Compost Worms

Compost Screen...

Made an alteration to the compost screen by installing a larger gauge (right) mesh as the smaller gauge (left) was clogging up far to much which made the process rather long... I screened 3 of the drums yesterday & the end product still comes out fairly fine with no large "clumps"... This makes it great for breaking up the soil structure in the beds... I also think that it will make great bedding for the worm farms...
I am going to screen the next batch of manure before I add it to the barrel to see if I can get a more consistent "cooking" of the blend... Being horse manure Im not to worried about burning the plants more so trying to cook any worm drench out that the horses may have been medicated with that can kill our little fellas... It is also a good time to add the Blood n Bone & cracker dust to help feed the bacteria that aid in the process...

Worm Farm...

The old farm has had a composted horse manure blend in it for a month now & was harvested today...  We got at lest double the amount of worms back out of there compared to what was added as well as many, MANY more eggs than we could of anticipated... It took about a month for them  to "work through" the compost so was most impressed with that...



We came across something we have never seen before so made a clip (sorry guys)  as well...

A batch of compost blend that I screened yesterday was added to the farm & the ½ barrel we found a while back... A makeshift cover has gone on the ½ barrel for now but that should be remedied during the week... I think we will be putting all the composted horse manure through the worm farms from now on & the big blue barrel can be the food scraps...

Have a great one all...

: )»

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Update of the vertical teaponic system and the compost tea experiment

The parsley and the small collard greens

  Things seem to be going well in the vertical farm, expept the parlsey, I made the mistake of plugging the extra light for the all day on friday, and when i came back in the evening, a couple of the leaves looked dried up ... Also, It overall seem to not be as green anymore- I though maybe not enough light- but it could be also anot enough nitrate. But today there is a new leaf growing on it, so it probably will be good. 

The green onions are growing nicely and this growth has attracted the lovely kitty who palyed with it. have transferred poted plants on the window seal so the cat does not have acess to it anymore. 

Given the nice growth of the collard greens (and green onions) I decided to count the number of leaves and the size of the biggest leaf just for the heck of it. The longest green onion leaf is just below 11 inches (30 cm) long, the longest collard greens is 2 inches (6 cm), and the parsley is 7 inches (17.7cm). Each of the 4 green onion has 3 leaves, the parsley has 9 leaves, and the biggest collard green has 9 leaves. I took a few pictures of the plants to get an idea of the progression. 

The small collard greens - pulled out to show the small roots growing out of the stem.

 The bigger collard greens, with plenty of leaves growing from it.

A view of the whole teaponic system. 

On the tea" side of the things, this week using 1.5 cups of worm compost for 2 cups of water, it seems that I got some traces of nitrates. Given the color of the tea, I really have to give a try at the stips style tests. But see the picture below, it when from a dark brown to a  "redder" dark brown after the incubation. I think it could be the apparition of some of the red of the API kit that changed the color this way, indicating that therre is some sufficient nitrate to change the color. I will get a set of test strips for next weeks tea and update.

The systems ammonia keeps showing traces (what i add) but it does not accumulate - showing that is really is cycle. Also Nitrate do not seem to accumulate either, they have been indetectable since thier "diseaperance "from the water a few weeks back, after the system had fully cycled.

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Backyard Farm garden update Air Pruning Compost plans for the patch 18th Dec 2014

Time for a bit of an update on the veggie patch in our little Backyard Farm now that Summer has well & truly hit SE Queensland..  
Was working on a few clips but they unfortunately got lost when the hard drive crashed so I thought Id give you a quick look at a few of them all in one clip.. 

Will have a follow up post on the wicking beds & how they fare during the high temperatures we had during Spring posted in the next day or so ;-)

If anyone in Australia is interested in purchasing the Root Pouches you can find a tab to our small store under our banner above..

Cheers all & have a great one.. 

