5 KEYS TO RAISING WORMS

Hi, I'm Greg Allison from Green Greg's Garden Worm Farm, I'm straight from my worm farm and today we're going to talk about

worms

, we're going to talk about what are the five key things you need to know about

raising

worms

. you can raise them successfully and so that they don't knock you down the five most important things that you absolutely have to know to raise worms and the last step I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you what most people do. evil that kills its worms and how to avoid it how not to kill your worms that's the last thing I'm going to tell you so it's the most important thing I can tell you of anything I've told you, so stay tuned to listen to That and I must begin with a little bit of worm physiology, which will be the first thing we need to know about worms, so I will have lots of videos on worms, including more details on each of these steps.

I'm going to talk about it, to keep you up to date with this, you want to see all the updates, all the new videos on my channel, so subscribe and ring the bell to get the update notifications. That way you will receive notifications for all my videos. vermiculture over aquaponics about raised bed gardening organic gardening growing herbs over microgreens we are going to cover a lot of things here so stay tuned for that now what I am going to tell you about worms the first thing you need to know is their physiology and the physiology of worms is really important because worms are interesting little creatures, so basically physiology, what is a worm, that's what we're going to talk about, it's that simple, put it in plain English, well, geez, let's take a look, there's a worm, let's say here we are.

If we can get them to focus now, it's pretty much a baby worm. Now I know I don't see much band in this one, so I would declare this a baby write, but this is a baby red worm because he. I don't have much band on it, let's see what else we can find in the worm bed here, ah, there are a lot of worms here, look at that and I'll get it here when I get some, these are all pretty young worms. here you can notice that worms have a band when they become adults this is how you can tell a worm is adult by the band and I'm going to see if I get some more out here this one is starting to get a band so I think It's an adult, if it works with a lot of things in these worms, you could see more, I'm sure it's a young adult, oh, we got here, yeah, trying to hide, okay, I'm going to put these back or one. bed I'm going to try to break them gently there these guys down here see what they like to do is hide I see a band right there this guy has a band on top he's not right the key is the worms that breathe through their skin, they don't have lungs , so they can't drown per se, not technically because they don't have lungs to drown in and they actually breathe through the moisture in the bed, so they should have a little moisture in the bed, but not stop.

What don't you want to heat the bed with? Here's the thing, so this is the first thing we do. The physiology of the Republic is that the worm can die if it is in too much water. Most people say they are drowning. That's not technically drowning. What's going on? What most of us don't know for sure, what most experts think, yes, they are dying because of a carbonic acid that accumulates in the skin, they breathe through the skin, they take in oxygen through the skin and They exhale carbon dioxide through the skin. skin well apparently that carbon dioxide builds up in the water and creates an acid on the outside of the worms one thing a worm is intolerant to is acid and then we'll come back to that because that's related to the biggest mistake People now it makes with worms the body of the worms, it's not the inside of the mouth, it's a very soft skin or the whole body has a soft skin like that, so they are very sensitive to things like acid and that's why they could die in pure water. why don't they want to, you don't need some wet water, although it's okay, made of small areas where they could go to get water.

I prefer more beds that are well drained, now my worm has a lot of heart. actually a worm has five hearts, they're like five little blood vessels that contract and pump blood through the worm, so you talk about heartworms, they have five hearts. The other thing you should know about worms is that they are sexual, not really, they are both sexes. They are more fanatical about it, each worm is male and female, they are all male and female, and when they mate, they stand side by side in the exchange of eggs and sperm and it becomes a mucus that comes out from the end of the worm towards a little golden orb, but some people call them eggs technically, that's a cocoon and well, that cocoon can have anywhere from two to seven eggs for these red worms.

Some worms should lay one or two eggs in a cocoon. I think you made the biggest ones. a couple but these guys will lay up to seven eggs, these guys can double their population every two to three months and when I first got mine they were guaranteed Dublin is better than Dublin. I had worms like crazy every two months. I started out like 50,000 worms in the unit, then I probably had a million and a half, I mean those guys that one day were laying some eggs, so that's the key to a worm is that, being sensitive, they don't like light. yes Note that they're not out here in the open and that's going to go back to some of the other things I'm about to tell you about the worms, they're going to dive into the state, stay away from the light because they're just. their training because the ultraviolet rays can kill them and the light can take them out of the sunlight so they have to stay down in bed plus they need bedding to breathe like I mentioned and if you notice that this bedding looks like a chocolate cake, this is a rich and pleasant worm castings. here, this is all ready to sell, it really is rich, rich, rich, worm castings, so the good thing about this is that it's not softly wet, I just have a cake consistency, you see, so let's get back to these other things I have.

