tiered trays vs plastic tubs

Possibly my method of using the 30-gal plastic tubs is far too antiquated for discussion now in the vermiculture form. The tiered tray method was not mentioned several years ago when this forum started, and since returning to DG I find the center of conversation is mostly around this method. Is there that much difference in the two methods or am I too old school?

not much difference that I know of. Tiers allow you to harvest castings a tray at a time with minimal disruption to the wormies (Wife's wording there).

Large bins you have to sift through to remove the worms for harvesting.

If a person wanted to build his own tiered bins, what would you use for the bottom, plywood with holes drilled in the bottom, or hardware cloth? I build boat dock and have lots of old lumber where I have removed old dock to build new ones. I also have several hoophouses where I would be keeping the bins during the Winter. I compost in a big way. Compost pile is 20' X 30'. Most I just spread around the yard to protect roots in the Winter and hold moisture in the Texas Summers. I would like to use native worms so that I can put the extras back in the yard. What I mainly want is castings and more native worms and I am not in a hurry to get either. The compost I put on the yard is no where near finished so there is lots for the worms to do.

I started some red worms last spring in the garage, in a 18 gal tub.
They are a bit messy to separate them and I like the idea of tiered trays.
I'm sure you could build the using 1/4" wire for the bottom of the trays.
But a question for those of you who have the tiered tray system.
What is the distant between the "bottom of an upper tray" and the bedding/food in a lower one ?
Does the top tray sit on the bedding, of the bottom ?

Dwight

I have a 5 tiered tray system I bought commercially. It's about 2'w x 2'd. Each tray is about 8 inches tall. The very bottom tray has a spigot to drain excess liquid. Between the bottom tray and the first removable tray there is a sheet of landscape cloth that allows liquid to drain to the bottom, but prevents the worms from falling into the liquid and drowning. It also keeps the castings from the first tray from dropping into the liquid.

Does the top tray sit on the bedding, of the bottom ?
Yes. When I add a tray, it sits on top of the bedding/castings from the lower tray.

What is the distant between the "bottom of an upper tray" and the bedding/food in a lower one ?
There are stops around each tray. About 3 inches from the top that prevent it from completely sliding down inside the previous tray.

I'll try to take some pictures. I just added my 4th tray this week. Worms are noisy if you listen closely.

How about some of you that have the tiered trays posting some close up pictures of the trays, especially the bottom. I just can not see spending $ 100. for such a small piece of plastic. As small as these store bought systems are there is no way to produce large amounts of castings. Our flower bed is one acre and growing. We have a nursery and sell lots of plants out of the yard. We also have lots of plants in pots would like to use castings in a big way.

I also would like to know if the the distance between trays. I like the idea of having the worms move to an upper deck and leaving the good stuff at the bottom. I have learned years ago, that if it's not easy to do, it doesn't get done. If producing castings is more trouble than it's worth I will abandon the the project.

Thanks Qinx, think I got it.
I'm trying to understand how the worms get into one of the upper trays. You said

I posted something a while back about my method of removing a quarter to half inch of castings off the top of my tubs before feeding the worms. Since a use a florscent light fixture which rests on two 1" x 4" boards directly above the four bins, the top layer of media is always dry enough to remove without removing any of the worms. I can easily collect 30 or more gallons of castings through the winter, which I use for germination and potting mixes. No one commented on this or several other postings I have made recently. I rely on feedback to come up with new ideas to try. The 'wormkashi' idea came from two different forums here in DG, but so far I haven't had any ideas from the vermiculture forum in the last three months. It would be nice to hear about how people are using their castings and what ratios are being used for germination or potting mixes. Does anyone heat treat their castings before using them for germiantion mixes? How about hydrogen peroxide, or do you use it straight from the bin as I do?

mraider, if you have a light on the bin how do the worms do their thing at the top? I think I must have misunderstood?
"Since I use a florscent light fixture which rests on two 1" x 4" boards directly above the four bins, the top layer of media is always dry enough to remove without removing any of the worms"
Sorry I can't help with any of your questions, except that I just add my finished mix right into my soil directly, no heating. I also use it just as a plant pick me up, spreading it thickly onto the top of the soil, then watering it. I have always had very good results.

