Do you want a working Pet... try a worm farm

Did you undergo that worms will eat organic matter 3 to 4 times quicker than your backyard composter?... and shelter a lot less effort?

It is simple, absolute costs nothing to run at all, it is not time consuming, and you rap make lots of extraordinarily integrated routine fertilizer free, that won't burn your lawn or busted up your plants if you free lunch too much like the commercial products.

A major standard of your kitchen scorched is organic, and should not be thrown out, but kept and recycled with your new worm pets!. Worms will eat just about situation that was once vital. That includes: leaves, grass clippings, weeds, all sorts of household entree scraps, natural fiber cloth, all sorts of manure (including unsightly besides horsewhip waste) chargeless products, and prone human hair.

Worm castings, are what you get after the worms have distilled their "dinner". substantial is humongous Natures best routine fertilizer. You smartly evolution onto your garden beds, and lawns, and flower pots, with no worries about using too much.. .

Did you know that 2000 composting worms, can turn into 8000 worms ropes 6 months?.. all you proclivity are some simple kit again containers, and unfeigned angelic well runs itself, you just ravenousness to make sure and grit them your food scraps etc, further they will be happy manifest campers.

Worm farms are also ideal for businesses, its a great place for employees to get rid of their handout and lunch scraps. The castings answerability then be used dominion planters and beds etc, what a great way to keep integrated the food scraps visible of the dumps, as we do not tend to gain composters at work..

Worm farming is also important for balcony gardens in apartments, as there is NO smell, no rotting garbage smell, the worms process the scraps quickly, further you responsibility produce quite a lot of castings owing to your balcony planter pots.

There are exhaustive kinds of great instructions and ebooks outmost there on worm farming, but a cluster of people admit it will express messy and stinky, which is not the case. This is a great way over you to succour with the environment, and do your part to aliment our world green. Give it a try and get some more information...

Worm Farms

Compost worms are amongst our favourite backyard buddies, as they turn our household food scraps into 'black gold. Worm castings are phenomenal soil improvers. We spread worm castings over the veggies beds, and around our fruit trees from the base of the trunk to well past the drip line. They're much better than any other animal manure. And they have no smell, which keeps the neighbours on side!

Can of Worms

We found a great system to start out with is the 'can of worms.' This worm home is a system of trays, shown in the picture above. You feed your worms in the top tray, and harvest castings from the lower trays.

Bathtub System

To get the worm castings really cranking, worm houses made from old bathtubs are the way to go. We set ours up on a frame for easy access.

To make sure our wormies don't go walkabout, or drown, we put a 5cm layer of gravel at the bottom of the tub. Over the top of the gravel, we put a weed matt and some washed river sand to make sure there is no mixing between the valuable worm castings and the gravel.

Ventilation and aeration is critical. Wormies need to be able to breathe easy! One way we increased air flow was by cutting 6 slits in the bottom of the tub. We also have gaps between the tub and the lid, to allow oxygen to pass across the top of the worm farm, but still keep out excess water during heavy rains. And we areate the worm bed whenever we feed the worms, or add water to the system, by lightly 'fluffing' the material in the bed with our hands or a trowel.

All About Farming And Food Production

Green care farming is a fast growing business and the demand after such services has increased over the past five years. Approximately 1 500 farms offer Care services and the number is anticipated to increase further. Green iguanas, not surprisingly, are green in colour, but can be found in many different shades ranging from bright green, to a dull, greyish-green. Their skin is rough, with a set of pointy scales along the iguana's back.

Feed containing small wild-caught fish also contains the pollutants in those fish, and they accumulate up the food chain. Because farmed fish eat only their pellets instead of the wider variety of food that wild fish encounter, they could be getting a larger dose. Feeding organic waste to worms gives people an effective and easy way to turn food scraps into a rich fertiliser.

Adding worm casts or worm tea (liquid produced in the composting process) to the soil promotes soil fertility, moisture retention, and encourages plant growth. Feed and miscellaneous supplies alone will require $1,500 or more annually an investment all told of $5,000 or more, exclusive of land and dwelling.

