i love being a part of your worm channel family. i share your feelings about responsibility for our earth and sustainability. i am a beginning worm farmer. i’m also a beginning gardener. i also love orchids. my father had an orchid nursery business and i grew up watering plants, doing lots of transplanting and driving around the big island of hawai’i on the hunt for more orchids. 😅 thank you so much for sharing all of your worms with us!
Your childhood sounds great to me as an adult but maybe not fun as a kid. I think if all the world protected the environment like Hawaii does now we would be in better shape. 🪱😁👍🏼
Good morning, Ann, from Windermere, Florida zone 9b USA 🇺🇸 🎊🎉🇺🇸 I'm up at 4a.m on New Year's Day and the first RUclips video of 2023 is YOU & Good Worms 🪱 👍 All great information and nice to hear all of your little personal tidbits. I share your beliefs and I appreciate the people on this Worm journey. Maybe it's as kind as it is because we look at the simple creatures in the World and realize how wonderful they are. And realize we are their caretakers. No anger or bitter feelings, just feelings their wiggly little bodies🪱 Wishing you and Our 🪱 Family a happy healthy 2023 🪱♥️🪱
Grateful for all your hard work to put these together, we enjoy them thoroughly. I know how difficult editing is (especially after I lost my mouse/ trackpad and it’s essentially deterred me from creating videos) A happy and fruitful year to you, Anne! 🎉
Happy new year, thanks for sharing your interesting & informative videos. Dealing with comments is what makes me too nervous to make videos with my worm crew but if the worm folk are so lovely maybe I’ll dust off my camera… 😬
You should. Our worm community has room for more. If someone is mean I just tell them to have a good day. If they continue I block them. No room for them here.
Happy new year Ann... babe I am waiting crazy to see yr outdoor bin. I dunno y I like d outdoor bins....I feel d castings are quite different...maybe bcos we don't worry too much abt them than d indoor bins.
I think that worms reproduce as much to the amount of food and moisture as to the size of the container. My bin is outside and being winter and with a surplus of feeding material I can hardly keep it dry enough for the worms to survive. With all that said I have never had a container (100 gallon water trough) so full of worms. I actually built a small compost pile in the bin it didn't get very hot but it a solid chunk of worms its really amazing how there are. Happy new years
I personally love your worms and hope that one day I can do something similar and have lots like you do. But I know that without spending lots it does take time. Have set up a couple of breeder tubs and hoping that over the next few months they will increase my population so I have enough to do what I want over our winter time. If not I will make a larger breeder bin out the breeders I get in the next 3 months which will make it that by spring time I can start. Eater way I’m hoping the next 6 months to get the numbers booming.
Happy New Year Ann❤Thank you for sharing all your awesome tips,tricks,experiment and experience! I am so thankful there are amazing worm content creators like you to follow and learn from! All the very best for 2023❤
Did you ever find out if beetles will eat the worms? I have a meal worm colony for my leopard gecko, and their bedding is either ground or whole oats. After I have left the bedding in a container for a while to make sure that all the eggs have hatched I am left with oats and castings. I have been wanting to use that for My worm bin so they can finish processing the powdered oats. I am concerned that if there is any microscopic meal, worms or eggs, will they harm my worms? What are your thoughts?
From what I understand the beetles are scavengers and do not eat live animals. So it would seem ok to let the worms eat their leftovers. I don't have personal experience with them. So I only know what I have read elsewhere. I hope it helps. Thank you for watching 👍🏼🪱😁
Happy new year. Have you ever tried to replace the 10 10 10 fertilizer with kelp meal and alfalfa meal or neem cake. I use a mix of all 3 with finely ground grains and oyster shell ground up also. I find to work great for gardens and larger fruit trees.
