Worms are definately the gardeners' best friends!

They aerate the soil, bringing humus and nutrients to the plants. The soil becomes crumbly and absorbs water more easily. They actually dig your garden for you, and all you have to do is provide the right conditions for them! They can be purchased, or grown yourself, and added to the garden.

They breed well in good conditions, young earthworms breed when about 3 months old, and one earthworm can produce another 1000 earthworms in less than 12 months! You just can’t have too many worms in your garden!

Worms only eat decaying vegetable matter. They will not eat live plant material, such as plant roots. So if you are growing them, you have to start them off in some soil, manure, or compost. Then you can add kitchen vegetable waste or manure, which breaks down and provides the worms with the ongoing nutrients they need.

It is believed that plant roots emit or secret a fluid that attracts worms, which is why you often see them around plants roots when you dig up a plant. This is a symbiotic relationship, where the worm benefits the plant by converting soil around the roots into useful plant food.

Worm castings have extremely high levels of nutrients, and make excellent fertiliser. Digging a hole next to them, on either side, and burying some kitchen waste can rejuvenate old fruit trees. Worms will soon find it, and the castings they leave will give the tree another lease of life!

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Worm castings rival the chemical fertilisers in their nutrient makeup. As little as teaspoon will provide enough organic nutrients to feed a 6’ pot plant for two months or more.They contain high biological mix of bacteria, enzymes, bits of plant material and animal manure.

Castings also contain worm eggs, which will hatch and grow if the castings are kept damp. Castings contain 60% more humus than what is found in topsoil. They contain concentrates nitrate, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium and calcium, manganese, copper, borax, iron, carbon and nitrogen.

All these minerals are immediately available to the plant, without the risk of burning it. While the plant immediately absorbs these minerals, they break down slowly over a period of two months or so. Provided the soil is kept damp the baby worms hatches outs of the eggs and start working the soil.

The advantages of using worm castings in your garden or pot plants are enormous.

One of the best things about worms is that you can grow them anywhere, add them to your garden, and it costs almost nothing to get started.

You need a shed, or a veranda, or carport or similar sheltered area. Many worm growers have established their farms under their house. As long as ventilation is good, and the worms are maintained properly, there is no odor or drainage problem. When I was growing organic vegetables commercially, I grew the worms under a veranda adjacent to the packing shed.

Some growers use large flat plastic trays, such as bread trays others use wooden boxes. Old refrigerators, barrels, plastic rubbish tins, old baths, or similar recycled containers. The large plastic 44-gallon drums are great, cut them in half long ways, down the middle, and stack on the ground.

I favor polystyrene vegetable boxes. They are insulated, cool in summer, warm in winter, and it's good recycling. They are cheap, often free. They are easy to move around, and in a confined area, if you run out of room you can build robust shelves and stack them!

The only essential requirement is that the container has drainage, and some way of collecting the liquid if possible. With poly boxes, I cover them with damp folded potato sacks, which are also cheap and easily obtained. If you are saving the worm liquid to sell, or use as liquid fertiliser, you can have a long collecting tray, and stack the poly boxes on bricks over the tray.

To get started, you can buy your worms, they are not expensive. Alternatively, you can sprinkle some blood and bone or seaweed manure on the ground, lay down a wet sack. Keep it damp, the worms will come up, and can be collected every few days, and introduced into your breeding facility.

Earthworms are very sensitive to light and vibration. Actually light starts to close off capillaries in the worms skin, through which it breathes. Deprived of oxygen, the worms head downwards, deeper into the ground.

There are many different kinds of worms, thousands of them, but only 6 or so are used by gardeners and worm farmers. In most urban areas of the world the native worms have been replaced by introduced worms. Nowadays native worms usually only inhabit forested areas away from people and pollution.

Okay, back to the worms! Most of the worms you will use are introduced from another area or another country. All thrive on vegetable scraps and manure, and any rotting or breaking down vegetable matter.

*Red wigglers* are the most commonly used worms. In the right conditions a red wriggler is believed to be able to consume its own body weight each day. It grows quickly and reproduces rapidly. Red wigglers are also known as tigers, garlic, branding, and manure worms.

*Red worms* are very often mistaken for Red Wrigglers. This is the one that, when dug up in the garden, wriggles very rapidly to get under cover again. They are quite common around the world. They are sometimes known as Redworms or Bloodworms.