Well gardenza, very good question... I just don't know. What are worms suppose to do on top? In my method of removing 'worm castings' in the past I referred to this as 'spent media', which I had always considered as full of castings. I use this material extensively in germination mixes and in potting up as well for any excess. Although from four 30-gallon plastic bins I can collect as much as 30 gallons of castings each winter using my removal method, there is never enough.

morgan

I guess I am confused about how the material on top gets 'spent' if the worms won't go there because of the light. Maybe they push it up to the surface like a gopher does? That would make sense. I haven't been at this long enough to know their behavior completely, and I leave the lid on most of the time. Maybe I'll bring in an experimental container and leave it open to see if I can solve this puzzle.
You may be able to help me with this question too? Is there such a thing as 'maxing out' your worm population? Can I just continue to throw food in there until it's a solid mass of worms, or will it not increase their numbers?
Thanks
Julia

Hi all,
I have developed a small kitchen worm bed using 5 gallon buckets.
The inner bucket can be lifted off and the casting scraped from the bottom, allowing
the worms and their food to slide down.



Here is a picture showing the pieces used to make the bin.

Here is a picture of the finished product.
Julia, You put fresh food on the top of the bin. As you keep adding food, mixed with soil or bedding, I use shredded paper, the food decomposes and the worms eat it. The worms don't like light so will crawl away from it.
In my bin I just lift the inner bucket out of the outer bucket and use one of those small hand
rakes to scrape the casting off of the bottom of the bucket.
When I start a new system I put a thin layer of damp newspaper on the bottom wires to
prevent the worms from dropping out.
After a while, about 30 days, you can scrape your first castings.
Paul.

This message was edited Jan 23, 2010 11:25 PM

This message was edited Jan 23, 2010 11:26 PM

Julia, two very good questions. The reason I brought up the question about methods of removing worm castings has been because of a number of comments by various vermiculturists about removing worm castings, but no one ever volunteered their methods. One former member of DG whom I sent a red wiggler starter culture to emailed me several months later telling me her worms were doing well and it was time to havest the worm castings. When I asked her how she planned to do that I never got a response. So I ask the question. Paul has come up with a very unique method which I have never seen before. Quite interesting Paul.
But to answer your question Julia, over the years I have done various experiments with my worm cultures and every time I placed something over the surface of the bins weather it be soaked newspaper or wet burlap, and then either/or a glass pane or black plastic sheeting, the worms would migrate to the surface and the glass &/or black plasti sheeting was always covered with fresh worm castings. My conclusion was the worms would deposit their castings near the surface, so why not remove a thin, dry layer from the surface each time I fed the worms. I use a plastic auto window scraper to move the dried surface material to a corner of the bin and a square opened cat litter scoop to remove this 'spent media' to a five gallon bucket. Is this material entirely spent or full of worm castings??? I don't really know the answer to that question. I can tell you that this material makes the best seed germination mix and potting up mix I have ever tried. But the question still remains...are there more castings on the bottom or the top of the media??? And what is the best way to remove them without disturbing or removing worms? There has got to be more methods out there.

Your second question Julia..."Is there such a thing as 'maxing out' your worm population?" I would say yes. To qualify this answer I would like to tell you about a friend who also raised red wigglers. He used peat moss as his media and granula alfalfa (no oil) for food. His media was usually pretty compacted and dark black in color. When he stired his media there were probably more worms then mida and he always said he should thin them out. Great deduction of the obvious. Well two things I do differently are: (1) I am constantly removing a protion of the media with each feeding; (2) I replace several hands full of new media (soaked and drained peat moss) when feeding as well. This new media gets mixed in with the food and prevents souring and takes up any excess moisture. I never let my media get as compacted as my friend did, and each spring I thin my populations by adding worms to compost bins and raised beds. One whole worm compost bin goes direcly into my largest horse manure compost bin each spring. If you next question is to quantify when is the best time to thin the worm population? The only thing I can say is every system is different and there is no right time. However, it's doubtfull you can depleat a culture enough to cause any harm. But, I believe it is best to play it safe any time you make a major change or adjustment to one of your bins, you should have at least one backup bin. Redundancy is important in my openion, which is why I have four separate bins. Any time I want to try something new or drastic I try to do it on just one bin at a time.

Again, clever idea Paul...that is one way to get pure worm castings.

I found this site that sell a 'Worm Harvester'

http://www.wackyworldsof.com/harvester/

I would not buy one for $75 but I'm sure it could be made with little trouble.
Looks like the drum is a 5gal bucket, cut in half and joined with a screen of some kind.
Then set over a bin that has 'half circles' cut for the drum to turn in.
The big question is, What screen size holes would be best ?

I'm building Trays now to make a stack-able worm bin

rentman, if you are already building stackable bins, would you post pictures? I will soon be building some and want to see as may ideas as possible before I start. Thanks.