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The vertical farms update compost tea a valid nitrogen source

Collard green is getting huge (kind of)

 The vertical farm is growing along, I am not sure if it is the days starting to get longer, or my experimenting with the compost tea, but here is what is happening: the collard greens and green onions have grown quite a lost since last update. Especially the collard greens, I might have a mini-salad or something soon.

On the other hand, the parsley is still not doing much, and the pepper seedling that was growing has lost its first leaves and last cleaning I broke the first true leaf, so only 2 true leaves are still on it. Not sure if it is because I have treated the poor thing roughly or if its not liking it in there any-more....

Between below is the same collard greens on feb 16th

On the nutrients side, nitrates have started to increase again - since I add a mL of ammonia everyday (or almost). Last post about the system, Dr. Ruteledge (google + user) advised me to check out Dr. Tims video, suggesting that maybe the tests are not detecting nitrates because they are to high and "burnout" the reagents before it has time to react and produce the desired colour. So I diluted the water before testing it, and there is no trace of nitrite, a bit of ammonia (my system is 3 gallon and I add 1 mL of household ammonia everyday or almost).

I also did again the compost tea "experiment" last week end, but making sure I dilute the "sample" to test it. I actually decided to test non diluted and diluted using the test strips. The dilution 1:5 actually is light in color, so when ill decide to do the "timed experiement" again, I will use the test in drops.

THE COMPOST TEA EXPERIMENT !      From top to bottom: just after adding compost
compost tea after 10 min
compost tea after 10 mindiluted 1:5

compost tea after  1H
compost tea after  1H diluted 1:5

compost tea after  2H
compost tea after  2Hdiluted 4:15

Compost tea after 4H
Compost tea after 4H diluted 1:5

That is is the tap water used for the tea.

Compost tea after 6H
Compost tea after 6H diluted 1:5

Compost tea next morning (~15H)
Compost tea after ~15H diluted 1:5

So, what to make of that ? still dont know, all I know, is that sometimes between 2 and 6 hours, nitrate decrease, and nitrate as well. Given that the dilution 1:5 always look "lower" in color than the non diluted one. This time next morning there was still some amount of both, but clearly lower. In the pictures, it seems that maybe nitrite are decreasing later than nitrates, but given that these test are not very precise, it is difficult to really conclude. Maybe I should sneak in a lab and make measurement there in a more rigorous manner ... If anyone sees a spectrophotometer that need to be discarded give it to me ! lol.
 

The compost tea: 1 quart of water (left out to dechlorinate with an airstone), about 3.5 cups of worm compost and also 1/8th tsp of diatomeous earth and 1/8th of epsom salts, no sugar added.

I added some diatomeous earth because my try of adding some pumice seemed to improve the green onion, and epsom salt because I added some when I set up the system, and I though it was long ago ... not very scientific ... sorry ;-)

One last thing, the school project is about to start, this week, I will "pitch" the project to the students - I hope the couple of students that inspired the project will sign up! If you want to support my project with the school, but that you cant volunteer, you can give a donation to Chfermette see the donation button on the top right corner. Any donation will be used to finance a trip to one of NYC rooftop farms or to insure the continuation of the project after the end of the spring semester. Also, I am in the process of making it a non profit.
Please If you enjoy the blog content, comment and/or subscribe.

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Cycling is definitly over No Ammonia no nitrites And Compost Tea

Cycling is definitely over ammonia and nitrites are undetectable.  Nitrates have been decreasing progressively. Nitrites peaked and totally disappeared very quickly. Also, the intresting thinkg is how the pH decreased until the nitrite peak was over, and then started to increase again. I think it is because there are pieces of eggshells trapped in polyester is the tower.

Last weekend, I did the first of the monthly maintenance check up. I took the system apart to rinse the pump, I removed the profiler that was in it, there was a worm cocoon and a fat worm in it, they both were returned to the tower. The water has an interesting reddish tint, but didnt have any distinctive smell to it. Not sure where that color is from, but  could be natural coloration occurring because of the vermiwash and compost tea. It also could be that the wood I leaching out something. When I built the tower, I remember that the wood was giving away some lightly coloured water. maybe the plastic wrap I have put on the walls has gaps and some of what is in the wood is leaching out. I may need to rethink the cover of the wood, maybe using a double layer of plastic wrap would be better. 