*Red tiger* is another excellent composting worm. Also used as bait because they are believed to exude a fluid which attracts fish. Also known as tiger worms and tiger hybrids.

*Blue worms* like warm climates. So do I! Sometimes called Indian Blue and Malaysian Blue.

*African Nightcrawlers* are known to be a good composting worm, but sensitive to climate or habitat change. The African Night Crawler will move out overnight if conditions are not to its liking. Sometimes known as the Giant Nightcrawler.

*Nightcrawlers* are very common in gardens. Good bait worms, because of their size. They can grow to 7 inches long. Not that good for composting, but they do okay.

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If you can’t find a worm farm to buy your starter worms, sprinkle some blood and bone or seaweed manure on the soil, in a corner of your garden, then cover with a damp hemp sack, the worms will come up under the sack.

Keep the sack wet, lift it up every few days, capture the worms there, and put into your worm farm. They won’t take long to breed up, and you will have plenty of worms. Shift the sack somewhere else if you run out of worms in that spot. Put a few inches of manure of some sort or compost in the polystyrene box, before adding the worms, then you can start putting vegetable scraps in to feed them.

Another trick is to bury some kitchen waste in a hole in the garden. Come back a couple of weeks later, fork it up, and gather up the worms that have been attracted to it. You can start your worm farm today!

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Worms are easy to breed. The saddle thickens when the worm reaches maturity, in about 60 to 80 days after birth. They are bi-sexual, but must mate before they can perform both male and female functions. The band then is slipped over the worms’ body, and forms an egg capsule.

Capsules lie for two to three weeks, depending on temperature, after which the baby worms emerge, sometimes several from each capsule. Each mature worm will produce up to 60 capsules each year, which then breed after three months. If your worm farm becomes overcrowded, the worms will stop breeding, so you have to keep removing them to your garden.

You can set up special propagation boxes for worms to get your production going faster. Again, poly vegetable boxes are ideal. Label and date each box, and include information as to worm type, when bedded, feed, and when your first lot of breeders were removed. The boxes can be stacked in a basement, veranda, or shed. Check the PH regularly.

In the bottom of the box put a layer of hessian, mosquito netting, or shade cloth. Then some straw, dry leaves or similar. Two thirds fill the box with damp bedding, preferably aged manure. Put in 500 breeders, and sprinkle some mash or bran on top. Water slightly and cover with old carpet or a damp sack. Feed occasionally and dump and divide in about one month.

I have seen worm breeder farms made from an old fridge turned on its back and holes punched through the back for drainage. I’ve also seen four car tires stacked one on top of the other, direct on the ground, and a lid on top. Very successful they were too.

As I said earlier, I like broccoli boxes. They make great worm farms and breeder boxes! Make sure they have drainage in the bottom. Doesn’t matter if they have large holes in them, if you feed the worms, they will stay in the box. If you really want to, you can put some old fly screen in the bottom to stop escapes. If the box dries out and they do escape, they will only go into the ground in search of water. The boxes with fitting lids are great too, but you must punch some air holes in the lid.

When the soil and kitchen scraps in the box are the right moisture again, the worms will come back to get the food. Of course, you shouldn’t let them dry out anyway. Keep some damp hemp sacks on top to keep the moisture constant. You can lightly spray with the hose in hot weather.

As the scraps in the box are eaten by the worms, they are replaced by just the best and richest soil you could possibly find. When the box is full, scrape any scraps off the top into another box, worms and all. Then you can add the worm castings and soil the worms have created, and any eggs that are there, to your garden.

There are two ways to separate worms from the castings. Pile the castings into a heap and wait an hour or so. The worms will move deeper into the pile, and you scrape of the top. Pile the castings up again, and keep doing those two or three times. Eventually you only have a few castings and lots of worms, which can go back into your worm farm.

Another method is to spread out the worm castings several inches thick. Put some screwed up wet newspaper in the center. As the castings dry out, the worms move in towards the wet newspaper.

All right, now you that know all about earthworms, why not get started today? Bury some vegetable scraps in your garden. Acquire a couple of poly boxes from your fruit shop. Put down a wet sack in your garden and start your breeder farm now. Your helpers will dig and fertilise your garden, while you sit under a shady tree with your favorite cold drink! How’s that for easy digging!

Happy gardening, Patrick.

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