Number One I will take pic. as I build it ( I will not show my failures, which usually are many ) ^_^
I had a couple of plans in my head, but after finding the 'Worm Harvester' this AM more plans are developing.
If the 'Worm Harvester' is made from a 5gal bucket, the dia is 11", so I'm thinking of building my trays 10" by maybe 36" and 3" deep. That way the trays could be dumped right into the 5 gal bucket 'Worm Harvester'.
Or maybe I could make the W.H. out of wood and make it's dia larger.
I think I could make the W.H. 15" dia by 20" (screen area) and that could work with a 18 gal tub I have.
You see how my mind runs......
My worms are doing well and do not have to be screened right now so I will start on the W.H.
I will post as I work on this project. BUT I MUST GET STARTED.

rentman/kenboy....have question...what do you do with harvested worms?

I put the worms into new bedding and use the old bedding, which is now worm castings or worm poo.
The worm castings is a rich additive to soil, like other animal poo.

I would like to use worms from our yard and return some every year back to the yard and in raised beds. I know worms from my yard are not the worm of choice for most people and I may find out it does not work for me either. I compost in a big way. Last year my compost pile was 20' X 30' X 6' and one year I counted 6,000 bags of leaves. I use compost to amend the soil when planting and to help with water needs in the summer and mulching in Winter. We have 1 acre of large oaks and are now pushing into the horse pasture. We have mo grass just plants. i have composted for about six years and the worm population in the yard is on the rise but I would like to help that along. We also run a small nursery and use a lot of castings in pots etc..... I am not in a hurry to get started but when I do I would like to do this in a big way. I have lots of leaves and Peacock poop. We also have a vegetable garden so have lots of waist, although my peacock love so of that. mraider3 I have read lots of your post and others and am trying to understand the whole process before I even build my bins, thanks.

kenboy, regarding oak leaves...I have heard they contain a substance which may be harmful to your vegetable garden. You may want to check that out here in DG with a thread if you can't find a posting.

Seems odd to me, I thought oak leaves were the very best for gardens. I believe Black Walnuts give off a chemical that retards growth in some plants.

My Bad! Stand corrected.

Hi all,
I want to further expand on the worm harvest idea.
Close to me, Canby Oregon, there is a dairy operation that uses Vermicompost to
process their cattle waste. They have a huge compost pile, approximately 50' in
length in a open covered building. They have this huge compost turner that moves
over or through the pile each day, stirring the compost. This leaves the compost pile
moved outward about 10'. This leaves room for that day's manure to be dumped at
the beginning end of the pile. The outward end in then removed and spread along
the top of a worm bed in a ditch along about 1/4 mile of the entrance road.
About every 30 days they use a large backhoe to scoop the top 6" of the worm bed
to the opposite ditch. This top has 90% of the worms, the bottom is then scooped up
and placed in a pile and covered for about 6 months. The resulting castings are sold
to local garden soil manufacturers. I don't know if you can get Black Gold potting soil
in your area. It contains 10% worm castings from thin operation.
The reason I went into this long winded story is to illustrate the fact that the worms do
live in the top 3 or 6" of the bin. The castings are located in the bedding at the bottom
of the bin. If you remove the top of the bin you are removing decomposed food that the worms need to eat.
You can't get too many worms in a bin. They reproduce to the amount of food and space available. Too cramped and they quit reproducing. Too little food and they die off.
There, my $1-2.98 worth, Paul.

This message was edited Jan 27, 2010 1:33 PM

Thanks Paul, that's the way I always thought.
So the worms move UP to more food, (unless you have a light on top), and leave their poo below.
Still working on my 'Worm Harvester' , changes it a couple of times and still not completely happy.
Couple of photos following.

Next, cut out bucket, cut plastic gutter wire to fit inside and wood to hold every thing together, screws through the bucket into the wood.

I could not get the screen to fit tight so..............

I then cut some filler blocks, but this is not just what I wanted and I was running low on beer so I called a day.
Last night we has snow, an inch or two and this AM is too nice to be working inside, so I'm now working on a cold frame useing a shower door for the top.
Stay warm and be Happy, Dwight

Cool set up in the bucket...but how does it work?

Thanks mraider and lonejack for the worm density info. I'm going to try to build them up until they can eat a days worth of kitchen scraps each day, in a relatively small container. Sort of like the kitchen garbage disposal.
I have a tub I've been dumping scraps in since fall, and as far as I can tell the worms are scattered from the sometimes a little dry top layer to the soaking mush at the bottom, about 24 inches deep. That has been my experience with all of my previous bins. Perhaps this is because these bins are so small.
Mraider, I will plan to use my castings mix to start seeds this spring, too. I'm going to see if I can grow the plants in that mix alone, and augment it every once in a while with more mix, and worm casting tea. Since they'll only be there for one season, I think it should work. I'm also going to experiment with purposefully keeping a handful of worms in each pot, to see if they can continue the fertilizing process in the pot.
Nice system, rentman, it looks like it would work for my kitchen bin project.