 

The tee, with old socks to filter particles

After cleaning up the pump, I also decided to mess with the water pipe. It is a flexible poly tubing, and was pinched at the level of the tower. Also, the green onion getting soft may be due to over-watering, so I needed to reduce the flow from the pump. I had a couple of tees and a small valve. I used one of the tee and the valve to divert some of the flow from the pump and return it to the reservoir, the other one to play the role of an elbow and avoid the pipe to kink. I covered the ends with nylon sock to play a filters role, and added a short length of tubing on the "top end" to avoid splashing things around. In the process I kind of messed up the 3 pepper seedlings. It seem that maybe one will survive, the other will definitely not.

Compost tea version 2.0

After that, I added 2 cups of compost tea, brewed for 24h. Oxygenated using the aquarium pump. The tea was "brewed" using worm casting (1.5 teaspoon), seaweed (1/8 teaspoon) and same of brown sugar. After 24h there was no foam on the top (Internet tends to say there should be a lot). I filtered the "tea" measure the nitrate and ammonia (traces) and sprayed some on the leaves (according to compost tea aficionados it is great to fight diseases and so-on), and dumped the rest in the reservoir. I also added 2mL of this house plant fertilizer that we have laying around. I keep checking ammonia and nitrate on a daily basis and the compost tea does not seem to change much of these. There seem to have a slight increase of ammonia, but the plant fertilizer contains both ammonia and nitrate (ammonium nitrate and other nitrate source). I kept adding 2 ml of fertilizer everyday since. I decided that I will add much more  of all the ingredients and get molasses ( instead of brown sugar) the next batch, which I prepared yesterday: 1 hipping table spoon of worm compost, one teaspoon of seaweed, and one teaspoon of molasses.  This version has some foam on the top, indicating that there is life in it. Last night I added another teaspoon of molasses, as tonight the foaming has greatly reduced. It "brewed" for 48h, the colour is yellow-brown, its smells good (like the molasses, with some earthy smell mixed to it) has a little bit of foam on the top, but does not have a significant amount of ammonia or nitrates. I also sprayed some on the leaves and dumped the remaining in the tank. To avoid risk of overflow, I removed about 2 cups from the reservoir. The water is still brown-redish, and still does not have any particular smell to it.

The "growlight"

 I also made a "growlight" out of a power strip, a couple on plug-light-bulb-sockets and 2 23W CFL (5000k "bright daylight"), since the days are seriously shortening. On Tuesday night however, some of the parley looked strange : a few leaves were wilted, and theses leaves, where the closest to the lights. I decided to use only one light, and to put it on the timer with the pump. The wilted leaves did not recover, but no more of these appeared.

some wilted leaves on the lower parley plant.

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Compost Tea update brewing seem to consume the nitrates!

Last week when I tested the compost tea, There was a quite high reading of nitrite and nitrate. The interesting thing is, Even if I gradually increase how much compost I add for the tea, i didnt see it increasing progressively. One thing was quite different though: we had a guest at home, so i got to brewing the tea only on Sunday late in the evening, and let it brew only for about 2 hours. So it got me thinking: what if, there is some nitrate at detectable level in the compost, but that it is used in some way by the living organisms during the brewing process ?

