Compost Worm Farming

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Compost worm farms transform household waste into a resource, a very valuable resource, a nutrient-rich fertilizer (liquid and solid) while also closing the loop on food waste cycles in households.

Compost worms are a great way to make your own fertilizer for organic gardening, and they are equally as good for recycling food waste at home. The system will continuously create both liquid and solid fertilizer and close the food-waste loop.

Compost worms—red wrigglers, tiger, Indian night crawlers, African night crawlers, etc.—are not earthworms. They eat their own weight every day, and the only thing they don’t like to eat are citrus peels and stuff from the onion family.

Every day, the system can produce a few liters of fermented worm juice. This can be used as is or watered down. Additionally, the solid results inside the bucket are worm castings, something that, in many ways, is better than compost. It’s got loads of beneficial bacteria.

You can use an ordinary bathtub, set up to drain as normal. Get a piece of wire and wrap it in screen to cover up the bath plug to act as filter. Fill the tub halfway with cow or horse manure (anything else would have to be aged) and add some worms. Then, top it off with food scraps each day, and the worms will come up for it.

Fill it up with water. The liquid draining out, picking up nutrient from the worm castings, and it makes excellent fertilizer. This is better than manure tea because it doesn’t go anaerobic and it has a neutral pH level.

The final touch is adding a dense shade cloth over the top, protecting the worms from the sun and predators.

Key Takeaways:

• Composting worms are a great way to close the cycle of food-waste in your household and create daily liquid fertilizer, as well as incremental solid fertilizer (worm castings).
• A worm farm is easy to make out of an old bathtub: The liquid should drain out of the tub as normal, caught in a container, and the castings can be harvested about every three months.
• It’s important to cover the tub with dense shade cloth because the worms do not like the sun.

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[GrandmasterGib]

I've been trying this but my wife's extremely upset about dirt & worms in the bathroom and not being able to take a bath.

[didiernedelec]

I used to share a tiny garden with neighbours. The soil was quite poor. It took so long yo get my neighbours' approval for the compost bins given gor free bu the council. So I simply started burying my kitchen waste. A couple of weeks later the soil was packed with worms. I even put up an ad and gave them away for free

[khilarihemanshu]

You sir, are the Bob Ross of gardening,
Big fan of yours

[T.Android]

Imagine if every person of age took control of their own waste. That would build a better world! Thanks for the inspiration.

[Selfsufficientme]

Very good demo mate - and a great repurposing of a bathtub too! Well done 👍🙂

[intheshellify]

Geoff just improved the quality of a gardens all over the world with that lecture and demonstration.

[fredlahaye]

Just what I was looking for: Compost worm farming simple. I am an old man now, but I am eager to renew myself all the time. With hindsight I may say that I may have had too much land to manage, but boy was I deeply moved. My lifelong learning tells me that small is beautiful and now that I am back in town, I shall have to show myself all over again that there is no limit to smallness. My nickname is Peasantfred. I believe in peasants, they are the salt of the earth. Thank you Geoff

[blarknee]

I started with just two tiger worms 6 weeks ago - now there's hundreds and growing exponentially.Instead of manure you can use shredded paper/newspaper with a handful of compost.Hold off on adding too many foodscraps until you have a large population.Worm farming is the perfect use for a spot thats too shady, cold and wet for cropping.

[CalTheKiwi]

There’s shedloads of home gardening/self sufficiency vids on YouTube, but Geoff has to be one of the best. Cheers, mate. Very helpful. 🙏

[ruthlewis]

I am sure this has nothing to do with your video but I go to WalMart every couple of years and buy fishing worms (from Canada). I then dump them out in my front yard - set them free! My reward is a beautiful green yard that requires little or no attention. Those worms can travel from the front yard to the back and some have moved to the next door neighbors. Whenever everyone else has a sad looking lawn mine looks fantastic and no chemicals, ever.

[davidthegood]

One of the best fertilizers ever. Thank you, Geoff.

[atommachine]

I have a worm city 4 tear system and I do this, go for walk fill containers with cow dung, go in woodland fill bag with non acidic tree leaf mulch and a bit of soil, drop the cow Mick in then on top the mulch and mix it a bit then any available kitchen food waste goes in .You should see the size of my tiger worms, massive . This works a treat.

[miloudbouchefra]

Simple, practical and highly effective, once again you are a living legend.

[annapachaclarke]

Straight to the process with no messing and straightforward advice. I found this video far better to watch right through, after scrolling through various other videos.
So many just waffle on for ages, making it about themselves 😴 instead of getting to the process, so I flick off after 5 mins.
So glad I found this video, thanks.
I can now start cultivating 😊

[GrassPossum]

When I lived in Denmark for six years I was a keen fisherman of trout and eels in season. We also lived within a few hundred meters of Gudenaa so access to eel fishing especially meant I was down at the river more nights than not. I used to get the majority of them smoked by a guy a few Kms away. The best bait for eels and trout if you're using live bait, is worms!

We had an apartment and a cellar to match before moving to our summer house by the river full time. At that time I used to keep some galvanised tubs of earth in the cellar which I also used as compost, dumping all kitchen scraps and newspapers etc according to the usual rules of compost into them. Between the 3 tubs I had a virtual volcano of wriggling fireworms. Small, red, slimey and wriggly little beasts. Also earthworms, pink and as fat as your pinky finger.

I've been an organic/permaculture gardener for 30 years and value earthworms as allies and natural barometers of environmental health and believe anything which makes another worm live is good.

[janeababe]

I know this video is already 5 yrs old… but I’ve just made a worm farm just like yours. I’ll check it in 3 days to see how the worms are going. I put a new box of approximately 1000 compost worms in, plus the existing worms from one of those Bunnings worm kits (too small for anything, those kits) and there would have been another 1200 worms from that, so hopefully, I’ll start getting some wonderful results soon, for my gardens.
Thank you for this wonderful tutorial ❤

[maudepotvin]

I've being doing that for a few years now, inside my appartment.
No odors, no insects, so much less garbage :)

[wildlifegardenssydney]

I have a dog poop worm farm. (Started with a 10 Cm layer of coir and horse manure. Open to the ground. With wire mesh to avoid a bush mouse explosion). It does 4 dogs (mine and neighbours poop) no smell at all . (Would work perfectly well with composting toilets). It gives a plume of underground fertility and abundance of microbial life to the surrounding trees. I give it ground up egg shells, water, leaves, urine, every few days. Every month I give it fruit and veggies.
I also have 6 other worm farms running on aged horse manure, coir and fruit and veges.

[f.n.schlub]

Geoff ... if you place your worm bin on a teeter-totter and plumb a faucet into each end you can simplify your operation. To harvest worm tea and castings simply lower one end and pour lots of water into the lowered ends.Not wanting to drown, the worms will quickly migrate to the higher and drier end. After a bit, open the faucet at the lower end and drain off your worm tea. You can then shovel out the worm castings from the lower 2/5ths of the bin and recharge with your favorites mix. Tip the other end down and add water and the worms will scramble upward into the fresh food leaving the other end's tea and castings to your collection and usage. This back and forth process tipping, watering, draining and collection process is very fast and efficient. Cuts down on needless worm deaths, too.

[WormPeople]

Great Video! I raise about 2 million worms for fertilizer for my organic garden and also to teach others how to care for them :) Worm castings are the best fertilizer on the planet! :)