From what I have heard/read, the worms can eat/digest 15 times their size/weight in 36 hours....

Paul, the piece of equipment you are refering to is probably a Brown Bear Auger which was originally built to backfil ditches. About 30 years ago the Browns found a new use for their huge frontend auger which was sludge drying for various wastes like muncipal digested sludge, hog and dairly wastes, etc. It was a great tool for less than $180,000, but that did include an air conditioned cab and a stero system which I encouraged them to make a part of the standard package for municipalites who wouldn't pay for those ammeties. Anyway it looks like another new use has been found for this amaizing piece of equipment.

In defense of my method of removing worm castings from the top of my worm bins, yes it is not truly worm castings. Therefore, I typically just refer to this as spent media. The concept of removing castings in their purest form has been a question in my mind after reading numerous comments in this form about removing worm castings with the various methods of verculturing being used. There just weren't any details about this untill the two of you came along.

rentman, you need to be careful here...This process of yours might need to be patented. I once looked into a marketing programs which sold incubators for growing Canadian nightcrawlers. Of course you had to purchase their coffin shaped incubator for about six grand, but you could make that back in no time...so they claimed. Anyway, when I saw those pics I immediately thought by adding a simple referigation unit from an old referigerator you could make a mini home version for growing Canadians at a fraction of the cost of these commercial units. You obviously have an inventive mind...so think about it.

Hope you weren't too bummed rentman about last nights game. It was one of the more exciting games I have seen this season.

This week sometime I'll try to get out and take some pictures of the commercial
process. It might be very educational to see what the pros are doing and how effective it is.
Paul.

I will be waiting to see you next post, thanks.

Julia, I reread you comment about using worm castings as seed starter and gave some thought about that before making a response. I keep wondering if straight worm castings might be too nutrient rich as a straight germination mix. Most people I have corresponded with here in DG in the past mix castings with other materials to make their seed germination mixes. Some use commercial potting soil, vermiculite, peat moss, etc., to build their mixes.

As mentioned previously I mix soaked and drained peat moss routinely into my media when feeding to replace the thin layer of dried media from the top of the bin. Since this material is not 100% worm castings it has worked well using it directly as seed germination mix My practice is to feed wormkashi 4 to 6-inches beneath the surface and mixing it into the old media along with two or three handfuls of new media. Every couple of months I do a complete media mix of each bin as well.

I can’t tell from my method any difference in concentrations of worm castings from top to bottom of the bin. Logic tells me the castings will be heaviest in the feed zones where the worms are heavily concentrated and with my mixing practices these castings should be fairly uniform throughout each of the bins. And, since most people dilute their worm castings before using them as a germination mix, this method eliminates that step.

Hey Kenboy

I am new to writing on a forum of anykind.

I am impressed with your effects to produce worm castings. I raise redworms inside a building that is well insulated the tempature inside when it is real cold stays about 50 degrees.

I have to 3 worm beds inside on is 4x7 , 4x8, 3x6 the two larger ones have redworms the smaller one has european nightcrawlers.
There are about 1 1/2 pounds of redworms per square foot I feed them rabbit manure and they love this stuff, I will feed on top about 1 inch of manure and about a week later I feed again.
When I get ready to harvest the castings I will ligthly rake the top and wait up to 30 minutes for the worms to go down and begain to harvest. There will be very little worms left in the castings.

OK, jlpollard I am confused. You lightly rake the top. Why do the worms move downward, because of the light or the raking? I guess I am going to have to find a rabbit owner. The rabbits leave their dropping in the green belt but it would take forever to gather enough. I need a tiny shop vac I can attach to my belt when I am walking the dogs.

Mrader3, I read over with docpipe, I believe, that worm casting do not have that much nutrient value but the live bacteria is outstanding. I guess I had better go back and read again. But I do agree with you. I do not use my casting, without mixing with my potting mix and perlite. I do use 100% castings for making the tea.

I picked up some dried molasses at the feed store and some alfalfa pellets. I am going to soak them and then feed them to my reds. I am also going to add some to my compost piles which have big gray/brown worms.

Thanks for the post, jlpollard, and Sharon.
I also have red worms and thinking about some nightcrawlers for fishing. How warn is your 'worm building' in the summertime ? I've read night crawlers need cooler temp.
I do not feed kitchen scraps but the rabbit poo ( I have two breeding does, lots of poo) and as Sharon, alfalfa pellets, made into a slurry mix.

Dwight

OK Dwight, Slurry mix is like a very cheap milk shake. What did you think about the molasses. They use molasses in the casting tea so why not put it in their food?