What are Worm Farming Secrets?

Question

How many types of benificial worms used in farming? How to look after them and stemulate them to multiply rapidly? When and how to release them in the farm?

Answer 1

Visit this site. CIKS is completely devoted to organic farming. They are also members of other international organizations with similar concerns.

One can contact them for specific advice.

http://www.ciks.org/pub-org.htm#manvalam

Answer 2

Simply put, worms are attracted to food and moisture.  So all you have to do is provide a conducive environment.

Answer 3

I know that earthworms like moisture, decaying organic matter, and cool, but not cold conditions.  We used to buy worms from some people who farmed them.  I'm talking just a little farm owned by some really poor people.  They raised chickens and farmed the worms under the chicken pens.  They also sprayed it with water and gave them corn meal as extra food.  The area they grew them in was maybe 100 square feet and they had a lot of worms. When you bought worms from them, they put about 1/4 cup saw dust mixed with dirt in a 16 ounce cup and the rest was worms.  Now, when you buy worms from bait shops it's the other way around.  You get more litter than worms.  

These people always had at least 50 cups sitting out for sale every time we drove by there and that's where everyone bought their fishing worms.  So I would say chicken manure, yellow corn meal and water are the key to producing worms.  

I recently built some raised bed gardens to grow veggies and wanted worms to put in them to improve the soil.  At first I bought some fishing worms, but that was really expensive.  Next, I went to the part of my yard where I dump all the kitchen scraps.  I hit the jackpot there.  Each shovelful of dirt had at least 10 gigantic earthworms and several smaller ones.  I left many of the smaller worms to replenish the stock and put the rest in my beds.  It turned out to be a good move for the worms as we've had the worst drought in ages here and they may have died if I had left them where they were since most of the plants around there died because it's so dry.  Even the scraps I through out this summer dried up before the bugs could start eating on them.

Answer 4

Earthworms are always working to make the soil better, not only for their own survival and reproduction, but also for the healthy survival of their primary food source, the residues from your crops. Earthworms are truly the farmer's best friend. And one last added benefit: they provide free fishing bait.

Instead of my trying to write you a whole book, let me refer you to this article.  I think it will answer all of your questions about farming and the benefits and returning earthworms to the farm.

http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/agric...

Answer 5

Earthworms travel underground by the means of waves of muscular contractions which alternately shorten and lengthen the body. The shortened part is anchored to the surrounding soil by tiny claw-like bristles (setae) set along its segmented length. (Typically, earthworms have four pairs of setae for each segment but some genera are perichaetine, having a large number of setae on each segment.) The whole burrowing process is aided by the secretion of a slimy lubricating mucus. Worms can make gurgling noises underground when disturbed as a result of the worm moving through its lubricated tunnels as fast as it can. Earthworm activity aerates and mixes the soil, and is constructive to mineralization and nutrient uptake by vegetation. Certain species of earthworm come to the surface and graze on the higher concentrations of organic matter present there, mixing it with the mineral soil. Because a high level of organic matter mixing is associated with soil fertility, an abundance of earthworms is beneficial to the organic gardener. In fact as long ago as 1881 Charles Darwin wrote: It may be doubted whether there are any other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly creatures.

Earthworms are monoecious (both female and male organs within the same individual). They have testes, seminal vesicles and male pores which produce, store and release the sperm, and ovaries and ovipores. However, most also have one or more pairs of spermathecae (depending on the species) that are internal sacs which receive and store sperm from the other worm in copulation. Some species use external spermatophores for transfer instead. Copulation and reproduction are separate processes in earthworms. The mating pair overlap front ends ventrally and each exchanges sperm with the other. The cocoon, or egg case, is secreted by the clitellum, the external glandular band which is near the front of the worm, but behind the spermathecae. Some indefinite time after copulation, long after the worms have separated, the clitellum secretes the cocoon which forms a ring around the worm. The worm then backs out of the ring, and as it does so, injects its own eggs and the other worm's sperm into it. As the worm slips out, the ends of the cocoon seal to form a vaguely lemon-shaped incubator (cocoon) in which the embryonic worms develop. They emerge as small, but fully formed earthworms, except for lacking the sexual structures, which develop later. Some earthworm species are mostly parthenogenetic.

The major benefits of earthworm activities to soil fertility can be summarized as:

    * Biological. The earthworm is essential to composting; the process of converting dead organic matter into rich humus, a medium vital to the growth of healthy plants, and thus ensuring the continuance of the cycle of fertility. This is achieved by the worm's actions of pulling down below any organic matter deposited on the soil surface (eg, leaf fall, manure, etc) either for food or when it needs to plug its burrow. Once in the burrow, the worm will shred the leaf and partially digest it, then mingle it with the earth by saturating it with intestinal secretions. Worm casts (see below) can contain 40% more humus than the top 6" of soil in which the worm is living.

    * Chemical. As well as dead organic matter, the earthworm also ingests any other soil particles that are small enough—including stones up to 1/20 of an inch (1.25mm) across—into its 'crop' wherein minute fragments of grit grind everything into a fine paste which is then digested in the stomach. When the worm excretes this in the form of casts which are deposited on the surface or deeper in the soil, a perfectly balanced selection of minerals and plant nutrients is made available in an accessible form. Investigations in the US show that fresh earthworm casts are 5 times richer in available nitrogen, 7 times richer in available phosphates and 11 times richer in available potash than the surrounding upper 6 inches (150 mm) of soil. In conditions where there is plenty of available humus, the weight of casts produced may be greater than 4.5 kg (10 lb) per worm per year, in itself an indicator of why it pays the gardener or farmer to keep worm populations high.

    * Physical. By its burrowing actions, the earthworm is of great value in keeping the soil structure open, creating a multitude of channels which allow the processes of both aeration and drainage to occur. Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison points out that by sliding in their tunnels, earthworms "act as an innumerable army of pistons pumping air in and out of the soils on a 24 hour cycle (more rapidly at night)" Thus the earthworm not only creates passages for air and water to traverse, but is itself a vital component in the living biosystem that is healthy soil.

I hope it helps!

Answer 6

Here's a good guide that explains the whole process:

http://wormfarmingsecrets.pinurl.com

It's written by a worm farming expert from Australia, so the ideas you get will be viable and accurate.