I’m no expert but I’ve been told that if you have worm tea then your worm bin is too wet. What I recommend is that you keep doing what you are currently doing and make compost tea which your plants will love (or you can even sell it. I sell small bags of castings and gallon jugs of tea at flea markets.) I’m retired so this provides me with extra cash to do the little things around our Miniature Horse ranch (miniature horses not a miniature ranch).

Hope this helps,

Marty

1. Did you do anything special to winterize the bins for the worms aside from covering the bins with plywood?
2. Looking at the photos of the bin it appears that you have two areas, one empty and the second with material in it. Only one section of this material appears to have “food” on it, and that spot moves further from the first part of the bin as the worms do their thing.
a. Is the food “bottom to top or is it instead piled atop bedding? What bedding is used?
b. If you did not seed the area do you think that worms would have naturally colonized it?
c. Suppose you placed food material within the entire 150 foot bin and then seeded spots at a certain distance from one another, say three feet. Would that result in more rapid conversion to vermicompost of the entire row?
4. How long is the feeding area and how long does it take the worms to devour it?

Sorry for being too wordy here but I love what you have done. Many thanks for any information that you can share.

Kevin

There is plenty of information on the internet on this subject, but here are some immediate facts:

(1) Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) will convert 100 lbs of organic wastes ( including various manures ) into about 5 lbs of castings and about 18 to 20 lbs of edible larvae ( grubs ) which can be fed to a variety of animals ( fish, chickens, pigs, reptiles, wild birds etc ) all of which will relish these grubs, at superfast speeds way ahead of any worms.

(2) The BSFL castings make excellent food for earthworms, especially the Red Worms, maybe others too.

(3) The liquid leachate from the larvae bin is excellent for plants if used in the right way ( it is acidic ).

Vijay Tonse

Seriously though, we’d love to learn more, and as I wrote in this week’s newsletter (just sent out), it would be cool if you could write a guest post on the blog or take part in an interview for the site. I will fire you an email about this now.
8)

Any publicity is good. I did not go into much detail and would be happy to answer any questions that your guests may have.

Happy Worming

Darren

I use fresh horse manure and love the system I have built. I am preparing to build my next one the same way also. I Live in Reno NV, so this system keeps my worms eating during the winters.

Check it out
http://www.sierrawormsolutions.com/wearegrowing.html

http://www.esrint.com/pages/bioconversion.html
http://www.hollowtop.com/finl_html/manureflies.htm
http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=87518