1st I want to wish you a happy new year and thank you for the worm content. I’ve tried to emulate some of your practices like the wedge but the 4 days below 20f have given me so much dead plant matter, ( banana stalk, cauliflower leaves and stalks, Mexican petunias etc… my wedge bathtub just got turned into an overflowing pile of food and bedding. I can say with 100% certainty that it takes longer than 6 months to have a properly functioning wedge. That’s how long mine has been running and the “ finished end” was far from finished with worms mixed all throughout, but it was looking great! Until today that is. Also your idea of a seed mat was very helpful considering my worms live outdoors. I put two end to end in the tub and the worms enjoyed a balmy 65F while everything else froze solid, including my three 80 gallon compost tumblers.
I have some fish bone meal, but it’s not ground up into like sizes of sand particles. They’re a tiny bit bigger. Do they need to be smaller for worms to eat?
I have a question for you that might help me as I transition to a horizontal migration bin: I notice in your Big Blue videos that you clearly have a lot more worms at the feeding end than at the harvest end as intended, but it still looks like there are enough still at the harvest end that you have to separate at least a few worms from the castings at harvest. You've mentioned at times that some of the reason you're not getting all the way to worm-free castings is probably because you keep adding material from other bins, which makes sense, but I also notice that when you are fluffing the castings, or when you have harvested some castings from the very end and are scooting everything that remains toward the newly emptied space, it looks to me as if you take big handfuls of material from all the way about a third to almost half of the length of the bin that looks like it has worms in it and toss it all the way to the beginning. How will it ever get to be worm-free, if some of the worms keep going back to the starting line after they had migrated almost halfway to the feeding end? Do they reach a point after they've settled into the bin when they migrate faster every time they find themselves back in the almost-finished castings, so they don't really lose any time? (Mine are still hardly moving, but it's early days yet.) Or is there some reason you have to do that, even if it means that some will not have migrated back out by harvest day?
Normally the last 1/3 should stay together as a set and considered finished. i get over zealous in fluffing and mix the middle in sometimes. Now that all the bin movement is over i am willing to bet the finished end will start to clear out of worms in a month. I think many of the new worms are hatchlings in the finished end.
@@PlantObsessed Thanks for that clarification! I was afraid that it would be harmful in some way (maybe to the microbial balance) if I didn't keep integrating part of the more recently added material into the older part. I'm hoping once my bin is well-settled, all the hatchlings will move out of the harvest zone before they are mature enough to breed, so that if I wait long enough between harvests to let the cocoons hatch and the hatchlings migrate, the harvested castings really will be free of both worms and cocoons. But it may literally take a couple of years to be sure if it's ever going to get to that point!
I find the meat topic in worm farms interesting. I recently came across the topic of protein poisoning, but have heard about things like anaerobic situations and things like maggots as concerns with adding meat to a farm. My farm started with me trying to keep feeder worms for a pet axolotl alive, but took on a life of it's own. It is currently in stacked 5gal buckets, with screens over the main air holes. At one point one of my sons adopted 9 goldfish. We started a dirted tank for them. Like with the mass produced carnival goldfish some died. I opted to put them into the farm. Most were just laid on top of the bedding and in less than 12hrs were gone. More recently i "gambled" on the hotdog core of w corn dog that my youngest are the bread from. I walked away from the farm for a while (about two weeks) for a couple of reasons. When I came back to it i pulled the last two feedings out of the buckets and put them into a 30gal tote to set up a wedge syatem, which allowed my sons to demonstrate a feeding at a science fair in which they shared the concept of worm farming and composting. It also allows me time to modify the buckets to create better air flow between the different buckets in an effort to resuce humidity and cut down on the number of worms exploring because of the moisture on the sides of the buckets "escaping" and dying throughout the house... Their ability to... worm... their way between the buckets is remarkable. But the short of that was that the hotdog was gone. There was still decent sized pieces of cardboard, coco coir, and even some small pieces of fast vegetable food here and there but the hotdog was completely gone without any signs of adverse effects.
Mom, you can use half wedge to harvest the worms. Everyday, you need to take old bedding on the surface little. The worms will move to the bottom. Do this everyday. In the end, the worms have no choice but move to the new bedding.
