Vermicoast

Last Chance to Order Your Christmas Worms!

shel — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 04:09:46 +0000

I will be away, yes, finally I will be out of town for the holidays.

I will be leaving on the 22nd and back late on the 27th. I will leave 6lbs of worms ( bagged up in 1lb bags each) in the bin by the front door on your left as you face it, before I go.

The house sitter will be in and out daily, but not taking phone orders.

For those of you who have been here before you know how to leave your payment.

To you who have not been here, it is simple.

Above the bin, which is on the left side of the front door as you face it are the worms, bagged up and ready to go. Each of the bags has a lb of worms and a lb of their own bedding in it. Above them are small brown envelopes. That is what your payment goes into. There is wooden box to the right of that with a slot for the envelope. Just drop it in there.
Welcome to my world: the world of organic waste reduction through the team effort of red wiggler worms and YOU! Keeping worms is simple. I have clients in second grade, who do this for their science projects and then take it home and introduce it to their parents, grandparents and friends. What better use of our organic wastes, than to amend the soil that feeds us? Either with either flowers, to feast the eyes and spirit or crops from your vegetable garden? Worm binning will work for you as it has for countless others. After 23 years of raising worms, I can say this: I was green when green was just a color!

I hope this helps you with your holiday shopping and that you all have a safe and wonderful holiday season.

I will see you back here in the New Year!

~Shel

The Paper Questions Regarding the Worm Bin.

shel — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 03:25:55 +0000

I receive many questions either via email or on the phone regarding this issue. Here are some of them.

Questions regarding the bedding for worms in their bins has been an ongoing and recurring theme. Since the bedding is a vital component of the worm bin, this a good place to start.

Q: Can I use office paper once it is shredded?

A: Yes, all papers will work in the worm bins. The smaller the particle size the faster it will be consumed by the worms. I always keep both dry and soaked paper on hand, as I find that one bin will be too damp or even wet and another will be in need of wet paper as it has dried out. Just about all inked paper is soy based ink now. You can shredded glossy junk mail and magazines to use as bedding and it works well. Glossy paper is made with a ceramic slurry base, which when you soak it is removed and safe for the worms. Soak it for at least 24 hours before you wring it out and fluff it up for your bin use. The left over water can be used over again many times to soak more paper. When you think of your home and all the paper which either goes to the landfill or to your recycle bin, IE, paper towels and their cardboard inserts, it is the same for toilet paper roll inserts, you will find endless sources of paper for the shredder.

Q. Why is the paper bedding so important to the worm’s bin ?

A. For a variety of reasons: the bedding is a site to bury their food in. It is a place for them to mate in, leave their cocoons to mature, a haven when it may be too hot or cold outside the bin for the worms to be insulated within. Finally it is a food source for them. You will find that when the bin is ready for harvest in 4 to 6 months the bedding will almost all have been consumed by the worms.

Here, at Vermicoast, I have found that the worms I raise: Eisenia Fetida, have grown accustomed to newspaper and junk mail, as it is plentiful supply. The worms have adapted so well to it that I encourage my clients, who are first time worm bin users to continue to use it no matter what their worm bins have provided for them as a bedding material. Newspaper over peat moss, office papers over coir fiber, as I have found the worms will adapt readily to their new bin with what they have been accustomed to, especially in new bin surroundings.

Q. Why do you wring out and fluff the bedding once it has been soaked?

A. The worms prefer their bedding to be between 55to 75% moist. This enables them to slide by each other in order to mate, find their food with ease, deposit their casts. There are many, many reasons for this.

I soak the paper for 24 to 48 hours and have another pail or the bin ready to receive paper. I wring it out. As I do this I gently pull it apart allowing for air spaces, this is what I mean by ‘fluffing’. It is then placed into the bin. Since it is very moist, it will reduce in size or depth as you add more paper to the bin. The soaked paper when you first begin your bin should come to within 1″ of the top of the bin.

Q: How often do I add soaked, shredder paper to my worm bin?

A: Once the process has begun in the worm bin, more bedding will be added as it is consumed. If, after 1 month, the paper level has lowered by 2″ to 4″, add enough bedding to bring the level back up to within 2″ of the top of the bin.