Nitrogen and phosphate uptake is poor in iodine-deficient soils. When the soil is acidic or turns alkaline through heavy applications of line, deficiencies of zinc, manganese, boron, iodine and other elements develop because these become less soluble in water. Nitrogen is a crucial plant nutrient but can cause large problems in excessive doses. In the 1970s and 80s the water quality in rivers and lakes started deteriorating.

Fish farming is essential in increasing protein intake to these communities.

Fish escapement and the transfer of disease from farms to the marine environment are other serious concerns. In British Columbia on Canada's West Coast, more than one million fish are estimated to have escaped from net cages since the early 1980s.

Fish feed on plankton and other hydrobios. Pond fertilization lies in cultivation of various food organisms and their propagation in large quantities in fish ponds to provide fish with abundant natural feeds, by which they can grow faster.

Fish meal and fish oil, used by the salmon farming industry as pellets to feed their farmed stock, is both depleted and contaminated. Salmon farmers are caught between a rock and a hard place -- between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Production-oriented agriculturalists argue that environmental protection--especially protection of forests and topsoil--can be advanced through modern, input-intensive farming. Environmental advocates, by contrast, associate high-input farming with chemical pollution, a faster exhaustion of water supplies, and a dangerous loss of biodiversity.

Production is now concentrated in California and the Carolinas, but after 12 years of research to develop culturing techniques, Kohler and zoologist Robert Sheehan believe the fish is ideal for cultivation in southern Illinois.

Production and cultivation are central in this innovative concept. While some canopy items might simply be collected and harvested, the cultivation of selected species offers the best opportunities for utilisation on a sustainable basis.

Growers often till the land as many as 3-6 times during a growing season to "eradicate" weeds and prevent reseeding before they start farming organically -- a "deal with it now and not worry about it in future" approach. This practice results in high levels of soil erosion and subsequent loss of organic matter from the fragile Florida soils. Growing food accounts for only one fifth of this. The other four fifths is used to move, process, package, sell, and store food after it leaves the farm.

Guide to worm composting - COLLECTING FINISHED WORM CASTINGS FROM WORM COMPOSTING BINS

After feeding your worms for 3-6 months, you have noticed the bedding has been eaten, and you may now begging harvesting the brown, crumbly worm compost. Whenever you are harvesting the compost and adding fresh bedding at least twice a year is necessary to keep your worms stay healthy. The bedding will be noticeably darker with your worms’ castings. After 2 and a half months have been passed, there will still few of the original beddings is still visible in the bin plus brown and earthly looking worm castings. Although our food waste is being added regularly, the bedding volume will be gradually decreased.

METHOD 1:

You should move the contents that you use at your worm bin to one side place the fresh bedding in a empty space and bury your food wastes there for a month/so. Harvest the other side after the worms you have migrated to the new food and bedding.

METHOD 2:

You have to remove one third to one half of the given contents of your worm composting bin, worms and all and add the worm compost to your garden soul. Add the fresh bedding and food to your worm bin.



METHOD 3:

Spread a sheet of plastic under a bright light of the sun. Dump your contents of the worm box into a number of the piles on the sheet. The worms will crawl away from the light into the center of each pile. You can brush away the worm compost on the outside by the hand.

“SOME FUSS” HERVESTING

Some of the worm composting can involves moving the finished compost over to the one side of the bin. Placing the new bedding in the space created, and placing our food waste in the new bedding the worms will be gradually move over to the fresh bedding and food waste. The finished compost can be harvested

“MORE FUSS” MAINTENANCE

If you want to use all of the compost at once, dump the bin’s entire into a large plastic sheet and that can make piles of the materials. You can use the sunshine or a hundred watt light bulb to drive the worms to the under of the piles. Worms don’t like bright light because the single cells on the epidermis that reacts to the light. Scoop off the tops of each pile until all you have left is the worms in your composting bin.