I have to tell you and that's containers. Now, if you notice, I have a wooden container here. I have my worms. This is the second thing you need to know. These are just plywood containers that I built. These are some of my. The best warm beds because they are above the ground and the way they are constructed they keep mold out for the most part and that is one of my main pest problems which is one of the other things we will talk about, he specified that the Lid also keeps pests out. It helps prevent worms from escaping, so what you need in your bedding is preferably something that drains.

I know a lot of people put out worms and containers and concrete buckets that won't drain and I don't know, but if I were a worm, I wouldn't want to live and all my waste forever. I would like the liquids to at least drain so all my beds have drainage holes here on the bottom to protect the wire on the other side and it's just stapled together. the wooden train wired here for air holes, they had to be able to breathe, so these air holes and drain holes actually and here you can see the screen wire that is literally stapled with a normal staple gun and that's just wire of normal metal screen and it staples together quite easily and that's the good thing it doesn't require much, you can also use other things for the bed, for example, I brought here just a couple of visual aids to talk about, from now on I won't use them I grew up in a can. but you could use a five-gallon bucket in a similar way.

The problem with a bucket is that worms only live in the top six inches or so of soil unless it's very cold, so with all this down here don't buy anything less. drained, which a lot of people don't do and that's where it all breaks down, that's how they get away with not having drains, sometimes they have that deep bucket, but usually it doesn't buy them much for their worms. Another way to do it is I have other containers now, it's a container that's the right size for school projects. I sometimes arrange these types of containers for school projects.

Okay, these are here today because they are easy to transport and simulate the large containers you can get at Walmart, but like I told you. I can actually raise some worms in these, just a small point. I wouldn't put more than a pound in one of these and maybe not even that much, but what you can do with the Walmart bins is use a bottom bin and put a block in. at the bottom so that the other container doesn't sit to the bottom and if it does it becomes difficult to separate it but this allows you to drill holes in the bottom of this container and let the fat drip and drain here and that contains it so it doesn't leak everywhere and then you can just remove this guy or the fat to make hot tea or just put the fat in, the leaching, that's what we call it directly. in your potted plants, in your garden, whatever you want to do with it, so, it's a valuable thing that makes plants grow, but you can brew it, make hot tea with it and make it even more powerful, which is a topic we'll cover. in the not-too-distant future and I'll also detail how to build various types of worm beds and containers, in addition to this quick thumbnail sketch.

Gimme this is just to give you an idea of ​​the holes you would drill. It would be small, about five thirty seconds and then you would put a layer of sand around the holes of many of your bags to have the recessed area, is where a good name, all the way right on top of that or you would just have a layer wet in the bottom. that way the wind salmon won't run through the holes and prevent the compost from passing through and otherwise the compost will actually plug the holes and not drain at all and also prevent the arms from straightening, so That's the water. pass, so when the sand is perfect to use, another thing you could do is screen wire like the one you sell my large bed.

You could make larger holes here, but screen wire there and for the plastic you'll want to use a hot glue gun. Suppose some people use a little thicker plastic containers and a thread, a hole can put a tap in it, you can do that, so honestly the truth is that there are as many ways to raise worms as you can imagine, but here is the clue. you need to know in the containers you raise them in, yes, they live in the top six inches, mostly in the bed if you have thicker bedding, which is sometimes desirable just for thermal mass, so they live at open air about a foot, maybe two feet deep. in most areas, or just fine, it gets to below freezing temperatures here in North Alabama.

I'm about a mile south, the Tennessee border is used about three times a winter and the last few winters and maybe it will stay below freezing and go down a single day only for maybe three. consecutive nights that's the hardest thing our winners understand today is December 15th. I could be wearing a short sleeve shirt right now. It's not cold right now, but we've already had some really bad cold snaps from this fault, so those are the key things. on the bed, excuse me, on the containers, is that they must provide general protection. You want something that will keep pests away.

