Hand Sprayer: amzn.to/2H1vIJd
Reusable Gloves: amzn.to/383JFCo
Fly Paper (Great to put on the bottom of your worm bin lids): amzn.to/2veFUex
You won’t pay any more or less when using these links but I will receive a small commission for your purchase if you buy something after clicking one. A lot of these links are for things that I use at my worm farm but also for things that are useful if you want to get into raising worms at home.
Remember to compost your amazon boxes!!
Thanks for the worm tour.🐛🌱
Thank you for watching, we just finished a big machine to make things move a lot faster. going to be a wild ride.
Would love to start something like this in my country not alot here. Doing my research to start
@@gavinwallace7508 please use Australian earthworm ( Eisenia Fetida) which is the richest proton women on Earth to produce earthworm. It has high resistance power as well. Let me know if you need any help in the same, abhinavsingh23@gmail.com/ +91 9810449546
I would get some food in there in one spot and separate the worms as much as possible before you do the sifting. The worms will go straight to the food, making it easy to separate them and spare them from the sifters. The sifting process as it is now is not healthy at all for your worm population. Taking a few extra minutes ahead of time will save you time and make your worms happy and productive. Half dead worms will never give you optimum results. That's my advice as an observer.
Totally agree! Saves them stressing so much. Ripe banana cut in half is a great way to attract them to the one spot and come back after a few days. In this case maybe 10 chopped bananas lol
Absolutely. Setup sectors with horizontal migration, isolate the mature one to be harvested, do the banana trick and extract 90% of the remaining worms in one simple grab. Healthy, nothing chopped up and easy work load.
Place a rich food supply 10 feet away, 20 mins and they are moving towards it. Or use an electric worm probe th-cam.com/video/I2-kfbjxKLc/w-d-xo.html Just make the device on a board, that you can slide along your beds. Move along or harvest your worms. it's like an electric fence ;) It will say you A LOT of time, to work on other things.
The things I've noticed that worms love is butternut squash and nettles that have been used for tea.
@@lurmot Great tip 🙂
I'm going to move on a farm 2.5 acres and there 2 houses parents gonna let me live in the 2nd one and start my worm business in the garage im 15 almost 16 and im planning on becoming a commercial worm farmer
That is amazing! I hope you can make all that a reality!
Good for you. Being an entrepreneur is awesome. Take detailed notes so you have a record of what works and what doesn't and expect setbacks. If they don't happen, you'll be ahead of the game. I wish you luck in your business.
Hows that working out buddy? I'll love an update on this comment!
Wow that's awesome. But first you will need to get some Worms first since u are a beginner. Am also a worm Farmer too
Awesome! I hope it's going well! Check out Green Greg's channel too. He has great info on worms and his production is impressive.
Poor worms lol bet they all had a headache after the sifting 😂
I bet some of them got vomited :)
O.O I hate this.
they looked Dead!
Just WOW! This is so fascinating!
The part with your dog was amazing, put a smile on my face.
Glad you kept the dog in there. It gave me multiple smiles :) very cool dog lol
You guys are moving along quickly. They do have a few machines that can sort faster that you could probably recreate similar to the sifter you already made.
Thank you!
Yes we have a few machines in the works and one working now that are going to make things move much faster
Very cool, it looks like you have a good footprint in that building for exponential expansion!
I hope one day to expand into the entire shed!
You don't have to sift; if you feed them in a box above the dirt, they will all l3ave the soil and go into the food box.
Really it is nice vermicomposting process and demonstration !
Thank you! it's only getting better :)
You should spread the remaining material out in the 1/4" screen and just put it on the top of the bed and let the worms crawl through the screen as the material dries out.
Interesting video. Glad you left the collie in! :)
Yea the euros love it near the top thats why you find them under rocks and containers and stuff when you pick something up off damp ground
You have a good channel
Keep making content
You could fill sections of old garden hose with sand to weigh down edges of the garden cloth. Or rebaar. It’d save you time on staking it.
" Jaws" like the video, black gold is out of this world ! I was raised with organic gardening concept, all this new stuff videos and new techniques , information highway, I wish I was young again to implement all this cool stuff. Things have really changed in 50 years. I would also sort those babies big farm or not.
Never too late
Thanks for the video and for not cutting out the part with the dog.