I've followed you for awhile, and the difference in wetness/dryness from your bins and worm bins here where I live in Jalisco Mexico is enormous. When I buy worms from suppliers here (most are in Mexico City) the breeders seem to grow their stock in what might best be described as swamp muck. I've tried acclimating over time my red wigglers to a more moderately dry medium (the old "squeeze a handful and only get a few drops of water out) but with little success. This means the 'best' condition I can achieve when it is time to harvest castings is much wetter than your bins at harvest time. Is it 'normal' for red wigglers to be so regionally different? Any ideas on how to acclimate them to dryer conditions?
I wonder the same thing. I see breeder channels that also are muddy. Newer generation seem to adapt in my bin but the worms are much smaller in all species. My take home is to breed big worms it needs to be very highly wet. For the use I need them for they are small but still eat all the food I give them. 👍🏼🪱☺️
I am just getting ready to start on my worm adventure. I noticed that a lot of vermiculturists freeze food scraps before feeding to their worms. Is this just a function of easy storage of food scraps, or is there a practical reason I would want to feed pre-frozen foods as opposed to fresh food scraps? Also, what is your opinion on worm smoothies (blenderized food scraps made for worms, not made of worms)?
Freezing can be both for storage and also to make the food easier to consume. Also it can reduce fruit flies. Pureed food is good to have them eat faster too.
Thank you. Do you water with tap water or with filtered water which isn´t as hard? I heard that I think carbonates and bicarbonates are preventing bacterias from accessing many nutrients (minerals etc.) because those carbonates are binding to very much nutrients etc. . I heard this from John Kempf you may check his videos if you wish there is just veery much we need to know. Greetings.
I have super hard water here so I either use reverse osmosis water or treat the water when adding to the worm bin. I will use straight tap water when making bedding a month early before feeding it to the worms. The other ingredients will slightly acidify the bedding and start breaking down the minerals in the water.
@@PlantObsessed it sounded like it was adjusting the volume any time you banged against the side slightly - has the camera got an automatic volume adjustment feature and it’s trying to be too clever?
Some of the bin is dry. It encourages the worms to move to the wet part with food. The left part of the bin is dry and almost finished the right side is more wet and has new food.
Don't worms crawl around in the bedding, create air holes that's keeping the bedding aerobic. I don't see the reasoning behind, constantly turning everything upside down and fluffing the bedding other than just really disturbing the worms.
Worm People are a special breed . Happy New Year . Stay safe and warm .
You too 😊
I just did my first harvest of worm castings thank to you. ❤ I appreciate your guidance and awesome videos!
You are welcome. Thank you for watching 🪱👍🏼😁
i love being a part of your worm channel family. i share your feelings about responsibility for our earth and sustainability. i am a beginning worm farmer. i’m also a beginning gardener. i also love orchids. my father had an orchid nursery business and i grew up watering plants, doing lots of transplanting and driving around the big island of hawai’i on the hunt for more orchids. 😅 thank you so much for sharing all of your worms with us!
Your childhood sounds great to me as an adult but maybe not fun as a kid. I think if all the world protected the environment like Hawaii does now we would be in better shape. 🪱😁👍🏼
Good morning, Ann, from Windermere, Florida zone 9b USA 🇺🇸 🎊🎉🇺🇸
I'm up at 4a.m on New Year's Day and the first RUclips video of 2023 is
YOU & Good Worms 🪱 👍
All great information and nice to hear all of your little personal tidbits. I share your beliefs and I appreciate the people on this Worm journey. Maybe it's as kind as it is because we look at the simple creatures in the World and realize how wonderful they are. And realize we are their caretakers. No anger or bitter feelings, just feelings their wiggly little bodies🪱
Wishing you and Our 🪱 Family a happy healthy 2023 🪱♥️🪱
Well said. Happy New Year 🥳🎉🎉
You are a wealth of information and experience. Thank you for sharing with us.
You are welcome. I'm glad you found it useful. 🪱👍🏼😁
Great chat & fun check-in!