Q: Are there any types of paper which I should not use when I first start my bin?

A: No. Once you have soaked the shredded paper long enough, either 24 or 48 hours, all papers are fine in the worm bin. Just be sure that you have wrung it out well and fluffed it up for your bin use, before you add it into your bin.

Q. Can I use coir fiber in my worm bin?

A. Yes, this is a renewable resource and the worms will eventually consume it. However, I have found over many years, that the red wigglers I raise prefer newspaper and all waste paper from the home. Newspaper, et al, is also a renewable resource, which generally is delivered to your home daily. The red worms I raise are used to paper and do their best work when they have plenty of soaked bedding to have their food wastes buried in it.

Q. I was away for about two weeks, maybe three and I had put enough of the soaked shredded newspaper bedding into the bin to fill it to the top, before I left along with the worm’s food. When I came back and looked into the bin after a week the casts were all gray in color. Is this normal?

A. Yes, it is normal. However, it does sound like the worms may have run out of the organic wastes you buried into the bedding, and then had to make do with the newspapers alone as a food source. This would account for the casts all being gray and not a deep, rich brownish-black. A balanced diet will give your worms a better all round food source and will give you higher quality casts from them.

I hope this information helps you.

Enjoy your worms!

~Shel

A Few of Your Questions and Some Answers

shel — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 03:36:31 +0000

The Journey of the Worm

Q: How did composting worms get to the United Sates?

A: They came like many of us have, as immigrants. They hitched a ride on imported plants to the United Sates. The worms were either fully formed adults, new hatchlings cocoons or. Once the plant was introduced into our gardens the worms began to multiply and thrive in their new environments….

Earthworm taxonomist Sam James, a professor at Iowa’s Maharishi University of Management, says that until the arrival of European colonists, the continent above the glacial line was worm-free. “When ice sheets covered much of northern North America,” he says, “native earthworms were eradicated.” The glacial edge runs from Washington State to Long Island, with a southerly dip below the Great Lakes and Ohio.

Although native earthworms are found below this line, the innocuous locals, which number 90 or so identified species, still haven’t squirmed more than 100 miles north in thousands of years. The invaders came to this continent packed in the soil around potted plants, in ships’ ballast or tucked in the hooves of livestock. Aided by their fevered reproductive rate, the official blessing of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a reputation for results and durability with fishermen, they prospered. This last from Wikipedia.

Q: Why can’t I just collect the worms from my garden and start a worm bin?

A: It is unlikely that the worms you find in your garden are composting worms. Most likely they are burrowing worms called Lumbricus Terrestris. This burrower is a robust, almost pencil thick worm, and frequently grows up to six inches long. It lives in depths of six inches to six feet.

By the very action of burrowing through the soil, Lumbricus Terrestris creates tunnels that allow air and water to reach down into the plant root zones. Burrowers use their tunnels as underground throughways to move about, even creating chambers for winter hibernation. At the depths where they live the ground is stable enough and the burrows can last over time.

Burrowers move through the soil eating organic matter, dirt and whatever comes before them. These worms create tunnels that allow water, air and nutrients to filter down to the root levels of plants, shrubs and trees.

Another common burrowing worm Lumbricus rubellus has a distinctive red color and is often called a red worm. This points out the difficulty in using common names for specific animals, as the term “red worm” is used to describe at least two different worms with reddish coloration.

Q: Are composting worms called top feeders and why is that?

A: The top feeders have a slightly different function. Living in the top two to four inches of the soil, they devour large amounts of decaying matter which fall to the earths’ surface. In the wild these voracious eaters consume up to their own eight in organic matter each day. They leave behind their nutrient rich manure, referred to in these many ways: casts, worm castings, worm compost or vermicompost. Vermicompost is an excellent source of nutrients for plants, an organic and dynamic soil amendment.

One of the most common top feeders in the United States is Eisenia Foetida, highly recommended for vermicomposting. E Foetida is another worm referred to as a red worm because of it’s color.

Top feeders differ from burrowers in that they do not create permanent burrows. The material where they live is loose and whatever space they have created by moving through the area is soon compacted. They leave tunnels behind, but only as a consequence of their movement. These are not used aa a permanent throughway and are crushed or destroyed as soon as a human or animal walks above them.