I was a worm farm supervisor. I set up 18 x 100 meter worm cloch tunnels. I have a few tips if you’d like to contact me.
Just by feeding down the end where u want them to go they will move them selves if the moisture is right.
Hi Tanya, if your offer to give tips is still available, could I chat to you?
Hello I am also a commercial worm farmer down here in australia.Igrow euros for the angling hobby .The castings are a side line/by product for me but this is fascinating and I look forward to following your progress.I have found it very much is about having a system and you seem to be well on your way .Very good luck in your endeavours
Thank you! good luck with yours as well!
Hi @Andrew Cummins , I'm also in Australia, investigating a large scale worm farming set up for the large ecovillage where I live in SE-QLD. Can you point me to any good resources for getting me started with this project? Thanks a lot!
@@nickward8728 hello nick what are you looking to do? do you want the castings or are you looking for a way of using old veg and paper,cotton clothing and cardboard.what kind of space do you have available etc let me know and lets see what we can come up with
this is super cool
I don't know if this is true, or a good idea, but I've heard a mild flooding will encourage the worms to come to the top and can be scooped up more easily. Don't know if that distresses worms or not. Of course the castings would need to be dried out again before you can sift.
My castings where smaller size and never used a screen . Just waited till they moved to next section.
Mine was as small as sand.
Funny enough we just sifted some recently and they were very small as well. I think they get smaller the longer they have to work them
@@westmountainorganic8084 am a worm Farmer here in Africa and we have lots of the Worms if still interested in buying contact me
Interesting form
I built a sifter from hardware cloth with a frame of 2x2s. You prop it up at a steep angle with a broom handle that sticks in a hole drilled in the frame. Handle had a point at the other end to stick in the ground a bit. Then fork the material at the top of the frame, it rolls/falls down the steep pitch and breaks apart and the screened stuff falls on a tarp. I shovel the stuff off the tarp, avoiding the tarp, then give it a roll and pick it up and dump the rest into the wheelbarrow
I love my worms each of there lives matter and losses should be respected and thanked ❤️
nah
@@insanezams5330 yeah
They make good bait and great for gardens
Can we pick up the earthworms under the rocks and breed them in the bin🤷🏻♀️ I saw so mamy worms I believe they are earthworms pink with orange tail don’t know what kind of worm are they?😂
Left leaning woman talk like this. Yet are pro choice. 😜
Love the dog!
If your not using malted barley I highly recommend it. It will double if not triple your worms. Make sure to grind it up.
To get the worms out ....... get a small black box ...... drill holes in it about 1 inch up the sides ....... fill it half full of table scraps or what ever the worms gravitate to quickly ...... bury it about 2 to 4 inches in the soil ...... an leave it sit for a week ...... it will be full of worms when you check it ...... be sure an cover it so its dark inside the box .......
Im going to give that a try. Thank you for the advice!
Going to try that as well thanks
I'm glad you left the dog in
I love your dog...😁
Really liked the channel! Hope to hear what you've been up to.
The best money can buy- black gold indeed.
ty
Ive been digging my worms my pawpaw stocked his whole yard with them years ago and they are at least 4 times bigger than these little guys i got about 100 now but i heard they can multiply in just two months
I use old magazine's pages, just soak and place on top of soil. I also use plastic bins, holes on the bottom to drain excess moister comes out bottom into smaller bin which elevates off bottom and collects in bottom bin. I feed my worms ground up, banana peelings, brockly, carrots, lettuce, potato peelings, spinach, along with used coffee grounds, crumpled moist leaves......I stared with 1 bin around 4 months ago, and now have 2 bins. I have night crawlers and red worms that live together, and have some night crawlers growing over 1 foot
1 foot night crawlers?! That's awesome!
it's so scary
You should explain why you are doing each step. Why are you sifting thru 1/4" screen? Is it for appearance to the customer? And why don't you have separators in the long bed at the beginning? Eventually the worms will find everything anyway and it seems like a lot of extra work having to move worms/dirt from one side of the long bed to the other.
good thinking
How do you know your gonna need that many space in that whole shed?
5:45 shaving in those microplastics. Nice.