Thank you 😊
Dig your channel, again very grateful for your insight on every posting! I’ve learned so much from you. Sharing is caring!
Awesome! Thank you!
That earthy smell is my favorite in the winter. That was my hook. Now that I’ve watched the whole video,
Happy birthday
Being able to play in the " dirt" in the winter keeps me going until spring.
Happy New Year everyone!
Happy New Year 🎉🎉
This was the best way to ring in the new year! Thanks Plant Obsessed!
Thank you 😊
Happy New Year 🪱
Thank you! Happy New Year to you too!🎉🎉
Grateful for all your hard work to put these together, we enjoy them thoroughly. I know how difficult editing is (especially after I lost my mouse/ trackpad and it’s essentially deterred me from creating videos)
A happy and fruitful year to you, Anne! 🎉
Thank you that is rough about your equipment. I hope you get a replacement this year. ☺️
Happy New Year !
Thank you 🙏
Happy new year, thanks for sharing your interesting & informative videos. Dealing with comments is what makes me too nervous to make videos with my worm crew but if the worm folk are so lovely maybe I’ll dust off my camera… 😬
You should. Our worm community has room for more. If someone is mean I just tell them to have a good day. If they continue I block them. No room for them here.
Happy new year Ann!
Thank you. Happy New Year to you too 🎉🎉
Happy New Year!
My favourite part of the video is always harvesting castings.
Me too. I always think about what I will use them for and that makes me happy to think about spring.
Love you and your channel! Happy New Year! ❤
Thank you. Happy New Year 🎉🎉
Happy new year Ann... babe I am waiting crazy to see yr outdoor bin. I dunno y I like d outdoor bins....I feel d castings are quite different...maybe bcos we don't worry too much abt them than d indoor bins.
I am hoping to get out there today to peek at it since it is a little warmer this week. Happy New Year to you too. 🎉🎉
I think that worms reproduce as much to the amount of food and moisture as to the size of the container. My bin is outside and being winter and with a surplus of feeding material I can hardly keep it dry enough for the worms to survive. With all that said I have never had a container (100 gallon water trough) so full of worms. I actually built a small compost pile in the bin it didn't get very hot but it a solid chunk of worms its really amazing how there are. Happy new years
Thank you and have a happy New Year 🎉🎉❤️
Your welcome.
👍🏼
I personally love your worms and hope that one day I can do something similar and have lots like you do.
But I know that without spending lots it does take time. Have set up a couple of breeder tubs and hoping that over the next few months they will increase my population so I have enough to do what I want over our winter time. If not I will make a larger breeder bin out the breeders I get in the next 3 months which will make it that by spring time I can start. Eater way I’m hoping the next 6 months to get the numbers booming.
Patience is hard I know. Pretty soon you will have more worms that you know what to do with. 😃🪱👍🏼
@@PlantObsessed I will give some to friends to help them in their garden.
Happy New Year Ann❤Thank you for sharing all your awesome tips,tricks,experiment and experience! I am so thankful there are amazing worm content creators like you to follow and learn from! All the very best for 2023❤
Thank you for the kind words 😁
❤❤❤
🪱😃👍🏼
Did you ever find out if beetles will eat the worms? I have a meal worm colony for my leopard gecko, and their bedding is either ground or whole oats. After I have left the bedding in a container for a while to make sure that all the eggs have hatched I am left with oats and castings. I have been wanting to use that for My worm bin so they can finish processing the powdered oats. I am concerned that if there is any microscopic meal, worms or eggs, will they harm my worms? What are your thoughts?
From what I understand the beetles are scavengers and do not eat live animals. So it would seem ok to let the worms eat their leftovers. I don't have personal experience with them. So I only know what I have read elsewhere. I hope it helps. Thank you for watching 👍🏼🪱😁
@@PlantObsessed thank you. I will try it
Happy new year. Have you ever tried to replace the 10 10 10 fertilizer with kelp meal and alfalfa meal or neem cake. I use a mix of all 3 with finely ground grains and oyster shell ground up also. I find to work great for gardens and larger fruit trees.