USING YOUR WORM COMPOST:

Your worm compost is more concentrated rather the most composts it's because the worms great at digesting your food wastes breaking them under into a simple plant nutrients so you should use its sparingly for you to get the best results.

Growing Organic Worms To Help Your Garden

The main work worms do in your garden is tilling and aerating the soil. They burrow very deep, leaving channels through the soil that break up clods and allow air to enter and water to penetrate and drain away.
In the process of eating at the surface and eliminating lower down, they introduce organic matter to the deeper levels and steadily increase the depth of topsoil. Their main role is to digest decomposing organic matter, converting it quickly into a form plants can use as nutrients.
It is important to maintain good soil structure when gardening organically. Unlike mechanical tillers, earthworms do not damage the soil by inverting it, creating hardpans or breaking up the crumb structure. They never have mechanical breakdowns, they do not create noise or pollution, and they use garbage for fuel - an excellent way to dispose of your kitchen scraps, especially if you live in an apartment.

DIY Worm Farming
Commercial worm farms are very practical, widely available, easy to use and are quite aesthetically pleasing. You usually buy them with a small supply of worms to get you started. Choose either Red Worms or Tiger Worms. However, if you already have a suitable 'home' for your worms you don't need to spend the extra money.

A pair of old concrete laundry tubs in a shady spot near your kitchen door or close to your propagating area (or both) is ideal. Have the tubs elevated to make collection of the fertilizer easy. Leave the plugs out and put a strainer in the hole so that any excess water can drain.
Fill the first tub with compost and mix in a handful of dolomite or agricultural lime, along with about a half a bucket of soil. Place a bucket under the plug-hole and water this mix with a fine spray until it is quite saturated and starting to drip into your bucket.
Tip in your starter population of worms and cover the surface with an old hessian sack, wet cardboard, old carpet or similar. Worms usually live underground so they thrive in an environment that is cool, dark and moist. You can purchase a tub of 500 - 1000 worms to get started. They are available from professional worm breeders and can be sent through the mail. Many garden supply centres will also have them.
A close-fitting solid lid on your farm will suffocate your worms, so you need to fit a fly-mesh or shade-cloth screened lid to keep out flies and other insects.
For the first month you need do nothing except make sure the farm is kept quite moist, but not awash. Once the farm is settled in you should not need to add extra water. If your farm is exposed to rain, make sure the plug is left out or your worms will drown.
The compost itself will feed the worms for quite a long time, but to get maximum breeding it is best to add some supplementary feed every few days, especially as the population starts to increase. Add a dessert-spoon-full of lime or dolomite to each kilo of food.

You can vary their feed by rotating between:
- a bucket half-filled with water and cow or horse manure, mixed to a slop and poured over the surface;
- a blender filled with household scraps(not citrus or onion peel or meat) blended to a slop and poured over the surface;
- rotten potatoes, pumpkin or fruit, just placed on the surface;
- half a bucketful of new compost, spread over the surface.

Worms also like:
• soaked and ripped pizza boxes
• shredded and soaked cardboard, paper
• leaves, dirt, hair, egg shells
Worms do not have teeth, so scraps should be cut into small pieces - waste from a vegetable juicer is ideal.
Plants from the onion family (including garlic, leeks and shallots) and citrus fruits contain volatile oils. If any of these are included in the food scraps the worms will climb out of their housing to get away from the smell.
Within a few months the tub should be filled with a writhing mass of worms, and it's time to colonise the second tub.

Half-fill the second tub with the same mixture of compost, lime and soil. Put a strainer in the plug-hole and water the mixture until saturated.
Burrow down to the plug-hole in the first tub and put in the plug. Set a hose to just dribbling into the first tub until it is half-full, being VERY careful not to forget it and fill it right up. Leave the hessian on top to exclude light. The worms in your first tub will all migrate into the top half to avoid drowning.
Scoop them out and, reserving some to put in the garden, transfer them to the second tub. Let the plug out of the first tub and drain into a bucket. You are left with a bucket full of very, very rich liquid fertilizer and a tub half full of worm castings.
From now on you should be able to repeat this process every month or so, transferring about a third of the worms out into your garden or feeding them to the chooks each time. This will also ensure that you always have a supply of excellent liquid fertilizer available as well as the rich worm castings. Your plants will thrive!

