I Wish I Knew This Vermicomposting Method When I Started.

are you worried about the current fertilizer shortage or are you just looking for really high quality organic fertilizer for your vegetable garden i have a really amazing technique that we have discovered with worm composting and i am going to show you how easy and how cheap it is to make your own fertilizer at home [Music] i've had a worm bin now for oh i don't know over a decade and i've had it pretty refined but when my friend and permaculture nursery owner introduced me to this new concept it took it one step further this is the perfect system and you all are lucky enough to learn from the master himself albert's here to show you today his technique that he has refined over the years for raising worms here in florida hello everyone my name is albert and i run the moon landing garden and apiary and one of the things i do here is i farm worms i've been doing it for about seven years it's been very successful and i've developed my own system we're here in florida and we really have challenges with the heat and what i'm working with are red wigglers and so this system is what i developed here uh what will work you know in the north where it's colder is is different so the reason why it's different is because the worms they lay eggs and the eggs can sustain freezing even though the worms can't but they can't sustain heat worms need two critical components in florida shade and a large container much larger than anywhere else in the united states your shade needs to be very dense tree shade maybe the north side of your house like my worm bin is or even under shade cloth you have to be especially careful during the summer months one of the differences between the regular earthworm you see in your in your garden and the composting earthworm is a composing earthworms red wigglers especially uh they reproduce every three weeks you get about three to seven eggs with three to five uh worms in each one the worms like you find in your garden those are only going to produce they're only going to reproduce maybe uh three times a year and you might get you know three to five eggs out of it but they don't decompose food the regular earthworm aerate it eats soil these creatures and we're going to see it real soon they live and eat food scraps that's what they want we've settled on what we believe is the best container for worm farms in a tropical environment and that's why i use bathtubs we've tried five gallon buckets totes and other designer worm farms and they just don't cut it here in florida they are too small the worms get too hot and they die that is not very sustainable there's one thing you have to have is you have to have a seamless cover piece of plywood whatever it can be because if you don't um creatures can come in soldier fly can come in and even the rats will make their nests in there and eat the worms so you want to have a cover and you're going to see some palmetto bugs and some other things they don't they don't cause a problem this is the screen okay you have to have a drain and one of the things i always do is uh clear make sure the drain is cleared because if somehow water gets in this is going to fill up with water if the drain is clogged and the worms will drown that's why you really want a seamless top one of the things i got to mention is bathtubs have this hole here you got to cover it rats and mice can get in there our approach is different than most traditional worm composting systems we want to disturb them as little as possible so that they can do their work we only feed the colony once a month rather than every day like most other systems it's less work for us less stress for them and we still get just as much worm castings from the system in this system that i developed instead of having the castings in the bottom i bury the food and so what happens is they bring their waste to the top and that's really what we're the castings are their waste and that's what we're gathering and so they're not going to lay their eggs in their waste so you're not taking away their eggs you're not you're disturbing them the least amount possible instead of putting food in there every day i store the food in five gallon buckets with a really good sealed lid remember soldier fly are gonna get in there and you don't want that in your colony and then at the month i will feed i'll harvest the castings first and then i'll feed and that's what we're getting ready to do use two five gallon buckets per tub per month and about maybe five to ten gallons of bedding per month as well food they like to eat um bananas pears squash cucumber really mushy foods remember uh earthworms don't have teeth the more available food you give them the quicker you're going to get castings and the more castings you're going to get you don't want to use dairy products you don't want to use meat you don't want oily foods in there you don't want spicy foods in there stay away from garlic onions citrus doesn't work either with citrus as far as bedding is concerned peat moss is their favorite peat moss is not sustainable coconut quark is is works as well my preferred bedding is sifted city mulch most most communities have free city mulch when i bring in a truckload of it the last a bit of it that comes in i sift it with this sifter and that's what i save out and here is here is here's the product right here it's beautiful honestly so so let's say you were starting a new bin right first thing you're going to do is you're going to fill the bottom of your of your container of your tub with whatever bedding you want to use and now see how dry it is it's totally dry right they don't like dry so when you're starting a bed from scratch if your food supply that you're going to add to them to beginning is not wet you're going to need to add some moisture to that and if you have enough liquid like that you don't have to add more liquid but if there wasn't that much liquid i would add more liquid and look at that and honestly it doesn't smell bad it's just super ripe bananas in there especially during the summer you do not want to leave this food here uncovered for any length of time because if you do the flies come in and they're going to lay their eggs immediately and that's what you want to avoid we put the bedding we put the food and now guess what we're going to do we're going to put the worms to harvest the worm castings you're going to lift the lid and allow the light to filter in for 5 to 15 minutes then you'll start removing the top one to three inches of castings once you start feeling a little bit rougher texture start seeing lots of eggs or start seeing tons of worms it's time to stop if you're questioning whether you should stop or not just stop it's not worth harvesting their eggs in exchange for a few extra castings you'll get them next time it's that simple all you have to do a third bedding a third food a third bedding and make sure no food scraps are exposed before you close your worm bin if you're wondering what to do with this amazing organic fertilizer check out this video and i'll show you how to apply it and why it is a miracle in the garden for one of my personal favorite vegetables to grow here in florida