An easy way to keep your worm tray going without having to sift worms out is doing the wedge method. It’s a hole lot better and less work for you and time.just feed the working end of of the tray fed and moist and the worms will migrate themselves and the other end keep dry and just move your castings down towards the dry end to sift out. Hope this helps 👍🏻
Maybe the small stones in the mix is a bigger problem than one realizes. It will negatively impact the customer experience and one does not want to buy stones. The use of a more sandy version of base aggregate may be wise.The clumping will also be reduced. Aeration will be easier and drainage improved. The main question to any new business is how do you distinguish yourself from your competition. Just thinking. Common problem is SA LOL.
Yeah the rocks are part of why I have to sift out the final product. I still am trying to figure out how to set myself apart from everyone else. But the main focus currently is getting production up and going smooth
i would feed in sections moving the worms by moving the food. When the worms move to the new section you harvest the ready worm free section.
That's what we are doing now. :)
Youre right it works great.
You can use food to lure the worms out of the stuff you want to harvest instead of trying to pick them by hand lol
Yeah I ended up doing that on a later video. :)
Bury a whole banana half way in the ground when they are hungry needing to be fed, they will swarm it.
@Johan Rodrigues Nope, just burry it half way in the ground straight up n down, use a pretty heavily browning banana, think banana bread use banana. Make sure they dont have much other food.
you need one of those cylindrical wire mesh sifters that they use for gold mining...it would be perfect for this...plus they attach a water hose at the end so you can wash all the dirt away and leave only worms
Like a trommel screen.
Not long after this video we made 2, one for sifting worm food for feeding, another for sifting castings. So much easier now
9:55 they seems to be a bit dizzy from the shakings
put some UHMW tape on the top of those bins it will keep you from wearing them out with your sifter.
I had been bouncing around ideas on doing large scale vermicomposting, but I wonder where outfits like yours are getting the input materials? Do I need to buy 5 acres of land to grow biomass, then semi compost it? Do you buy inputs from outside? How do you ensure they are free of contaminants, etc?
If I may ask how do you winter proof this when it starts to get cold out? I don’t want my worms to die! Thanks for the video by the way super informative.
Find horse manure! The heat keeps em warm. Find styrofoam from packaging..Or recycle old clothes/cotton sheets for insulation.. they will eat that too leaving behind the nylon.
@@Brandtphenom I would like to ask, does horse manure need to be decomposed or should it be fed directly to earthworms?
@@godiscominggodiscoming8156 i feed it directly to my compost worms (Eisenia Fetida). If horses are treated with heartworm with Ivermectin I would wait for it breakdown before feeding it to the worms.
Have you tried a continuous flow bin?
How do you make your compost to start the worms in. I think you mentioned animal manure. Would that be 100% or do you use other materials? I’d like to start an outdoor bin like yours at a smaller scale like in a grow box. I have access to composted horse manure and leaves. Trying to find the best mix that would work in my hot dry climate here in Utah. Thank You for the well thought out video.
I'm in utah as well. I use partially precomposted animal manure. Mostly horse and some cow. If you have leaves that would be great to add too.
I aim to have my wormery like yours huge
How you tell when the worms are done working a section..like it being compost/bedding to castings??
They tend to move on when they are done so you will start seeing fewer worms and the compost becomes very crumbly and granular.
William , all the vermicompost is black and you wont recognize any food
My dog attacks the water every time I turn on the hose also! Lmao. My dog also looks similar but only 30 lbs
Why did you go with this bed design vs a continuous flow?
don't see much wormeries made in ground. is it reason for? i think it would be better because of more stable temperature
U should grow plants in your worm far for the worms.
That would only create more unnecessary work for himself.
I am not a commercial farm just a hobby farm and have a 4 foot pile of rabbit droppings all my worms compost it I add to it but worms love the rabbit droppings
Unfortunately due to economic and other unfortunate factors I have had to step back from commercial farming as well. I hope to start again one day but as of now I am working on perfecting my home worm bins
I would like to ask, does rabbit feces need to be decomposed or should it be fed directly to earthworms?
Nope, it's a cold manure it go straight in@@godiscominggodiscoming8156
My worms are very active. I've noticed yours just kind of lie there. I don't think they're doing to well
I think there were just a bit in shock from the jostling. There became much more active sometime after the sifting process. That process is also no longer used, was too rough on the worms. Thank you for watching! Good luck with your worms too! More people should have them!
Just a question If you leave the first 2 feet of the oldest part uncovered and not water it the worms would move out as it dries out right or am i mistaken
thank you
can i ask you what is the suitable dimensions of the bins for 10 kilo from red worms ??