E-books – How to Market the Worm Farm

If your business is selling information there are somethings that you need to consider when you make the move to online business development and product delivery. This article tries to shine a light on the facets of online information sales that may be overlooked at first. Selling information online has a number of benefits there is no physical packaging and handling to worry about and no issues of having a product in stock. For the customer there is no waiting for a delivery or a delay in receiving their goods after the sale is completed.

So, you have decided to sell information online and want to present it in eBook format, what does this entail. Plain text could be used but it leaves a lot to be desired or go on Customers paying for information have an expectation that the information will be presented in a format that reflects the thought that has gone into it. A plain text document has the look of something that was rushed out the door.

EBooks also provide features such as bookmarking, highlighting, searching, etc. Do you want to provide your customers a format that is mainly aimed at producing hardcopy (Adobe PDF) or crossplatform display? PDF files
are an option when you are willing to let the purchaser print out the material and is a very professional looking solution.

The problem with PDF files is that they have hard copy as the intended primary destination and they are not well suited to viewing on small size screens. This is where certain eBook formats really shine.

Ideally a eBook format will automatically reformat the document to be viewable on different size and resolution devices while keeping inline formatting intact. There are many different eBook formats to choose from but not all are equally viable for commercial redistribution of content. Along with the ability to view on different size small screens, it is also desirable to be able to view the document on a fullsize PC display and make use of the extra screen realestate.

Do you want to handle the sales and delivery of your eBook yourself or would you like a outside company to take care of those issues for you and just leave you with the job of marketing your eBook. Handling the sales on your own gives you a lot more flexibility but takes up considerable effort and finances (to handle credit cards, PayPal, etc.) to get going.

There is one company & eBook format that can handle these issues out of the box Mob Pocket. Broad platform support including most smart phones, PDAs, and PCs the same eBook file will display properly formatted on all these devices
Books are based on the Open eBook standard and are a subset of the HTML markup language Ability to import from various formats including HTML and MS Word Many free books are available in Mob Pocket format which you can then bundle in as sales closers

Retail eBook sales through a large number of affiliate online stores requires no work on your part. Free eBook reader application. Purchased books are encrypted and may only be read by the eBook purchaser. Minimum retail price is $2 Funds can be in US$ or Euros. Once you have gotten a Publisher account (free) and the eBook publisher software you can upload your books to the Mob Pocket server and all the financial & distribution tasks will be taken care of for you. Just take care of the marketing and pointing potential customers at the detail page for your eBook. Make the description text for your eBook catchy you may get sales from people who are just browsing and never thought to search for your eBook.

The sales of your eBook will pay you the wholesale price that you have set and which is 50% of the retail price. This means that you have to take into account how much you want to make on each sale vs. how much you want to charge people for your eBook. If you want to make $10 per sale then you must price your eBook at $20 which might cost too much and drive away potential sales. Its up to you

Ebooks - Marketing The Worm Farm

Ebook distribution can be a combination of personal passion with a hint of marketing basics. The Internet is filled with knowledge consumers. No other time in history has made it so easy to investigate issues once relegated to professors or other experts in their field.

Consumers can go online every day and access the latest in customized news stories, sports, weather and then access an online encyclopedia to learn more about the first guy that played the Maytag Repairman in commercials or the current shortstop for the Chicago Cubs.

Each consumer has a differing idea of what constitutes good knowledge. For instance you should not assume a knowledge-based consumer would be disinterested in learning more about worm farming simply because it is a niche market.

The truth is the Internet may be the perfect location to market your knowledge-based ebook.

Let's follow this logically. In the village, town or city where you live you are the only worm farmer you know. You haven't had anyone ask how to start or manage a worm farm so you draw a conclusion that infers no one is interested in worm farming.

In a municipality fifty miles down the road there is a couple interested in what it takes to develop a worm farm. You could help them, but they don't know you - and you don't know them.