It has to be what you really want where you can drain the water. It has to have access to air. I think if you make a tote type container you drill holes in the top to put air in and the nice thing about having holes in the bottom and holes in the top is that you get a flow as the water seeps down through the upper part, attracts air to where we have the water filters towards the lower part and attracts air from the upper part, so in the small holes, the one in the ceiling, the worms will not escape from one of the physiological things that you need to know.

I should go back to you. and tied to the containers, worms are a great escape artist so having a tight-fitting lid is a good way to prevent most from escaping and although they can crawl through the cracks, another thing you can do is to place a light on it, not directly. up at the point where you're going to cook them, you don't want to cook your worms and dry your bedding, but a bright light high enough that you won't have a problem with that because again, like I mentioned earlier, a light like So that one it's a way to store them, so in some future videos we'll cover quite a bit about containers.

I'll show you how to build containers, including these boxes. I'll show you how to build in-ground beds. I'll show you how. To build a bedding out of Walmart bags and other things, aside from that, the next thing you need to know is that the third element is the bed itself. Many people make mistakes in bed, especially when they watch YouTube videos where people are just trying to do it. make videos these are early ground alarms with compost worms many people think and just throw them in the ground no they're not actually ground these are compost worms these are the ones that make your compost for you the red worms this thing doesn'tfits into nothing and the same goes for the bigger worms, there are also night worms, there are also compost worms, they are not earth worms, so even the earth worms don't like soil two months unless it escapes .

Worms love compost because that's what they can eat. It's a good bed and it usually has rotten moisture for them, so if you notice that my bedding is not a pile of food or a pile of paper, this started out is horse manure, it's not horse manure, now it doesn't look like in nothing because these worms have become. They have turned it into worm castings, they have processed it many times and once they have contributed to the food they have eaten and converted it, it is not and does not look like any modern horse manure, but you can use horse manure as it is. do.

I have been, but what you want to use is well-composted horse or cow manure that has been sitting outside for several months in the rain and weather, leaching any chemicals they may have fed to the animals and, most importantly, not you want it to go through the heat phase, so if the bacteria is several months old it is already sufficiently processed, this should not go through the heat phase, although I have had a friend who used horse manure from a barn thought that It would be nice, but it never got the humidity and as soon as it did, it got hot.

Thermophilic bacteria in Bedan can reach 180 degrees now, don't they do that to kill everything except themselves so they can feed themselves until they get tired and don't get what they want and then they die and another one misses me again, it's still very good and rich for other things. deep, but as long as they are in that high heat phase, nothing will survive, including worms, and you won't survive at 280 degrees either, and then I mentioned that they are soft bodied creatures like the inside of your mouth, imagine taking the inside of your mouth. mouth wrapping around your body and throwing you at 180 degrees kill them, you're not going to be happy and neither will your worms, you know that goes back to the containers, don't put your worms in a metal building, it's all closed where it's going to be very hot inside, so I'll go back to bed.

The key is that you have to bet that the worms can move easily. You want it to have some moisture but not soggy like I mentioned now. I've seen YouTube videos where they just throw paper in a bag and fill it with paper or food, yes ant, no no, and hell no those guys are just making videos, yes you can put shrimp paper in the beds, but what? What you don't want to do is put it in the spread and water it to such a point that you'll have a mass of wet paper mache because if it's just a mass of paper, how come you want to move through it?

It's going to breathe, it's going to get trapped in there and it's going to suffocate or it's going to dry out and turn into a brick, you know, like a little piece of I don't melt it or something like that. There is no dry paper mache, it is hard, paper mache is a bad idea, anything you are just going to make paper mache that you don't want so the papers are found by the worms they love paper look here I have paper here I have the boxes and the lights that I bought from my microgreens I used a bag of food from my rabbits here so I can see that I use paper and they eat it.

