Kris

whats the best way to get worms out of my garden??

Brian G

Start a compost heap, put in all your vegetable kitchen waste, not cooked foods though, grass clippings, used tea bags, you will soon find the worms colonise in there, you can also add shredded newspaper and cardboard, add a layer of cardboard on the top and you should find a good few right at the top. Lobworms can be collected of your lawn at night use a torch and you will soon spot them, best done when the lawn is damp.

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richie

go out on a damp night with a torch and they'll be laid on the grass but you'll have to be quick . I usually leave the ones that are at it ! lol

Brian G

Posted on an earlier thread by Justin Case and well worth a read.

Ok I know this thread is quite old now but its a subject Im quite qualified in

some 20 years ago I set up a company importing worms from Holland USA and Canada
We rented a small farm and also bred some of our own, We also supplied the Angling Times with there own portable worm breeder called the green machine, memories memories, We also wasted thousands of pounds doing trial runs with local councils as part of a recycling campaign,

Building something to breed worms in is simple, feeding them and keeping the stocks up is the tricky part

The easy part

Any container will do depending on the scale of your operation my worm bed is about 6 ft sqaure built from concrete blocks at the end of the garden.

we used to use wheelie bins for our commercial operation and would suit most anglers and keep them supplied with a good amount of worms, another good product is an old water butt especially if it has a tap on the bottom as drainage is one of the main issues

So find your container from the bottom up you need to drill some small holes around 3mm drill these all around the base coming up to around 60mm from the bottom, fill the bottom of the container with pea shingle and a small covering of course sharp sand make sure you go above the drain holes, if you can get your hands on Lytag which is a light expanded clay agregate then your quids in.

For the medium we used a mixture of riddled soil and peat dont use the dry brown peat use bog peat the black stuff, the brown one is far too acidic. add this untill you reach two thirds of the way up, the last third being for food, add a good helping of starter worms try to keep away from Brandlings Reds and Dendra's will live happily together and don't try to keep lob worms in there, if one dies like in your small tubs it will eventually kill your whole stock.

The food

Ok we tried hundreds of different materials 3 of which came out on top, used tea bags and coffee grinds, thats the bags as well rip them up and just throw them in, all filter coffee bags will do, the next best thing was cardboard and paper worms adore it, they eat through it so fast its unreal, all of our commercial worm breeding pits were covered with corrogated cardboard this provided a little insulation and a great food source,
you can also add all of your left over vegtables, potato peelings etc just keep it varied and make sure you give them a head start by chopping it all up.

Stay away from watering its not really needed unless its over dry there is enough water made during the decomposition of the food source. if your lucky enough to have a tap on the bottom what is mentioned above is correct the liquid produced is as good if not better than baby bio, its well worth bottling up.

The whole process can take a while to get going but its worth it.

The cardboard trick is quite handy if you need a few dozen hook samples quickly, pull back the cardboard and you should be greated by quite a few worms munching on the cardboard, newspaper can also be used.

you need to remember natural light is not good for worms keep a lid on the top.

A note about lobworms, don't add them to your breeder if they die they will in most cases cause the whole wormery to die I have had this happen and lost millions in a few days, somewhere around 200 kilo's all because I had a few hundred lobs over and I threw them in one of the beds, we don't know why this happens but im sure you have all smelt them once they have died

If you need any help on this subject give me a shout

JC

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Kris

Thanks for that I've just flooded the garden with soapey water!!! Caught 5 and will go back to have another look later!!!!

BAG UP

Use a light with a red beam as this won't scare the worms as if you use a white light !

richie

Make sure you give them a wash because the soap irritates them and that's why they come out

Kris

i caught 5 lol

think i need more practise!!

BAG UP

Or more soap

jasper

pro's n cons of soapy water ,

ok there i was in the garden having just read about this method , hose in hand making he spray pattern with the water with my thumb, water going every where. bottle of washing up liquid in the other hand and squrting the liquid into the water flow from the hose, drenched aprox 3 mtr size peice of lawn,
in the back ground is the wife calling me every name in the book for doing what i was doing to the lawn. mean while im soaked from the waist down , so i think to myself " well that should do it" and after about 2 hours of this ive had enough,

1 cup of tea and a fag later ,there i am bent yet again over looking for the elusive critter we all call a worm, well i managed to find 15 in total , some large and some small. so kind of a success


cons

1. back ache (bent over for too long)
2. head ache ( from eye strain looking for the bloody things )
3. soaking wet trousers boots , etc( spray from hose )

Pro's

1 the cleanest garden in suffolk

the moral of this stoy is ,dont bother guys just spend the money and buy them ,lololololololol