Yesterday, I set my compost tea to brew, with a timer on the side for 1h, 2h and then the next morning (about 12h from the set up time). I also "sacrificed" a strip to measure the water - molasses mixture before adding the compost to get a baseline. Here are the results: 

Time	GH	KH	Ph	NO2-	NO3-
0	30	80	6	0	0
1	180	120	7.5	10	200
2	180	120	7.5	10	200
12	180	120	7.5	0	0

So It seems that my tap water was slightly acidic (at that time) and does not contain significant amounts of nitrates. An hour and 2h after adding the compost to the mixture it does not seem to be different, but by 12 hours all nitrite and nitrates are gone. I cant measure how much ammonia there is - as I have only drop type tests for ammonia and the compost tea is pretty dark. Obviously, and as expected, the GH and KH increase a lot by addition of the compost.
So where does this nitrogen go ?
If nitrates are consumed by denitrification, my pH should increase to some extend. Denitrification is the biological process in which bacteria and fungus are transforming N03- into N2. This process consumes H+ ions [http://www.umich.edu/~lehnert/denitrification.html], which should raise the pH. Most hobby website would mention that denitrification is an anaerobic process, but in fact, some organisms can function in both aerobic and anaerobic modes [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00408378], but is less efficient in aerobic environment. The pH seems stable, so I would want to say that this is not happening, but possibly the amount of change would not be reflected in the strips measurements. I cant test that without an actual lab. Also I have aeration going in the tea, which should slow down the process if occuring.
My hope Is that bacterial activity is fixing nitrogen into their proteins, which would keep the nitrogen in the system. Some bacteria are able to use N03- as a nitrogen source for their protein synthesis [http://www.bashanfoundation.org/cyli/cylisporocarps.pdf].

Conclusions for me at this point : I will brew my compost teat only for an hour or so from now on. Also, I will not add systematically molasses as there will not be a focus on increasing bacterial life.

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Vertical farm and compost update

This week, the tower farm is continuing to grow. I had to add about half a gallon of water to top of, the green onions are growing like crazy in the bottom of the tower. the rest keeps growing at its rate, except the parsley that is kind of stagnant.
On the nutrient side, I have just brewed some compost tea using 2 cups and 1/4 of worm compost in 1 quart of water, and nitrite and nitrate still read below the detection level in the compost tea , however, in the system, the level of nitrate is increasing. I did add 4 mL of ammonia last week, and again this week, but I think next week I will not add any, and see what happens. I recall that during December, I was adding 1 mL everyday of ammonia and it didnt seem to increase nitrates at all, I am starting to think that the compost tea brings some nitrogen in the system, but not in the form of ammonia, nitrite or nitrate, but that the system processes it into nitrate. Also, there is a little pick of nitrite.

For the compost, I now have a bucket set up for the school project, I have added a bag of 8 quarts of storebought compost to the bucket. The bucket was filled with paper and a bit of food scraps, and for the last 3 weeks, I have added the solids from the compost tea. I added storebought compost so there is enough finished compost for the class project when it starts. When I digged though to make a separation with compost on one side and "composting in progress" on the other side, there was quite a few worms in the bucket. I also added for good measure a couple of large handfull of partially composted material from my wormcrate - which contains adult worms and probably cocoons, and mixed it with the storebought compost. Of course i hydrated it as it was fairly dry out of the bag. My worm crate produced some more finished compost and it was incredibly fluffy and non sticky this time around,

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Why I wont get fish for now and compost tea experiment

The farm from above

Its been over a month and half now that I have set up the tower farm. In the process of cycling, I have discovered that eggshell can release ammonia (I should have guessed right ?), that pH drops quickly once the beneficial bacteria are established, and that the pH climbs back up in absence of new ammonia. I have also lost my green onion and basil.

The farm from bellow

pH has decreased then increased since no new ammonia was added

Since the system has "cycled", I have hesitated in what fish to get. I will not get fish for now. Why that ? After all the point aquaponics it to get fish to right ?
The reason is that I decided to have an apprenticeship about aquaponics with  Citizen Schools and while discussing with the Citizen Schools people, the fish seemed to be a down side for my plan, so I ruthlessly removed the fish from the picture.

Citizen schools is an association that brings professionals to teach after hours classes (apprenticeships and other programs) to selected middle schools in NYC. Only schools that have 85% of student who are eligible for free or reduced lunch due to their parents low income. Since the fall semester I have been volunteering there for an apprenticeship where we teach our students about heart health. Anyway, A few weeks back I proposed to have an apprenticeship where we would build an aquaponic system with the students and learn about the basic science behind it. So after discussion with the school staff I settled for an "other"ponic system, instead.