This paper is probably here. They haven't been eating too much into this yet. Look at all the worms hiding under here. Well, then they move away from the light. Oh, wow, hey. Guys, look at the worms, they have worms, there are worms and they love to be under these melons. They love to eat melons. There are some things that one really loves. Look at this. Yes, I have worms. I'm glad I have them. the bedding should be moist, not dry, not wet, and old horse manure, old cow manure works, you can use peat moss. Peat is a great bed, a lot of people use it, but there are a couple of things you need to know about it: you need to soak it 24 hours in advance, yes, 24 hours of soaking in peat and then you have to take it out and squeeze the hell out of it. with just a handful of time until just a drop of water comes out to get the peat bed and just in a large content, that's a lot of work that's a lot of work this must be more to leave it wet I send my worms and peat, that's the The only place I use peat moss is to ship worms because it moves well and is not biologically active otherwise, it is inert and if you squeeze the right ones we will be fine I can ship worms all year round and the hottest days of summer and the coldest days no problem muscular arm farmers when they ship worms in the hot weather their arms die why because they don't squeeze those things come out right or they don't hydrate well in the first place so you have worms that are dehydrated or basically itchy and they get too hot with everything that, water in there and they vaporize and that happens to a lot of lumps come from a lot of other worm farmers and a lot of other large worm groups, so if you're buying guns and certain worm farms and you know you're getting them, it's so chances are I don't have that problem and if I give you one and they don't survive I will replace them but that's key to knowing that you can use compost from a compost pile for your bed.

Compost is a wonderful bed, just make sure again. it's going through the heat face, you can use paper, you can put some food, but if you notice that my bedding is not just food on shelves and that's a big thing, then the other thing you need to know about pest control , what do you do to keep pests out of your beds, well one is physical restraint, you know you use a parry, build something that pests can't easily get into, that's what I get by elevating this bed above a block, is that all that prevents the moles from coming out? the blocks are recessed under this edge, so the mole would have to climb up a lip and guess which moles can climb well, but they have the problem that if it went up, a mole could climb down this bed. you can climb, you can't use, oh yeah, you can't use treated wood on these beds.

I should have mentioned before that there is no treated wood, that means the beds only last about three years when you make them from wood. I paint the inside with everything when I first put them together, however, as these things get to the third year, when you put food in there, like watermelon, which a raccoon likes to eat, a raccoon will make a hole in the side of this bed to enter. Unfortunately, what else is there where raccoons eat worms? So my biggest pest. I have to worry about our moles and raccoons with a buried bed.

You can use these boxes again. Let's imagine this is on the ground. Our main nest. Your well. the floor, not the bed itself, just imagine it's a hole. I would fill the bottom with about six inches of gravel, then you can line the outside with cinder blocks or you can build a metal liner bed here, a win. It doesn't rust too quickly, anything else moles can go through. I am now using a metal liner. The first thing I inlaid I built out of plywood because I wasn't in a rush to build them because I had a client who was pulling a lot. worm castings fast nothing I have money to build better beds and now I'm paying for it because I have to go back when he built all those medicines anyway yeah, although the thing to know about pest management is not just if you have Los Raccoons and mole bugs are a big problem for beds, but I have that one in the way.

You don't see bugs in my bed. Oh yes, of course, it's almost winter, but what you might find are fly larvae, soldier flies soldier. the flies, the fly larvae won't hurt your arms, they'll eat the compost, and if you're trying to sell worms, you don't want to put together a package of worms that won't have them to separate the fly larvae. of the worms because customers don't want to come back full of fly larvae, believe me, I bought some from a farmer who sent me a lot of fly larvae and they open the bag and some of them come out and little caps and flies come out, oh. that's horrible, you don't want that and if you have followers, yes, when you've harvested those worms, you have to sort through them and get those little puppies out each one.

I don't have that problem, because I use lime in my bed, not garden line like you bought at the store. I will use pure crushed dolomite. Regular garden lab is toxic to worms, so you want to use pure crushed dolomite. The protocol Dolomite is a mineral, it is freshly crushed limestone. You can get it from the rock. quarry, some food stores sell it generally the people who work there don't know what it is, so you have to ask for its name: pure crushed dolomite. The thing to know about dolomite is that it typically comes in forty pound bags, the bags are smaller than a 40 pound bag of dog food tends to be so tall, so why are they so wide and so high?