Something with about 2 square meter surface area.
Was that actual worm castings or just the original bedding?
What type of feed mix do you use?
I’ve got little larva maggot looking things in my bed does these hurt anything?
What is the technique ro seperate earthworm n casting
I have nearby PIG farm. Can one use pig dung for vermi compost ? Have access to Reg Wiggler worm.
Have you moved away from wood yet? I would suspect the worms to try and nibble away on that.
Next time when you're shifting out your worms picked up pie on that you're having that black bucket and put it on top of your worm farm other good stuff wait an hour most likely all those worms will have moved down and you won't have to Seft them
Do u think this can be a good money in the end
Hello, I am thinking of getting into vermiculture, I have no knowledge of the subject or anything, in the future I would like to be more friendly to the environment and have my organic garden.
Can I practice vermiculture in buckets with holes and mesh and / or wooden boxes with geotextile mesh so that the worms do not escape?
Can you give them the sun or do they need only food, shade and water?
What percentage or ratio of substrate, green matter and brown matter should I provide them?
As green matter, can I use peels, tea, yerba mate, freshly cut step, etc?
As brown material, can I use grass that I would let dry, cardboard from toilet paper rolls, cardboard from which eggs are brought, etc?
I hope you can help me with this, thank you.
hello, sorry for the late reply. I hope I can answer some of your questions and help you get started
"Can I practice vermiculture in buckets with holes and mesh and / or wooden boxes with geotextile mesh so that the worms do not escape?"
Yes, you can make small worm bins with buckets and mesh, there are a lot of ways to do this and many videos on the subject of small scale worm composting.
"Can you give them the sun or do they need only food, shade and water?"
They don't like light or getting too hot so it's best to keep them out of the sun if possible. I have a video on good conditions for worms that might answer more questions for you.
"What percentage or ratio of the substrate, green matter, and brown matter should I provide them?"
Ratios are one of those things that nobody in this space seems to agree on. my working method is that if the worms are happy and thriving then the ratio is fine. It's also hard to put a number to it because there are so many different variables such as types of green and brown waste. I mostly just watch my moisture and PH levels and adjust according to that, oh and of course watch the worms. They can tell you a lot by how they are acting.
"As green matter, can I use peels, tea, yerba mate, freshly cut step, etc?"
Generally, yes to all that. Although if you are adding a lot of sugar to your yerba mate be sure to not leave in in one clump when adding it and instead spread it out, to avoid fermentation.
"As brown material, can I use grass that I would let dry, cardboard from toilet paper rolls, cardboard from which eggs are brought, etc?"
Yes absolutely, good call on drying the grass clippings. Wet grass clippings can be used as feed too but you have to be careful not to add too much or you risk it getting too hot.
I hope some of this helps!
I got worms!!
Why not toss the clumps back into your worm farm so you don't sell all your baby worms. Babies grow to be parents.
Had any pest problems?
I know I'm late to the show but I'm very interested in starting this type business, can you give me some names of books to read or YT videos that do a start to finish on how to get started? Thanking you in advance.
please can you tell me about putting my worms into composted wheat bran, bc I noticed that after like 10 days they are still on the top and didn't get any deeper.
thanks
How on top? Like ij the top inch or 2 of material? If so that that is fine. They are just chowing down. If they start coming to the actual surface though you might have issues. If you find worms just chilling on the surface and acting lethargic then start investigating the conditions of the bin immediately. Check temperature, ph, salt levels, oxygen, alchohol levels, any thing you can think of. But if they are just under the surface and active then things are probably ok. They dont like to travel far for food if they dont need to so they will usually eat whatever is closest first.
@@westmountainorganic8084 thanks for the quick reply. I checked on them and found some on the surface(dead) others are alive but look tired, numb and not very responsive.
under the surface I noticed that many of them are alive. I sadly am just an amateur and I don't have the tool to mesure. thanks again and I will be grateful for any advice or suggestion you might give.
@@whynot-vq2ly If you watch my worm die-off series it might give you some ideas as to what might be happening.
@@westmountainorganic8084 I did, and I got some precious informations. thank you very much sir and I wish you the best luck for you and your project. have a good day :]
what do you do with these?
I would like to start a small worm farm and am at the point where it is now time to buy the worms. Would you mind sharing a good place to go to purchase worms?
