Farming worms

[Rtc/tsn]

When it starts warming up around here I plan on farming worms to start feeding to my gymnallabes typus catfish. Any advice on how to get started. I already have a patch of dirt I plan on using. I’ll be feeding old and leftover vegetables and using cardboard. Is there a a better way to do this. Also is there anything I need to be careful of when feeding worms

 

[esoxlucius]

I have a small enclosed worm farm at the bottom of the garden. Once you get it going make sure you continue feeding regularly with those kitchen scraps. If there's no food you'll soon discover your worms will go elsewhere in search of it!

Also, try and keep it damp, difficult if you are in a warm climate, you'll need to keep hosing it down. Otherwise the worms will go deeper and deeper to avoid the upper dried out parts. And if it dries out completely you won't get any worms.

If you do everything correctly all you'll need to do is scrape the surface and you'll start finding them. Any that are joined together (mating), put those back.

As you can see from mine it's full of soil. This is the end result of a years composting. In a couple of weeks I'll be digging it out right down to ground level and using all that rich soil to feed my house plants and other outside plants. Then I'll start feeding it all over again.

 

[Rtc/tsn]

I have a small enclosed worm farm at the bottom of the garden. Once you get it going make sure you continue feeding regularly with those kitchen scraps. If there's no food you'll soon discover your worms will go elsewhere in search of it!

Also, try and keep it damp, difficult if you are in a warm climate, you'll need to keep hosing it down. Otherwise the worms will go deeper and deeper to avoid the upper dried out parts. And if it dries out completely you won't get any worms.

If you do everything correctly all you'll need to do is scrape the surface and you'll start finding them. Any that are joined together (mating), put those back.

As you can see from mine it's full of soil. This is the end result of a years composting. In a couple of weeks I'll be digging it out right down to ground level and using all that rich soil to feed my house plants and other outside plants. Then I'll start feeding it all over again.

View attachment 1488488

That’s neat. What would be a good simple way to make an enclosed area so the dogs don’t get into it.

 

[esoxlucius]

Dogs can be a problem, ours is forever sniffing about for scraps. Never put meat in your heap, or bones, or your dog will destroy it digging!

I just hammered a couple of "stakes" into the ground (you can see the triangular ends of the stakes) and attached some old decking boards to make a crude enclosure, it doesn't have to be fancy, get creative.

The worms you are likely to get are a small composting redworm. You can wash and feed these whole, unless your fish are really small. You may get some tiger worms too (brandings). These are stripey and a bit bigger than the redworm.

You are very unlikely to get the much larger earthworms, these tend to frequent deeper soil but come to the surface on mild nights, where you can pick them off your lawn. Only the bigger fish can usually manage the big earthworms.