They are not really big bags because the material is very dense, it is denser than the garden line. I bring you a large bag, it weighs 40 pounds, it is not pure crushed dolomite, it is garden lime and garden lime can be toxic to worms, however, pure crushed dolomite is not, it is actually a little toxic to The bugs, the bugs, as I was trying to say, really want to. a Bedan is a soul that is acidic, so when you bring the pH more to the neutral side, give it a higher pH, what that does is it makes it very unattractive to insects.

I am not having any bug problems in my bed since I am. using the Dolomites and how I apply them, not only don't go crazy with them, you just sprinkle, I mean just a little powder and sprinkle water to dissolve it, that's usually all it takes, just a very light powder . Put on a small pH strip and test it if necessary. I never do that because I just test. I put a little light powder on it. I say it's working and I don't bother with anything else, but you can try it. analyze and see exactly where you are to me, it's like cooking sauce.

I just mix things up until it's good and it doesn't take much, but you can try everything and that's probably a good way to do it, at least that much. way you know exactly quantitatively what you are doing and it just takes a little more time my life is a very valuable resource, however, garden lime is something to avoid in your beds, use dolomite, pure crushed limestone, I'll call it Lime, technically it's just not the chemically treated stuff, what you're looking for is a tea bag, it's any indication that it's been hydrolyzed or chemically treated, that's the point I was trying to make before, make sure it doesn't It's hydrolyzed and when you read the ingredients there's just going to be a list of minerals a list of minerals because there are minerals in limestone it's not just pure calcium carbonate or whatever I'm made of cells so there's other stuff in there and that's okay the minerals later when you put it things in your garden will be great for your garden yeah some people like to put lime in gardens but they use it they use something chemically treated why do we have to pee ?

Mcclee deals with everything that is our water, for example, oh my God and we have to keep a tree in rock dust no, you don't have to trust me, pure infatuation, don't lie, it's the way to go and ants are a problem you have to be careful of, but I have no problems. I've tried to use what looks like control. I will make a video sometime in the spring when the sugar ants are really active and show you how you can safely kill them until everything is ruined if you find a net nest. in your bed a little and then dig the nest, take it out early tomorrow.

I had that problem, there are some carpenter ants that came in. I took them out Minh, they were gone. I think you had another anthill later. Don't know. Don't get that boom, they're gone, you can do that, you can get it all at once. A good shovel does the job and the good thing about a warm bed if you build it correctly, it's easier to get out, in terms of ants. You can also put comment dust around the beds. They've told me they don't like comment dust. I don't know, you can grease the legs of the beds, let's say if this was your bed, you could grease it, but grease it around it, like this. axle grease and that should work, you can also do a lot of things, you can take your beds, the foot of the beds, the raised pieces and put them in cans or everything, especially if you are in a building outside because the water will just wash it away, but to get people to breed indoors, I've seen them do it with the beds, they took the feet and put them in big cans and put everything in because I asked them not to get fit at all, they can't. do it, they can't do it, so there's a lot of little tricks like that that you can do, but there's another thing that helps control bugs in businesses.

Moving on, so little, tiny, little bug called spring tail, it seems like where you have spring tells you. you don't have much else so those are all important points that I just wanted to highlight. Oh, spring tails are not a problem, they do not bother your bed, they are not really part of your ecology, any warm bed will not have ecology. in it they will not harm your plants when you place them, they mostly eat fertilizer. Another thing I want to mention is that some people haveafraid of worms in your garden because someone told me that, oh, I killed a person. during my garden because they will eat my parents they know that they know that a worm will not eat any living plant any living being they only eat dead material they do not bother the living plants what the worms do is go through the soul and make small tunnels and aerate put salt and make it great for the garden because then the air can pass through there the water can drain through there very easily the worms are the best thing you can put in your garden and the springtails do not cause any problem either there may be some occasion where there are many different species, maybe they nibble just a small fraction, they're your plants, but you'll never notice, so spring tails are really good because as far as I know they control a few other things, so I'd actually put cheese on spring tails.