Thank You,
Bill
my latest video about finally getting the correct worms names where I got them, I also put a link in the description.
tuyet voi
The heavy breathing is funny
Hey i wanna breed nightcrawlers for our family resort, any suggestions on where to start?
WHY night crawlers?
wood on plastic scratiching could be optimized 5:50
Why can’t you stack the sifters? It would cut the abuse on the worms in half I would think.
Though about it at one point, but they are still going through them all regardless, just in faster succession. Now we tumble them anyway, no more shakers. And he we sift is mostly devoid of worms luckily
Is the chlorine from the water ok? I always use water that's been sitting for a couple of days before adding to mine.
I'm lucky to be on well water here, no chlorine at the point I get it :)
@@westmountainorganic8084 Ah, cool. I looked for your recent vids with your new sifting process, have a link?
Mathias, rain water i best
Me too, I use a gallon jug with a srew on top and put holes in it to sprinkle water to keep my magazines pages moist on top of soil.
I use a boogie brew hose filter that emotes heavy metals, chlorine and chloramine.
How come you don’t get those huge white bugs in your compost?
@Ryan Ripley im not sure but they are gross and i could never run my hands through it like he does...they are fat huge grubs and my worm bin is closed in so i dont know how they get there.
Hello bro I'm from Pakistan
I would like to know that 🐛 breed through out the year.or they have specific time period
why do so many youtubers say you should never pour water directly into the worm bin?
Maybe they're in shock as you said, but they look dead to me. I think the sifting is counter productive.
I agree.
I hope you can use a fork to collect Worms without dying. By the way i wonder how your dog making that sound tuck tuck tuck 😂
Do the banana trick to separate worms
Pl tell us the diamention of shieve
where did you get 1000's of worms and at what cost?
I have bought from a variety of places. Uncle Jim's worm farm will get them to you fast and atany time of the year. But green Greg's is the best bang for your buck. A place called northwest redworms has the most healthy worms in my experience.
How much perkg?
What part of the country is this in?
Southwest
Andrew Luck is now a worm farmer.
Oh man that's actually a pretty close resemblance haha especially with the beard
I wondering why you are keeping it so dry. I studied with Dr Elaine Ingham and she suggests 70 percent moisture. What is your goal moisture level
Goal moisture is 70% as suggested. Still getting to know our feed and how it soaks up water. For a lot of the summer we held pretty steady on moisture. But fluctuated too much still, going to set up some auto watering systems this year I hope.
Cool bro 👌. I might do a project like that someday, but I got plenty to do at the moment. Great channel. Get breathable bags, Jim's worm farm uses some fabric ones or you could use the standard white plastic weave bags. I have some large worm bins I use for my own garden and helping clients reach their growing goals. Good luck, thanks for all you do!!
@@Soilfoodwebwarrior I looked for fabric ones but no luck when I was searching. I'll have to look again, iirc they were fairly expensive but I may just need to bite that bullet. Thanks for watching and for the advice. I always appreciate that! Good luck on your projects as well!
Of course and thanks for not being insulted. Putting aerobic biology (compost/vermicompost) in air tight bags is a pet peeve of mine. Everyone does it, but the quality is going to suffer. The microbes can go dormant rather than die in that type of situation, but you are most likely going to lose some hard earned biological diversity. Plus the dormant ones that do survive need to wake up when aerobic conditions return, they will but it takes time.
What is it about Border Collies and water streams. Mine does the same thing.
They are hilarious. That dog is obsessed with the hose
What state are you in?
21:36 If you place a 1/4 inch screen on top of your main soil bed and gently place this pile of worms/chunky material on top, I bet the worms would burrow down to the main bed and you could lift and move the material away.
Seeing as this video is 2 years old, you probably have developed better sorting methods.
How do you keep the other worm eating insects out of your beds?
There arent many predators out where we are, the most we have to worry about is mice but they have so much to eat on the rest of the farm that they don't really bother with the worms either. The worst they do it try to burrow into the soft beds to make nests.
for the worms well being, maybe a vibration machine would be easier, and also they move in directions to noise vibration, sending them moving, start a machine noise they will run away from it, leaving the area worm free. ???? any thoughts? invent invent.
Worth a shot! I'm actually working on some better machines finally. Thanks for watching!!
WHERE DO U BUY SEVERAL 1,000 WORMS ???????