I will have more of your questions and my answers here as time permits.

I hope your worms and their bins are doing well.

~Shel

Vermicoast's worms

Holiday time for me again, but short this time!

shel — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:42:41 +0000

I hope your summer is going well and that your worms are thriving. Vermicoast’s worms are with all this lovely and mild weather we are having. I have found that they are breeding as they should. It is like there is nothing else for them to do! They are also enjoying the fruits of the season. The water melon rinds are a big hit here, as well as the corn cobs.

I have just finished putting in all the food wastes, bedding and scattering some birdseed over the top as they will need all three things, while I am away. With 90 bins it is a large undertaking.

I am leaving as I always do, six pounds of worms and they do have enough of the bedding to eat, to the left of the front door as you face it. They are in a holding bin. Just lift the bin and take the number of pounds you need. There is a tray with envelopes above that bin and that is where your payment of $25.00 goes. There is a wooden box to the right of the envelopes with a slot in it and you place your envelope into the slot. Please write your name on it so I will know who has been here. I log everyone into the computer for the CPA.

I have always used the honor system here. It has worked remarkably well over the past 22 years.

I will be back on the 21st of this month.

I hope you have a great summer and I will be back here before you know it!

~Shel

How to order worms from Vermicoast, Revised!!!

shel — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 03:50:13 +0000

The worms and ~Shel

It is very simple and easy. Either call me or email me and I will have your worms ready for you. For those of you, who have already been clients of Vermicoast, you know the way I handle things here.

For first time worm bin clients I will tell you how do order your worms. You can email me from this site and I will pick up the email and get back to you as soon as I can. If you call the house phone (760.434.4223 ) I will call you back ASAP.

If on the off chance, you do know where I am located and Vermicoast is there are always worms bagged up and to the left of the front door as you face it. You can take any bag without a post-it on it and above that bin is a wrought iron rack with envelopes in it. There is a small rack with small envelopes on it. Please put your payment in the envelope and then into the small wooden box to the right of it. There is a slot for it to drop in on the top.

This system has worked since 1989. I have never had a problem with it. People, who are buying worms are the most honest people I have ever met. As you know, I am available after 9am and before 5pm on the house phone. I answer all worm related email between 9pm and 11pm. I can guarantee you that there is a great deal of email!

I hope this will clear up the 24 hour notice I asked you to give me in order have your order ready when you are.

From now on there is NO 24 hour notice you need to give me. Worms will always be there as long as I am here and not on a holiday. If I do decide to take time off, I will post it here.

I urge you all to read through the posts here at Vermicoast, as many of your questions can be answered with in them.

I hope to hear from you!

Enjoy your beautiful gardens and this delightful fall time of year!

~Shel

I will be speaking again at the San Diego County Fair this year!

shel — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 04:00:12 +0000

Yes, you read it right. I will be speaking again at the San Diego County Fair!

It is time once again, now that summer is here, for me to gear up and get ready for the fair.

I will be speaking and presenting on the Flower and Garden Stage.

My date for being there are June 19th, Father’s Day at 11.30, June 22nd at 11.30 and the 2nd of July at 1pm.

I will have a show and tell bin so you can see what a smaller verison of a working bin looks like, compared to the larger bins, which I will demonstrate for you: how to set one up at home for about $5.00 or $6.00 for a family of 4!

As always it will be good to be able to reuse a bin you have in your garage or reuse one of your Rubbermaid wash tubs from the kitchen, those Rubbermaid ones are handy when used as a worm annex. The worm annex is very useful, when you might have a temporary problem with your main bin and you need to have a safe bin to put your worms in, while you fix whatever is wrong in your bin.

I will look forward to seeing you at the fair. Between now and then I am using all my energies to get all the bins here in shape for the amount of time I will need to devote to the fair. I will also be harvesting more of the bins for the sale of the worms, which always happens after or during the fair!

I look forward to hearing from you, either here or via email with your questions or concerns about your bin or worms.

Enjoy your worms.

I look forward to seeing you at the fair!

~Shel

My Holiday and the Worms….

shel — Thu, 26 May 2011 03:39:21 +0000

I hope you all have the chance to get away this year, no matter how long or short your time away can be, it is good for us all to have a time out of time, when we can just be.

