I decided to put together a resource that will (hopefully) help people find vermicomposting-related businesses in their region - or at least provide them with more options. One of the questions I get ALL the time is “where should I buy my worms?”. Clearly, there needs to be thriving worm business directory put together, and what better place to have it than here at Red Worm Composting.
(Ok, so I’m a little biased - haha!)
Obviously the directory is extremely new and there isn’t even a single business in there yet (as I write this) - which is why this post is directed more towards worm business owners than those looking for worms/supplies. The listings will be based on geographic location, but at the moment I have VERY general category listings (eg ‘Asia’). I will definitely be adding many more subcategories as I start to get a feel for the countries and regions that are represented.
I have put together a directory Help Page in an effort to try and answer the major questions I think will come up (be sure to get in touch if there are any other burning questions on your mind).
Just so you know, this is a directory for businesses that sell any/all of the following: 1) Worms (earthworms that is - if you are a bait farmer and do not raise any sort of earthworm, please do not submit a listing), 2) Worm Castings, 3) Worm Tea, 4) Vermicomposting Systems and Supplies, or 5) Worm composting information products (books, videos etc).
I want to try to keep this as narrowly focused as possible so as to provide the most benefit to those those who are passionate about vermicomposting and are looking for worms/supplies etc. I will be manually reviewing every single link, and reserve the right to reject those I don’t feel relate to the overall theme.
Believe it or not, you don’t even need a website to submit your business! In fact, I really want to try and find as many non-web worm businesses as I can, since many of these could be located in our region without us even realizing it.
I will almost certainly be putting together a more general composting/gardening directory before too long, so please do not submit any educational/hobby worm composting sites to this directory. Again, my aim is to keep it as focused as possible.
This weekend I decided to fire up the ol’ digital camera to create a video about separating worms from vermicompost. It is quite possibly the worst piece of cinematography in the history of mankind, but hopefully the commentary at least proves semi-interesting.
It certainly didn’t help that the camera battery died on me before I was even finished!
Those of you who are on my email list will know that I am in the process of putting together a worm bin journal, which basically involves me starting a new worm bin and documenting everything along the way. As I’ve said multiple times before, when it comes to working with worm bins these days I just kinda do it without thinking about it. Obviously, some of those subtle details that I’m not paying attention to could be important tidbits of info for someone just starting out. I am hopeful that by forcing myself to document the process I will be able to add a little more depth to my instructions for setting up a worm bin. I also wanted to provide more info re: the maintenance of a worm bin. In my worm bin set-up videos, while I think I do provide some good info for getting started, I kinda leave everyone hanging a little when it comes to actually taking care of the bin I helped them set up!
Anyway, the video above shows how I am transferring worms from an older system into the new system (which has been aging for a little over a week). A lot of people seem to wonder about separating worms from compost, so I figured I would kill two birds with one stone while I was at it. I’ve written about my garbage bag separation method before (see ‘Setting Up a New Worm Bin‘), but I figured an actual demonstration - as poor quality as it is - would prove more beneficial!
One thing to keep in mind - the material I am separating the worms from in the video is not really good quality vermicompost. I noticed quite a bit of undigested materials and it just didn’t have the rich, dark appearance of good worm castings (vermicompost should be as close to pure worm castings as possible). If I dug it into the garden I’m sure it would be a great slow release fertilizer, but I don’t think I’ll be using it for potted plants any time soon. I actually tried using a similar material last summer during my ‘Terracycle Challenge’ and it performed very poorly. I just want to point that out so that people don’t assume that’s what high quality vermicompost looks like!
By the way, the ‘worm bin journal’ I mentioned above is a special project for all those who are on my email list, so if you think that might be helpful (or are just curious to see how quickly I’ll kill my worms - haha) then feel free to sign up. I am still in documentation stage, but I’m hoping to start sharing my ‘journal’ with members fairly soon.
