(soft music)
- Jacob here is asking,
"Geoff, what are the common difficulties
and the solutions to them,
of using a worm farm system like your bathtub system?
Anything you can provide to help a newbie avoid mistakes
will be very useful.
Currently while my worms are eating the scraps I give them
and thriving, they have almost entirely ignored
the horse manure provided from the beginning.
Any idea what this might mean or what should I do about it?"
Well, your horse manure is their base food
when they run out of scrap food.
So the worms actually moderate their population
to the food supply.
So they'll be increasing in number as a new worm farmer
you won't realize they're doubling their numbers
every 40 days.
They'll get to a stage where they'll be in all your scraps
and when they haven't got enough scraps,
they'll be diving into the horse manure
and the horse manure.
Here's my dog.
Yes, hello.
The horse manure will be their reserve food,
so they won't be going in there straight away.
As their population gets large enough,
they'll eat the food scraps and then dive down
and use the worm manure as their backup food.
So, and you can guarantee they've always got something
even when you're short on scraps.
Common problems is blocking.
If the worm farm blocks and it saturates
you got a problem, right?
That's one of the biggest one,
make sure that it's well drained.
Make sure you've got a good filter
that allows the moisture to go through.
Another one is, that you'll get rodents getting in here,
to get the scraps.
And also you'll get black solid fly larvae
which will produce a kind of oval looking maggot
that's a bit bigger than the meat maggot
and look a bit yucky.
And they actually consume the organic matter
faster than worms, but worms eat their manure.
Now, if you don't want that to happen
you need to put a fly screen top on,
the trouble is the rodents will eat through the fly screen.
So you've probably got to put a wire
and a fly screen together
so the rodents can't get through the wire
and then the black soldier fly larvae
can't get through the fly screen or shade cloth
which means you've got to make a wooden frame
to go around it.
So if you want it to be a respectable looking worm farm
that doesn't have rodents
and doesn't have black soldier fly larvae
and it looks a lot better as a system,
do that and put a roof on it
and control the amount of moisture you have
entering the farm.
So if you control the moisture, it won't block up so easily.
You won't have over watering or saturation problems.
You won't have black soldier fly larvae
looking a bit gross
and rodents won't be able to get to it.
So all of that makes it more of an urban system.
If you're on a farm,
yeah, probably doesn't matter so much.
Blocking does,
blocking does because they'll kind of drown.
They'll all come up to the top.
You'll end up with a putrid system.
Other one, don't allow anyone to bury the food scraps
into the horse manure or the manure at the base
'cause they'll go anaerobic.
If this system goes anaerobic,
it goes putrid and it stinks.
So that's what happens when it blocks,
that's what happens
if you bury the food scraps in the manure.
Make sure that the food scraps are on the top,
make sure it doesn't block.
Remove the rodents scenario with a wire mesh frame
and remove the black solid fly larvae issues
with a fly screen or a shade cloth below the wire.
So, and
as long as you keep feeding them, they'll keep producing.
They'll keep increasing in number
until they get to the right amount
to handle your supply line.
And when they're a bit short
they'll always keep going into the manure.
And over about three,
once you get the maximum population
about three to four months
you'll have a bath full of worm castings.
The manure will be converted
and they won't hardly be any food scraps left at all.
(soft music)