They're tiny, I guess we call them Springhouse because they can jump a little bit, they're small, kind of, white specks, unless you look closer and they look like a bug, but I don't think they're actually a real bug, so They're just a little speck of white insect anyway, so those are the key things you need to know about ants and insects. It can be controlled with dolomite. Ok, another pest for beds is centipedes. Centipedes are similar to millipedes, but here is one key difference in a millipede: in each section of the body there are two legs that stick out on either side of the centipede is just one.

Centipedes tend to be red or brown or colored and have large tweezers on the front the centipedes will eat worms you don't want Sophie to send a photo you finally kill the millipedes and they are just a pest they don't actually eat the worms they ate the composter they compete with the worms for the compost , but they won't hurt the worms if you follow my discussion about wine. I'll get rid of the millipedes for you, so last item number five is feeding and watering. Now this is where most people kill their companies, so let me talk about feeding and watering.

You can kill your worms with kindness. You will notice that I have many. of worms, but what you don't see is food went all over this bed, you'll see food, they have paper, they have watermelon and they have some food right there and yeah, I could probably feed them these worms today. They are ready to be fed, but now you don't see a bed full of food. I've seen YouTube videos, YouTube videos where people take a container like this and just fill it to the brim with chopped vegetables or whatever and throw them in there and tell you that's the way you lift your arms or the paper , you know what not, that's the way to absolutely kill your worms, that's absolutely right, that question will kill all your worms.

Now here's why this is the most important thing I can tell you. raise worms, uneaten food becomes acidic and as we mentioned before, the physiology of worms, their whole body is not inside the mouth, what does that mean? That means the worm will have some serious problems in an acidic bed, the acid will kill them. it's going to turn acidic, so you don't want to put more food in a bed than a worm will eat in a matter of a couple of days, now something like a Ryan watermelon that it can escape from, you know, there's a little exception, but then we'll eat on the way, come to it to escape, but you don't want a bed full of food if it's Roundup grain, access it and then mash.

I don't use too much of that and you need to buy organic when you can't use them, try saving some GMOs to keep going, you can also do this for the bedding and you can use wood chips and leaves once they have been composted, whichever ones are fine broken down they can be broken down and that's what I do. I will move to the bed in the future and come back now to think about the worms, what they ate in a day and if you put dry feet on the bed, just sprinkle a little water, in fact, as you water, you want. just a little bit of water, a little bit of water every day or every other day, every other day is fine, at some point you might want to spray a little bit of water every day just to keep the heat down, depending on what it is your humidity, but you have to go. also dig in your bed see how things look it's nice if it's dry give them some water and time you give them dry food give them water so I just want a little just to spray don't drown them with water and I don't I don't use water from the faucet, what I do with watering is I have water lying around and containers that just let the seat belt through with chloride.

I have tap water right now, it's anyone's guess, but that's the key. What most people redo is overfeed. They kill the worms with kindness and they do it because that is what all the YouTube videos they do and all those YouTube videos are wrong, everyone follows them and kills the worms so what I am going to give you in my videos It's the truth. I'm going to tell you how to raise your worms and keep them alive, don't overfill them. I have had people. I have told you several times about the roller feeding the worms. Oh no, I'm not, I'm not and then to go back to I imagine what's killing mine, what I've been going through, feed them, yeah, sometimes you tell them they don't get it 'cause their mind is fixated on these videos they sent on YouTube, all of these. other people make a bed with food and put worms in it, that's crazy, don't do that now you're just asking for trouble for moles, bad bacteria, anaerobic bacteria and all kinds of things you don't want there. so again those are the key points feed your worms lightly water them lightly and they will thank you they will grow they will reproduce I mean here is the proof that I have worms there is no doubt about it look at this you will see that I have worms. and you can get worms too so remember that and you will be fine ladies and gentlemen once again there will be many more updates.

You'll get the truth, the honest scoop on poop, how to raise worms, and gardening. have a height that you wouldn't reach because someone is trying to make a bunch of YouTube videos about something they know nothing about. I see that all the time I know about

raising

worms I have worms and you can have worms too to get the scoop to get the truth, honesty, how to watch my videos. I'll have all kinds of videos of the things I'm doing and you'll be able to see what works, so to see all future videos, first, subscribe to my channel and then.

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