DIYing your earthworm crib and basic care

This is a short note on how i construct my own earthworm farm and some basic care notes.

get two of the same type, same size of plastic opaque tub say 14 inches by 10 inches, so that when you stack them, there is a space in betweeen. okay then you drill holes around 1/8 of an inch at the the bottom of the top tub. 20 such holes spaced out evenly should do the trick.

(try to imagine the coffee shop's plastic chairs stached on top of each other, got some space in between right ?)


the improved version


an earlier version of my farm but still complete with drip trays and tubs with drilled bases.

also get a cover, make it an opaque one to shield them from light

so when you fill up with the special garden soil and you ocassionally sprinkle with water, the excess water will drip thru the top tub's holes and collect in the bottom tub ? great idea to use the excess water to water your land-based plants...

this cocopeat housing is available at nurseries, when you get it, it is in the dry form with a lot of dust and powder, so be careful not to spill it, just take the entire bunch, soak it in water and rinse semi-dry and you are ready to house the worms.

don't forget to buy the dolomite lime powder (think is some calcium powder) meant for them, it is to fatten them and keep them healthy.

remember they will eat ROTTEN stuff, not rotting or fresh stuff, feed them twice a day and the calcium powder once a week.

the bad pieces of vegetables that your household discards shd suffice, just dump this load into water and wait for it to ROT, then only do you pour this mixture over the heap, you not feed them but you water them at the same time ! (but go easy on the watering, they need to be moist not flooded)

you can even give them teabags or the coffee grind from your coffee maker. sometime when i smoke at my corridor, i will sprinkle the spent tabacco fillings over the top, they eat it all the same.

okay, now it comes to collecting, remember they hate sunlight, so when i need a clump of them, i will just flip over the tub, heaving the whole heap of the compost on say, a piece of newspaper, it's gonna get messy ! as they are afraid of sunlight, so they WILL congregate at the bottom for sure, so now you get to see the upturned bottom part of the compost with all the writhing worms but you got to fast to catch the juicy ones now exposed in front of you, cos the moment these light-sesnsitve fellas realize that their a s s e s are facing the light, they wil quickly squirm into the midst of the compost.

if you are intending to feed them to your fishes on a daily basis, i would say you need a pretty industrious earthworm farm going on, cos i used to keep like a few hundred, and i feed only on a weekly basis, after 6 months, their numbers were still the same ones, either the young ones were too small or they simply maintained their numbers instead of increasing..

remember, how much they can reproduce is directly proportional to their living quarters, if you can offer them a large roaming space, you can expect a bigger brood.

i would recommend this to be a treat in addition to your normal feeds.