Worm Farming with the Can-O-Worms

As part of your self-sufficiency program, I highly recommend farming your own worms. This may gross some people out, but if you want to be self sufficient, you're going to have to learn to suck it up. Self-sufficiency is not for woosies. And I can assure you that as the economy worsens, those willing to "suck it up" are the ones that will increase their odds of thriving where others will be struggling just to survive. You don't really have to worry much about touching the worms or getting dirty. The unit I'll be discussing (Can-O-Worms) is very well engineered and takes a lot of work out of the whole process. While I do believe that everyone can make good use of raising worms, those that have vegetable gardens will benefit the most. Your goal should be to produce a "green" cycle.

1. Grow your vegetables.

2. Eat your vegetables.

3. Feed the vegetable scraps to your worms.

4. Extract "compost tea" from the spigot on your Can-O-Worms, dilute 10:1 and use for watering.

5. Extract black compost from your Can-O-Worms and use as fertilizer.

6. Harvest your crops and continue the cycle.

There are worm farming products out there other than just the Can-O-Worms. I personally chose this one after having researched and decided it was the best choice. It costs a little bit more than some of the others, but this is an investment, and as with any investment, you need to weigh the pros and cons. Much of my decision was based on ease of use and efficiency. This being the case, I didn't mind spending a little more on a unit that I believe saves me time. And if it saves me time, it saves me money (and pays for the extra up front cost, which is only $20 to $30 more anyway).

Once you decide to purchase your Can-O-Worms unit, don't rush out and buy up any worms for it. Buy the unit first. Then, when it's delivered to your house, take your time assembling and familiarizing yourself with it. Once you have it assembled, have read any literature that came with it, and set up the bedding and some food scraps, jump on the web and order your worms. Just order 2 pounds of them (around 2,000). They will breed fairly quickly and eventually maximize the Can-O-Worms at about 15,000. That's a lot of worms. Make sure you order red wrigglers (eisenia fetida). This particular species is a great composting worm and a very efficient eater.
Once your worms arrive, just take them to the worm bin, open them up and dump them in and then put the lid on. You don't have to worry about spreading them out or anything. Check in on them form time to time to make sure they're settling in ok. Once they get established, you'll see just how fast they can devour your scraps. At first, your 2 pounds of worms will be able to eat 6 pounds of scraps per week (or about .85 pounds per day). Once you get to full capacity of about 15,000 worms, they will eat about 6.5 pounds of food every single day. That's some serious consumption.
If you crunch the above numbers, you'll find that at full capacity, your Can-O-Worms will produce about 2,373 pounds of fertilizer per year (assuming that 6.5 pounds eaten equates to 6.5 pounds excreted). If you are currently buying 25 pound bags of fertilizer, that comes out to 95 bags. Note that a portion of the excretion will be in the form of "Compost Tea." Compost tea is the moisture from the system that works its way down through the layers of worm castings and collects in the reservoir. The Can-O-Worms has a valve at the bottom of the reservoir so you can open it up and release this compost tea into a bottle where you can dilute at 10 parts water to 1 part compost tea, and use it as a liquid fertilizer.

What are the gains of using this fertilizer (known as Black Gold)? Let's take a look...

1. The humus in the worm castings extracts toxins and harmful fungi and bacteria from the soil.

2. The worm castings have the ability to fix heavy metals in organic waste. This prevents plants from absorbing more of these chemical compounds than they need. These compounds can then be released later when the plants need them.

3. Worm Castings act as a barrier to help plants grow in soil where the pH levels are too high or too low. They prevent extreme pH levels, which would otherwise make it impossible for plants to absorb nutrients from the soil.

4. The humic acid in Worm Castings stimulate plant growth, even in very low concentrations. The humic acid is in an "ionically" distributed state in which it can easily be absorbed by the plant, over and above any normal mineral nutrients. Humic acid also stimulates the development of micro flora populations in the soil.

5. Worm Castings increase the ability of soil to retain water. The worm castings form aggregates, which are mineral clusters that combine in such a way that they can withstand water erosion and compaction, and also increase water retention.

6. Worm Castings reduce the acid-forming carbon in the soil, and increase the nitrogen levels in a state that the plant can easily use.

7. Your plants will grow bigger, stronger, and look way healthier than those growing without fertilizer AND far better than with products like miracle grow.

I could go on and on about the benefits, but I'll not bore you to death.

If you're serious about growing your own vegetable garden, you really do need to consider raising your own worms. And because you'll have more than enough fertilizer by doing so, you'll have excess that you can use to barter with, if things like the economy get that bad. Think about it. If things get bad, others will be wanting to grow their own foods as well. And if you can provide them a valuable source of natural and healthy fertilizer, that should give you considerable leverage to barter. Maybe they have a particular vegetable that you're not growing, or for some reason they have better luck than you at growing it. Barter a portion of the crop. Or if they have silver, trade them for that. The opportunities are endless. In hard times, if you provide a much needed service, you'll find some way to gain the leverage to barter something.
I have included a video of the Can-O-Worms product. It does a pretty good job at explaining things. It can get a little distracting at times from them joking around some, but they're kind of funny, so it's not so bad.