Since my all point about starting the system was not only to grow some food at home, but also on a sustainable manner, hydroponic seems like a bad alternative to aquaponics. From the sustainability point of view, hydroponic seems a bit difficult given the need to do full water change, and the need for concentrated fertilizers. An Internet search for compost tea tends to make one inclined to believe that compost tea is the panacea for organic gardening, because of beneficial microbes and a balanced NPK. This is why I have been experimenting with compost tea.

The farm has cycled, and nitrate dropped to 0

I have been making compost tea in the last 3 week ends, increasing the amount of worm compost each week. After "brewing" the tea, I measure the amounts of nitrate and ammonia. So far, I was not able to have a nitrate (or ammonia) level above the detection limit. last week end, I have "brewed" a compost tea using 1/4 of a cup of worm compost, 1 table spoon of molasseses (unsulfured) and shredded seaweeds in 2 cups of water, brewed it for a day and half. After a days and half, it still smelled like molasseses (I like that smell).  I also added some of this greengrow plant food, very diluted. Because I have just seen the nitrates dropping, I decided to add some ammonia source, I though about eggshells, but the pH has increased to 7.4; so given the pka of 9 for calcium carbonate (witch is what eggshells are made of)  I am not sure it is a good idea. Instead I bough a 1/2 gallon bottle of ammonia at the dollars store and added one mL (a bit less than 1/4 of a teaspoon) of it on Monday and Tuesday ( gave ~ 1 ppm reading) nothing yesterday, and now ammonia is back to 0. I will keep adding 1ml everyday for now, until I figure out how to make a strong enough compost tea (if that is possible).
I am keeping track of my experiment hoping that I could make a sustainable "tea"ponic system for the school.

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Compost Teas Seeds

 Compost Tea...
Finely started up a batch of Compost tea on Friday using a small aquarium pump with an air stone, stockings, compost, worm castings, molasses & some cracker dust...

It was left overnight to brew after a few adjustments but hasnt turned out like other batches I have seen on You Tube so left it brew until early Sunday evening... I have been "massaging" the bags 2 or 3 times a day to help release the goodies further into the brew...

I did a few batches of soak & pour method of compost tea, where compost was mixed in a container & left for 24 hours then applied to plants, but really didnt notice a difference between the control plants & the ones that were fed with the tea after a week... I am still going to leave some as a control & see what they look like after a week... Have also thought about adding some seaweed solution to the brew but as it is an after though I may leave it to the next batch... Dont want to over do it too much...

Seedlings & other Plantings...
The seedlings in the trays have been a bit of a mixed bag as far as germination goes... The Udumalapet Eggplants we really wanted havent germinated so have planted another batch of 16 seedlings in 2 trays... The Perennial Capsicum seed hasnt shot at all either so we might try some seed that Koo has been saving... The Purple Basil B? planted has germinated & we have Onions, Beans, Silverbeet & Kohl Rabi popping up everywhere....
** Does big HAPPY DANCE **
Seed Tape...
Moo & I have made up some seed tape with some Carrot, Onion & Lettuce seeds just to make the spacing of the seeds in the beds a lot easier...

Sunday Morning saw Koo & myself go to the Ipswich markets where we picked up another bulb of Elephant Garlic, Purple skinned Sweet Potato & a Pineapple... The Garlic will be planted this week with the other purple Seed Garlic we bought... Not to certain where the Sweet Potato is going yet but shall find somewhere & the Pineapple will go into another pot for now...





Sunday Walk...

 We went for a walk at a local "recreation Reserve" where we came across debris left over from the January floods that took so many lives & destroyed many others homes & livelihoods... The photos show some of the larger pieces we found... There was an astounding amount of plastic bottles, bits of foam, plant pots, water & fuel drums...We did come across a large blue drum cut in half length ways so collected that to use as a planter as well as some rubbish just to help clean up the place a bit... Will be a long time before places like this recover...