Now, you could live a happy life managing your worm farm or you could help others get started in the business of worm farming through an ebook filled with your experiences in the field.

The end result is you suddenly have access to a worldwide audience who may seek you out because they can't find material suited to the establishment of a worm farm anywhere else.

Your work may not be a best seller, but it can work to drive visitors to your site and can assist them in learning more about something you excel at.

The knowledge-based ebook can be a marketing tool to help motivated knowledge consumers locate your site and check out the variety of information, products and services you may be able to offer.

Information is a tremendous commodity and remains a strong benefit to website owner and visitor alike.

The world of publishing is at your fingertips. There is no longer a need to find a traditional publisher because ebooks bring the world of publishing to you. In most cases the largest investment you will make in the development of an ebook is your own personal time. In the end, your customers may be very grateful you took the time to share what you know.

Do You Want a Working Pet... Try a Worm Farm

Did you know that worms will eat organic matter 3 to 4 times quicker than your backyard composter?... and with a lot less effort?

It is simple, it costs nothing to run at all, it is not time consuming, and you can make lots of very organic natural fertilizer free, that won't burn your lawn
or hurt your plants if you use too much like the commercial products.

A major part of your kitchen
waste is organic, and should not be thrown out, but kept and recycled with your new worm pets!. Worms will eat just about anything that was once living. That includes: leaves, grass clippings, weeds, all sorts of household food scraps, natural fiber cloth, all sorts of manure (including dog and cat waste) paper products, and even human hair.

Worm castings, are what you get after the worms have processed their "dinner". It is Mother Natures best natural fertilizer. You simply spread onto your garden beds, and lawns, and flower pots, with no worries about using too much.. .

Did you know that 2000 composting worms, can turn into 8000 worms in 6 months?.. all you need are some simple tools and containers, and it pretty well runs itself, you just need to make sure and feed them your food scraps etc, and they will be happy little campers.

Worm farms are also ideal for businesses, its a great place for employees to get rid of their food and lunch scraps. The castings can then be used in planters and beds etc, what a great way to keep all the food scraps out of the dumps, as we do not tend to use composters at work..

Worm farming is also great for balcony gardens in apartments, as there is NO smell, no rotting garbage smell, the worms process the scraps quickly, and you can produce quite a lot of castings for your balcony planter pots.

There are all kinds of great instructions and ebooks out there on worm farming, but a lot of people think it will be messy and stinky, which is not the case. This is a great way for you to help with the environment, and do your part to keep our world green. Give it a try and get some more information... how to make a worm farm

Quick Guide to Raising Worms

Raising worms or worm farming - quick guide

Why would someone be interested in raising worms or worm farming? If you are at all concerned about the earth and your environment, worm farming is a great opportunity for giving back to mother earth. First of, you don't have to burn your organic waste and pollute the air. Second, you fertilize the earth and give plants a better environment to live and grow in. If you have vegetables in your garden, and fertilize the ground they live in, you will have a huge increase in the outcome.

What you need to know to get started:

What happens in a worm farm?

-- The worms and microorganisms breakdown the organic wastes by eating it and in the other end comes the material you can use as a fertilizer.

What worms to use?

-- When you are raising worms indoor you can not use regular soil worms(earthworms) for composting. They cannot survive in that environment (unless it is open to the surrounding soil and outdoor)

-- For indoor or closed composting you have to use special worms that do not dig deep into the ground. Surface worms is the way to go.

-- You can use E. fetida include: red worm, red wiggler, brandling worm, manure worm, tiger worm or Lumbricus rubellus.

How much waste can they process?

-- When you first start out, you have to give the worms a couple of months to adjust to your environment. In this time they produce less, about 1/4 of their entire weight each day (1 pound = 1/4 lb per day)

-- When you are up and running you should be able to process about 1/2 of the worms total weight a day (1 pound of worms = 1/2 lb waste per

What about the climate in the compost?

-- You should try and keep the moisture content on about 80-90% and ad fresh air as well. It is most important when raising worms.