The worms have fared well in my absence. Sales have been fine considering this economy. I am looking forward to our annual county fair, where I will be speaking and presenting on the Garden Stage again. It is a chance for me to spread the word about worms, their many benefits to our soils and just how simple keeping worms can be.

This is going to be very short. Just to let you know I am back and I am looking forward to seeing as many of you as is possible at the fair.

Be well and enjoy your worms!

~Shel

My holiday this year, Vermicoast and you…

shel — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:34:46 +0000

Everyone takes a holiday, even me! I shall be visiting my relatives in Canada during the month of May. Despite the fact I shall be away my house-mate, Ken will be here and he will be able to fill the orders you will have for Vermicoast.

Please do leave a message on the house phone and Ken will return your calls and fill your worm needs. 760.434.4223

I hope you are all able to take a holiday this year. It is great to get away! It is also wonderful to come back refreshed and renewed. I know the worms will miss me, but not all that much. Their care will also need to be taken care of by me, too.

I will once again be at the San Diego County Fair, on the Flower Stage, presenting : Let Worms Eat Your Garbage! I will be there on three different days. As always I will enjoy meeting new people and explaining the wonders of using worms and their casts benefit to our gardens and plants. I hope to see you there!

I will be back here to post again, once I am home. I hope you have a good month.

~Shel

The Worms and Me.

Grey Water System for You and Your Worms.

shel — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:19:02 +0000

Grey Water

One of my favorite topics is water, it’s uses and the ways we can all work to conserve this precious resource. Consider, if you will, how many places on the planet inhabitants spend most of their day walking to the daily ration of water and bringing it home again for use. Here we turn on the tap or hose and think nothing of it. We should.

How many of you are currently using a grey water system?

Is there anyone who does know what grey water is?

I have done a grey water at my home and you can too. You can reuse water in ways you might not have thought possible in the past.

I have total turf reduction and have for many years. If you have been to my garden you would have seen how much mulch I do have almost everywhere. In most places, it is at least 6 to 12″ deep. I do not fancy ‘normal’ types of gardens, as they are too water thirsty.

The price of water is going up. We all know this fact. If you have extensive landscaping, grey water will save you money. Due to my grey water usage, I utilize only 768 gallons or one unit of city water per month. We can all hope for more rain in our Mediterranean climate, which is unlikely given our rainfall history, in Souther California. Another incentive to have a grey water system is the knowledge you are contributing to the preservation or wise use of our dwindling Earth’s resources.

Grey water. What is it? According to the Health and Safety Code, “grey-water” means untreated wastewater that has not been contaminated by any toilet discharge, has not been affected by infectious, contaminated, or unhealthy bodily wastes, and does not present a threat from contamination by unhealthful processing, manufacturing, or operating wastes.’ “Grey-water” includes, but is not limited to, wastewater from bathtubs, showers, bathroom washbasins, clothes washing machines, and laundry tubs, but does not include wastewater from kitchen sinks or dishwashers. Let me repeat this: “Grey-water” includes, but is not limited to, wastewater from bathtubs, showers, bathroom washbasins, clothes washing machines, and laundry tubs, but does not include wastewater from kitchen sinks or dishwashers

Greywater System is one which is designed to collect greywater and transport it out of the structure for distribution in an Irrigation Field. A grey-water system may be as simple as the one in the power point presentation or as sophisticated as you want it to be.

An Irrigation Field can be any size to fit your landscape needs. It can be a small area of trees and shrubs or a small patch of lawn, or an entire garden, whether you grow flowers or vegetables.

Interestingly 90% of the beneficial bacteria, root hairs, and soil macro-fauna are in the top foot of the soil. Percolation in virtually all soils is much higher in this top zone than even two feet down, which is the typical minimum application depth for your grey water system. This extra percolation provides a generous extra margin of error.

I use mulch instead of gravel, because gravel basins do not to form a biomat. In fact, the tilling action of worms and all the other creatures in our soils is enhanced with the use of mulch. The worms here at Vermicoast have never had water other than grey-water used in their bins. The shredded and soaked paper is all soaked in it. This is for at least 24 to 48 hours, wrung out and placed into their bins.