I have not. Thank you for the idea. I just got into alfalfa meal this fall.
1st I want to wish you a happy new year and thank you for the worm content. I’ve tried to emulate some of your practices like the wedge but the 4 days below 20f have given me so much dead plant matter, ( banana stalk, cauliflower leaves and stalks, Mexican petunias etc… my wedge bathtub just got turned into an overflowing pile of food and bedding. I can say with 100% certainty that it takes longer than 6 months to have a properly functioning wedge. That’s how long mine has been running and the “ finished end” was far from finished with worms mixed all throughout, but it was looking great! Until today that is. Also your idea of a seed mat was very helpful considering my worms live outdoors. I put two end to end in the tub and the worms enjoyed a balmy 65F while everything else froze solid, including my three 80 gallon compost tumblers.
I'm glad I was helpful. I bet some of the tropical plants take longer to breakdown or you need more worms 😁
I have some fish bone meal, but it’s not ground up into like sizes of sand particles. They’re a tiny bit bigger. Do they need to be smaller for worms to eat?
I would still try it. It will break down even without the worms. 👍🏼😃🪱
I have a question for you that might help me as I transition to a horizontal migration bin: I notice in your Big Blue videos that you clearly have a lot more worms at the feeding end than at the harvest end as intended, but it still looks like there are enough still at the harvest end that you have to separate at least a few worms from the castings at harvest. You've mentioned at times that some of the reason you're not getting all the way to worm-free castings is probably because you keep adding material from other bins, which makes sense, but I also notice that when you are fluffing the castings, or when you have harvested some castings from the very end and are scooting everything that remains toward the newly emptied space, it looks to me as if you take big handfuls of material from all the way about a third to almost half of the length of the bin that looks like it has worms in it and toss it all the way to the beginning. How will it ever get to be worm-free, if some of the worms keep going back to the starting line after they had migrated almost halfway to the feeding end? Do they reach a point after they've settled into the bin when they migrate faster every time they find themselves back in the almost-finished castings, so they don't really lose any time? (Mine are still hardly moving, but it's early days yet.) Or is there some reason you have to do that, even if it means that some will not have migrated back out by harvest day?
Normally the last 1/3 should stay together as a set and considered finished. i get over zealous in fluffing and mix the middle in sometimes. Now that all the bin movement is over i am willing to bet the finished end will start to clear out of worms in a month. I think many of the new worms are hatchlings in the finished end.
@@PlantObsessed Thanks for that clarification! I was afraid that it would be harmful in some way (maybe to the microbial balance) if I didn't keep integrating part of the more recently added material into the older part. I'm hoping once my bin is well-settled, all the hatchlings will move out of the harvest zone before they are mature enough to breed, so that if I wait long enough between harvests to let the cocoons hatch and the hatchlings migrate, the harvested castings really will be free of both worms and cocoons. But it may literally take a couple of years to be sure if it's ever going to get to that point!
I find the meat topic in worm farms interesting. I recently came across the topic of protein poisoning, but have heard about things like anaerobic situations and things like maggots as concerns with adding meat to a farm.
My farm started with me trying to keep feeder worms for a pet axolotl alive, but took on a life of it's own. It is currently in stacked 5gal buckets, with screens over the main air holes. At one point one of my sons adopted 9 goldfish. We started a dirted tank for them. Like with the mass produced carnival goldfish some died. I opted to put them into the farm. Most were just laid on top of the bedding and in less than 12hrs were gone. More recently i "gambled" on the hotdog core of w corn dog that my youngest are the bread from. I walked away from the farm for a while (about two weeks) for a couple of reasons. When I came back to it i pulled the last two feedings out of the buckets and put them into a 30gal tote to set up a wedge syatem, which allowed my sons to demonstrate a feeding at a science fair in which they shared the concept of worm farming and composting. It also allows me time to modify the buckets to create better air flow between the different buckets in an effort to resuce humidity and cut down on the number of worms exploring because of the moisture on the sides of the buckets "escaping" and dying throughout the house... Their ability to... worm... their way between the buckets is remarkable.