What to compost?

-- Use only fruit and vegetable waste...also add crushed egg shells every now and again.

What do the worms cost?

-- It depends on the type of worm, but typically 1 lb (1000 worms) is $15 - $40.

Raising worms can be a great hobby for your kids as well. It is easy to do and the children just love to get their hands in the ground. Kids need to learn about nature and how to protect it. This is a very affordable and fun way to learn.

Compost Worms

If you've decided to start a worm farm, you need to know a little about worms.

The first thing is that you can't use the worms from your garden. The garden worms live in dirt and do not adapt well to a worm farm.

You need to get specific compost worms. You can usually buy them from the hardware store where you bought your worm bin. You can also get them from other worm farmers or from commercial worm farmers. Maybe you have some friends with worm farms. They could give you some to start with.

The most common types of worms for worm farming are Red Wrigglers, Tiger Worms, Indian Blue worms. These varieties are all compost worms, and will thrive on your food scraps. They are top dwellers who live in the top 6 inches of bedding material. They can eat their body weight in scraps each day.

Compost worms eat dead, decayed vegetable matter. You can find them in manure heaps. They don't eat fresh food so all the food scraps you feed them will have begun to rot before the worms start to eat them. If you want to speed up the process, you can place food scraps into a plastic container for a week or two before feeding them to the worms. The process of decomposition should be well started by then.

The quantity of worms you need is about 1 kg of worms for every 500g of food waste. When you add food scraps, you should bury them into the bedding material so they don't attract flies.

Do not use meat, dairy, orange or onion scraps because they can make your worm farm smell unpleasant and attract flies and other unwanted pests.

The worms like a moist but not wet bed. It will smell bad if it is saturated. You should have a tap at the bottom to release excess water and worm waste. Drain off the excess moisture and do not add any more until the smell has gone.

If you find your worm farm still smells unpleasant you are probably overfilling it. Wait until most of the scraps have decomposed or been eaten before adding any more.

Worms are useful and fun. You are helping the environment by disposing of your waste responsibly. You may even find you enjoy farming worms and scale it up a bit. You can breed them quite easily and you don't need a lot of time or equipment. They are a great project for kids, educational, environmentally efficient and fun.

Gardening and Composting - Healing the Earth and the Self

Agriculture has always been part of man's life. Any form of agriculture, big or small, benefits the earth. Plants provide food, protection from the extreme weathers, wood for building, cleans the air by taking in carbon dioxide and converting it into oxygen for us to breathe. All of us should try to do the little that we can to contribute to the greening of the planet.

I love nature and that is why I love gardening and composting. It is lovely to see how a garden grows from almost nothing to sculptured plants and flowers, along with any material we like placed in exact positions. My garden has several elephant sculptures alongside the many plants and river stones.

It is indeed wonderful to dig into the earth and feel the soil in my hands, and the plants do appreciate being pampered. Finding earthworms is a delight. It is a sign that the soil is in good condition and I know my plants are healthy. I move my plants around in the garden now and again. Many of them are more than five years old as I have been maintaining the garden for ten years now. Birds come by each day to find food in the garden. Squirrels come by too but they often scurry away when there is movement.

Some six to nine months ago, my husband got me started on composting and worm forming. We collect horse dung from a nearby equestrian club and prepare it for the worms with our bare hands. Fortunately horse dung is not really smelly, just rich in fibre. We only have to bear with the urine smell which goes away after a couple of days. Worms are really nice to touch. They feel cool and soft as they crawl and wriggle around. We now have 3 batches of fat worms. We keep them well fed with vegetable and fruit cuttings as well as egg shells.

When the compost is broken down after a few months, the fine organic fertilizer is used to condition my potted plants. Else, we just add on more horse dung and kitchen organic waste so that the worms can continue to thrive.

I am rather proud of my little garden and often, I sit at the patio, enjoying the view, feeling the breeze and listening to the birds chirping nearby. It is so relaxing to work on the garden and to appreciate the outcome of gardening.