 Shall post a walk through update Video tomorrow... Ran out of light tonight...

Have a great one all....

: )»

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Update on the vertical garden and compost tea experiment

It now has been almost 2 months that I built the vertical farm ! and things are going along pretty well ! I have some parsley growing, a few green onions, 2 collard green plants and swiss chard. The parsley that got burned by the light bulb that was too close almost made it, but I pulled it out to make space for the seedlings to come. A few weeks back Ive planted the core of 2 collard greens and one of a swiss chard, just to see, and last weekend when doing a bit of cleaning I pulled a bit on one of the collard greens and was happy to see a few tiny roots that where growing out of it ! The collards, swiss chard and onions are all "salvage" from the kitchen scraps.

I just seeded a few seeds last week end : Cilantro, Parsley, Roquette, Letuce (black seed simpson), Swiss chard, Summerlong basil, and Spinach. I hope to be able to plant all of that - to see how many plants I can put in there.

I have kept adding 2 mL of NH4OH to make sure that there is enough nitrogen. I have kept increasing the amount of compost I use to make the compost tea, so far I am at 1 cup - which is 240 mL - of worm compost for 2 cups (480 mL) of water. Depending on the volume in the tank I am either using "new" water, or water form the system, and "brew" it for about a day and a half. After that i measure if there is ammonia and nitrate in there. Given the coloration from the compost (of course filtered) its really difficult to tell, but so far, it does not seem that there is large amount of it. Possibly, the different compounds of the compost interfere with the kits reactions. I may get these strips to see if the results are different form the API kit I have. The systems water has some ammonia (the one i add) but no nitrite or nitrate accumulating. The Ph seem stable around 7 ish : the ammonium hydroxyl I add probably buffers the acidification due to nitrification, as well as the compost tea.
Also exiting things are happening at the school I volunteer, but there will be more about it in a little.

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Finishing off the front veggie patch home made compost

& now there are 6...
As mentioned in the last blog I have been rather busy over the past few weeks trying to get the front garden beds up & running.. Added another 2 beds over the weekend just past to bring the total number of beds up to 6..

The last 2 beds will be made up in a few weeks time after we pick up a couple of ½ tanks that have been offered to us (Thank you sir).. Once they are all in Bianca & I will decide on what sort of cladding will be added to them to finish them off..
I have decided to keep using the wicking beds in the front yard after seeing how invasive the onion weed has been in the hay bale & lasagne style beds.. Not sure we will use IBC or tin style beds in the lawn as of yet & still have some tin put aside if we want to go down that road.. The compact dimensions of the IBCs would suit the slope of the land better but the tin beds wouldnt need to be clad so it will be something we think about later..

Wicking IBC beds...
Have been using the IBCs as wicking beds for a while now & have come up with a few modifications on the way they are being put together so they can store water in the reservoir..

Will be interesting to see how they go over summer once it kicks off.. I have a feeling that the corn in particular will be very appreciative of having the extra water available to it..

Harvesting the compost...
We have had 2 "slow cooking" piles of compost going in the patch now for close to 8 months.. As I ran out of horse manure on the weekend I decided to raid these piles to help add some organic matter to the new beds.. One pile was actually supposed to be a "Back to Eden" style wood mulch that just "cooked" a tad too much..

Must say that was very pleased with the way both batches had broken down & have already used over ½ of the composted timber pile.. There is a fair amount of the clipping compost left & think that most of that will be used in the last 2 IBC beds planed for the front yard..

Super fast manure mulching...

As you may have guessed by now I love using horse manure in the gardens & as an edible bedding for the compost worms.. The manure we normally get has been sitting in a pile for a few weeks before it is bagged up so is semi composted & normally very moist.. My local supplier was out of his finest pony poop when I stopped in on Saturday but I was lucky enough to get a few bags the next day from local farm gate.. Some of these pellets had been "sun baking" for a bit becoming rather hard to push through the screen so the big guns were brought out to process it : )»

Have tried the lawn mower method before with the moist manure but it just didnt want to cooperate by clumping up & stalling the mower.. Am thinking that I might be sun drying the moist manure for a few days in the future then running over it with the mower.. Will also save the gloves from extra wear & tear methinks...