Our state encourages our use of grey water, because it will percolate into the soils and be taken up by the root hairs of plants.

Mulch is organic waste material including but not limited to leaves, pruning’s, straw, pulled weeds and wood chips. Mulch needs be permeable enough to allow rapid infiltration of grey-water.

The Mulch Basin This is a type of irrigation or disposal field filled with mulch or other approved permeable material of sufficient depth, length and width to prevent ponding or standing water or runoff. A mulch basin may include a basin around a tree, a trough along a row of plants or any configuration necessary for irrigation or disposal. However, ideal conditions do not always prevail. Overall, I believe that a reasonable, highly conservative standard for shallow (6?9″) grey-water?fed dispersal would be an acceptance rate twice that for deep mulch leach-fields. These are what I have and use in my gardens.

What I use and have since 1994 is Clothing Washer System.

It is a grey-water system utilizing a single domestic clothes washing machine in a single-family dwelling. It was just in this past year; I started using the shower grey- water.

The grey-water usage for a single family is based on your water bills showing your water use for a month. You will certainly see that you are reaping the benefits of your use of grey water reflected in the reduction of your water bills, as I have.

For a single family household the estimated water use for two people :

Showers, bathtubs and washbasins 25 Gallons per Day

Laundry 15 GPD /person. If required in your city notification should be provided to the Enforcing Agency regarding the proposed location and installation of a grey-water irrigation or disposal system. In Carlsbad, my city, this agency is Code Enforcement. They have never contacted me. If you want to start your own grey-water system, contacting your city to find out what their regulations are for you is a very good thing to do.

The grey-water should be contained on the site where it is generated.

The most enlightening aspect I have learned is that not one person in our state has ever contracted any form of disease from grey water.

Greywater has approximately 1/2700th of the fecal matter that combined sewage has.

My fresh water capture system.

Upstairs outside grey-water pipes.

Hoses emerge from underground

Hoses from the washer going to grey-water for the worms.

Now is your chance to ask any questions you might have for me about this topic! ~Shel

Anatomy of a Red Wiggler Worm For You!

Jared — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:42:44 +0000

The mouth end of the red wiggler is microscopic in size.

It is shaped like an elephant’s trunk and in fact is called a proboscis, just like the elephant’s it searches around for food it wants and favors.

The helpers in the bin will first eat the food you have given the worms and once it is down to the size a worm can handle it the worms will eat it.

In order for the worm to be able to digest the food each worm has a crop and a gizzard, much like all birds do, to help grind their food in order to digest it properly.

This food will pass through the mouth area, move on to the fore gut, then the mid gut and then to the hind gut. After that last gut the material is called casting(s) and is expelled through the worm’s anus.

Each worm has the sex organs of both female and male. They do mate. This is done at their clittelum where the vas deferens and ova ducts are located. They join together like your forefingers if you knot them together and stay that way for up to three hours. During this time they exchange the fluids from the sex organs and when they separate a thin film is around each of their bodies at the clitellum. This film is around the new cocoon of potential hatchlings. It migrates up and over the top of the worm’s head. The end of it is flat, closed off when it leaves the worm. The first part of the cocoon to come off is pointed. This gives it a lemon-like shape and it is in fact lemon in color. It will change color during it’s maturation, from yellow to orange to a ruby red before hatching.

The red worm has a very basic circulatory system which does have a beat-like factor originating from the 5 pseudo hearts which is just after the crop and gizzard area. This system does go throughout the worm’s body.

The main nerve center of the worm’s body is located in the worm’s head. It is a basic ganglion. This enables each worm to detect heat, cold, light, certain elements they like in their food.

The worm breathes through it’s entire outer body. This is just one of the reasons it may, to some people, appear slimy. If we had out lungs on the outside of our bodies they would be pink to red and shiny also. The reason a worm can’t tolerate being out of it’s bin or the leaf litter, if it is not in a bin for long is that it loses it’s moist outer and protective sheen to the sun in less than two minutes. After that long it will suffocate and perish. This another reason to alway ensure that the moisture level of your worm bin is between 55% to 75% damp.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing my velvet worm and have learned from it.

~Shel