But the short of that was that the hotdog was gone. There was still decent sized pieces of cardboard, coco coir, and even some small pieces of fast vegetable food here and there but the hotdog was completely gone without any signs of adverse effects.
They do eat meat but the pest issues are not generally worth it for an inside bin. 👍🏼😀🪱
Halloween is over ! and so is Thanksgiving !😂 they have a head start for next year … wine/mead making and I helped …😊
No that was shake n bake...
Mom, you can use half wedge to harvest the worms. Everyday, you need to take old bedding on the surface little. The worms will move to the bottom. Do this everyday. In the end, the worms have no choice but move to the new bedding.
Yes, that is what I do. I don't do it every day,but I am getting there. Thank you for watching 😃
💙
Thank you 😊
I've followed you for awhile, and the difference in wetness/dryness from your bins and worm bins here where I live in Jalisco Mexico is enormous. When I buy worms from suppliers here (most are in Mexico City) the breeders seem to grow their stock in what might best be described as swamp muck. I've tried acclimating over time my red wigglers to a more moderately dry medium (the old "squeeze a handful and only get a few drops of water out) but with little success. This means the 'best' condition I can achieve when it is time to harvest castings is much wetter than your bins at harvest time.
Is it 'normal' for red wigglers to be so regionally different?
Any ideas on how to acclimate them to dryer conditions?
I wonder the same thing. I see breeder channels that also are muddy. Newer generation seem to adapt in my bin but the worms are much smaller in all species. My take home is to breed big worms it needs to be very highly wet. For the use I need them for they are small but still eat all the food I give them. 👍🏼🪱☺️
I am just getting ready to start on my worm adventure. I noticed that a lot of vermiculturists freeze food scraps before feeding to their worms. Is this just a function of easy storage of food scraps, or is there a practical reason I would want to feed pre-frozen foods as opposed to fresh food scraps? Also, what is your opinion on worm smoothies (blenderized food scraps made for worms, not made of worms)?
Freezing can be both for storage and also to make the food easier to consume. Also it can reduce fruit flies. Pureed food is good to have them eat faster too.
@@PlantObsessed Thank you, I'll experiment with both
What software do you use to edit your videos?
Power director
Thank you. Do you water with tap water or with filtered water which isn´t as hard? I heard that I think carbonates and bicarbonates are preventing bacterias from accessing many nutrients (minerals etc.) because those carbonates are binding to very much nutrients etc. . I heard this from John Kempf you may check his videos if you wish there is just veery much we need to know. Greetings.
I have super hard water here so I either use reverse osmosis water or treat the water when adding to the worm bin. I will use straight tap water when making bedding a month early before feeding it to the worms. The other ingredients will slightly acidify the bedding and start breaking down the minerals in the water.
Have a fantastic wormy new year! Your audio was having some issues. Mic battery dying? Soil sharks, compost piranha?
New camera. I will investigate what the issue is. Might need an external mic if the on board mic is that unreliable.
@@PlantObsessed it sounded like it was adjusting the volume any time you banged against the side slightly - has the camera got an automatic volume adjustment feature and it’s trying to be too clever?
@@kimberleywormerama1501 I think you are right
Ann I think you need to join the local Avacado anonymous....
The struggle is real 😂
Mam
Bin seems very dry
How is possible to eat feed
Some of the bin is dry. It encourages the worms to move to the wet part with food. The left part of the bin is dry and almost finished the right side is more wet and has new food.
Don't worms crawl around in the bedding, create air holes that's keeping the bedding aerobic. I don't see the reasoning behind, constantly turning everything upside down and fluffing the bedding other than just really disturbing the worms.
The holes the worms make are not enough to vent the decomposition gasses and add air between the bedding particles. It is an artificial system. 👍🏼😃🪱