--------------------

Looking at playing around with a chook feeder this week so shall do a quick post on that once its built..
There is also our Bits Out the Back Facebook page that we post mini updates on the worms, fish & veggie patch if you feel like a visit..

Have a great one all..

: )»

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Bathtub worm update some worm filled compost

Missing worms..

The bathtub worm farms that we keep under the house have been slightly neglected for a few weeks.. We currently have an aquaponic system taking up a lot of space & blocking walkways under the house making it hard to check up on the squirmers..  Knowing that the farms were going to be cut off for a while they were both fed ½ a garbage bag of wet shredded paper, a litre of coffee grounds & some leafy greens scraps from the patch to see them through until we could get back to them.. I wasnt overly concerned as they also had their manure & compost based bedding to feast on if the other food ran out..  Was hoping to harvest a load of castings for a few projects but got a bit of a shock when I opened the farms up..

The first farm I looked into was the newer bathtub farm..  This farm is located underneath the "S" bend for the bathroom sink, which had unfortunately sprung a leak over the past few weeks without us knowing.. I have a feeling the worms werent very partial to the mint toothpaste or soap flavoured water that had been trickling into the farm.. No bodies could be found in the farm so I think they decided to jump ship..  
½ of the castings in the farm were collected to be used around the patch..  I decided to leave the worms & cocoons in there so they would have a chance at a better soap free life elsewhere..  The rest of the "minty fresh" castings are being used to feed a few dead spots on the lawn.. 

The second, older farm had what looked like a mass exodus of worms from it & I found evidence for this in the leachate bucket where I found a few dried out, crispy worms.. We did have a bit of rain but have never had issues with damp weather causing worms to leave in large numbers before as I have seen occur in other farms..  The only thing I did differently in this farm was to use mushroom compost bedding in one end of the farm where as before I had just used it as a top dressing..  

About 90% of the compost had been processed & the castings  contained a good amount of cocoons so am not 100% sure as to what the problem was that caused the mass exodus..

The worms that were removed looked nice & fat which has puzzled me further.. We do have 2 rather fat skinks  that frequent the worm farm but dont think they would of consumed a few thousand worms over the past few weeks..
These red wrigglers have been added to a worm barrel under one of the lime trees down the back for the time being.. I have plans to add them to a much larger farm in a few months time ;)

With all the castings removed from the farm, I took the opportunity to make up some top notch castings tea from the castings that had collected in the drainage rock..

It was as easy as piling the rocks up one end & hitting it with the hose once we had collected as many worms as we could from it.. The tea drained straight into a few buckets & was used to water the beds in the garden down the back.. 

I havent made the farms up again as of yet & am not sure I will straight away..  While the bathtubs have worked fabulously for us up until now, Im not sure if I will use this style of farm again as our main worm farm.. I think I have stumbled upon a far better way to get the worms to work for us in the patch..
 
Last November I made up a compost pile inside an unused IBC cage using shade cloth to line it & help keep the compost contained.. It was filled with layers of mulched up weed trees (Chinese elm), horse manure, lucerne/alfalfa hay & scraps from cleaning out a few garden beds.. Has to be the best compost we have made to date but you can see that for yourself in the clip below ;) 

 

I have already started to harvest some of the worms & compost from this pile to add into a holding farm until the next compost pile has cooled down & is ready for them to move in.. 




 
Hope to have the next compost pile on the way by the weekend.. This time I will be using lucerne/alfalfa hay, horse manure, mulched pigeon pea, mango trimmings & corn stalks to build the pile up.. Hope to have that lot of compost ready to add to the patch by Summer if all goes well..

Cheers folks & have a great one,
Rob..

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