Sourcing Your Worms
While you can buy worms from online suppliers, it’s more fun to get them from a friend who keeps worms or to hunt them in your own garden. Worms from a friend are truly local and already well-adapted to life in a worm bin. In addition, they’ve not undergone travel stress. Mail-order worms are understandably freaked out on arrival (as freaked out as worms can be) and will often try to escape from the bin their first few nights before they’ve calmed down.It’s most satisfying to hunt worms in your garden. The worms you want aren’t the big, fat night crawlers; they’re the smaller red or purplish worms that live close to the surface of the soil, usually in leaf litter or in cool compost. They are most populous in spring and fall and can be hard to find in summer and winter. Make a trap for them by burying something tasty in your garden beds or in an area rich with leaf litter. Worms adore squash. It draws them like a magnet. You could also use leftover oatmeal or wet bread. Bury these offerings about an inch under the soil or leaf litter and come back in about three days. More than likely, you’ll find some worms bellied up to the bar. Scoop them up and take them to their new home.
Worms
are hermaphrodites, so they’re not picky about mates. They breed at a
rate that puts rabbits to shame. If you’re willing to be patient, you
only need to hunt up about a cup of them to get started. If you buy
them, you’ll buy a full pound — that’s usually the minimum amount on
offer. Whichever way you go, it all works. More worms eat more scraps
and make more castings. If you start with lots of worms, the bin will be
productive faster. If you start with only a handful of worms, they’ll
start breeding as soon as they settle into their new home, and you’ll be
up to speed in a couple of months.
****THIS BLOGGER doesn't take worms from my own garden. I get them from a local worm farmer. I want all the worms I can get in my garden----just logical to keep them there !
****THIS BLOGGER doesn't take worms from my own garden. I get them from a local worm farmer. I want all the worms I can get in my garden----just logical to keep them there !
No comments:
Post a Comment