hi jeff laughton here everybody
likes the idea of growing an organic
garden but they also
want to know how am i going to fertilize
it how am i going to keep it productive
well you can make your own fertilizer
well you can work with something that
makes fertilizer and that's compost
worms
we all have some food scraps to deal
with not
everybody has a recycling system where
they live set up by the local government
but you can recycle it yourself you can
set up a system
that continuously creates fertilizer
both liquid
and solid fertilizer that will keep you
eating from your own garden
this is closing the waste stream loop of
your own
food system now the little guys that do
the work
are these they're not earthworms they're
compost worms there's quite a few
different types red wrigglers brandon's
tiger worms
indian night crawlers african
nightcrawlers indian blues there's all
sorts this one's going up the arm a
little bit here
they're pretty friendly look they eat
their own weight every day
so the amount of worms you've got or the
amount of worms you're going to end up
with
is going to equal in weight the amount
of food scraps you're going to dump in
there
what you produce out of your kitchen the
only thing they don't like
is citrus peel and onions
and in the onion family citrus peel you
can actually burn and make a good
fertilizer
from the ash if you want to now
the product every day
you can get a few liters or a half a
bucket or so
of good quality liquid fermented
worm juice this is coming through the
worm farm you don't have to water it
down
but you can you can extend it 20 times
with water or you can use it
neat the other product the other great
product
is this one it's a whole bucket and it's
heavy
right this is worm castings this is a
solid material
this is better than compost in some ways
it's kind of sticky
it's gluggy i can kind of make a almost
like a
a ball like a clay ball out of this this
is high quality solid fertilizer there's
a little worm still in there
this has humates and mucilates and
sticky gels in it that all come through
the gut of the worm earthworms
eat the manure of compost worms
that's how rich it is in beneficial
bacteria not so much beneficial fungi
little bit of fungi
mostly beneficial bacteria this is great
fertilizer solid fertilizer and liquid
fertilizer
every three months you can empty this
bath
and get a bath full of this stuff
out and reset your worm farm and every
day
you get your liquid fertilizer coming
out you're in business
you can grow your own food in a very
high nutritious
high quality healthy way by recycling
your own waste stream let me show you
what you're going to need
you can use just an ordinary bath you
just get it set up at the right height
so that it drains down to the normal
drainage point of the bath
then i just use a piece of old chicken
wire
and a scrap piece of shade cloth all i
do is wrap it up
the wire just gives it a little bit of
strength and integrity
i just want it to stay over the bath
plug
i'll just fold the wire in bring the
loose ends together
and that's our filter you don't want
this bath
to get clogged up so that it cut the
water
any moisture in there can't drip through
the bucket and the
and the worms then get flooded up to the
surface
takes a while to drain it so i'll just
stick that over
the drain hole of the bus and all i use
is a house brick
that's my filter it's that simple we're
going to use manure as their base food
that's one of the secrets of keeping it
simple half fill
your container with cow manure or horse
manure
if you're going to use sheep or goat
you'd make sure it was quite old
especially if it was desert manure which
is very rich
if it was chicken manure it would be
have to be very aged
cow and horse manure are great because
they're partly decomposed vegetation
so here are some of our worms there they
are
they can go straight onto that manure
they'll thrive on that manure there
they'll dive right in and
i've got a wheelbarrow here of the
residual worms from the last worm farm
so there there's hundreds of worms here
and there'll be hundreds of worm eggs as
well
we don't want to mix the fresh scraps
into the manure
because it will go airless and that
means it will go anaerobic
and it will give off methane which won't
be good for the worms
it could kill them so we keep it in
layers
so now we've got all our worms in and
they'll all dive down
they've all gone for cover we bring up
our food scraps and every day
we just drop our food scraps onto the
worm farm
we spread it out a bit
that's it that'll build up because every
single day for three months you'll be
adding
a bucket half a bucket of food scraps
whatever you've got
and your worms will come up and they'll
convert that into fertilizer
now i'm going to wash it all down clean
it up a bit
and we're going to spray
all the farm down we're going to water
it down so it all goes
wet and sloshy because the worms like
that
the liquid coming out is definitely more
nutritious for plants because it's very
high in bacteria
the gut of the compost worm has enormous
diversity of beneficial bacteria that's
really good for the soil
it's quite different than manure tea
which can be quite anaerobic
and have anaerobic bacteria which is not
so good for the soil
and we don't know how old it is and how
acid it is
but the worm castings and the juice that
comes from the water
filtering through this worm casting mix
this is neutral it doesn't have an acid
or an alkali ph it's very neutral
and it's very high in beneficial
bacteria so you're
feeding the soil there we go we're gonna
we're gonna
really get a good test on our drainage
here as well
but there we go we've got it really nice
and wet and as long as it's draining
we're right we can keep topping this up
for three months and get constant
fertilizer every day
so here's our final move i've got a just
a scrap piece of
shade gloss keep them nice and shaded
they don't like the light
and move away from the light i'm just
going to keep it simple and just weigh
it down
with four house bricks
i'm just going to put an extra piece of
weed mat here
this is even more shaded could be an old
carpet
could be an old blanket as long as it
lets the rain
through i don't like the worm farms to
be covered up
from the rain i like the rain to come
through the worm farm
a little bit of extra juice a little bit
of diluted juice that's fine with me
the more juice we get the better the
more i can fertilize my garden
so there we go a very simple way to make
a worm farm
and it's guaranteed to work
be easier than that
so here we are after three months our
worm farm
is ready to be harvested and all the
castings can come out
it's like a compost but it's more sticky
but
we've got to capture our worms so
if we take the cover off and just cover
one end
and put fresh food only on that end they
have to dive away from the light
and they eat their own weight every day
in food so they've got to get towards
that food
so the majority of our ones most of our
worms are going to be in that fresh food
within two or three days
now we're ready to harvest so we can
pull out our worms put them in a
wheelbarrow
reset the farm with manure and fresh
food put our worms back
and we're ready to go again for another
three months
okay let's get on to it
take the bricks off they're just
weighing down this
shade cloth uncover our worms
now we've got to move quite quick
because they'll also dive away from the
light
so we start to pull them out here they
are they're in that fresh food
and there's thousands of them
just look at them it's breathing with
worms here
they're all coming from that fresh food
these are your classic
worm castings and they're
sticky they glue together it's much
it's much stickier there's one worm left
in there there he is
but that's worm castings
it's a beautiful solid fertilizer and
every three months we get a whole bath
full of this out
we reset and we empty again every three
months every 12 weeks
this system closes the waste cycle of
your food supply
so you can produce good high quality
fertilizer
solid fertilizer every three months you
get a bulk load
and every day you can get liquid
fertilizer coming through this
worm farm it doesn't take up much room
it's a constant supply and it will run
as long as you supply it with waste
stream
it will run now if you don't have enough
food scraps
you can use grass clippings you can put
clipped weeds in here
if you want more nitrogen you can use
bean crops
or cover crops that are natural and rich
if you want more phosphate you put
phosphate rich crops in here if you want
more potassium you use potassium-rich
crops
or weeds it's just vegetation they'll
even eat shredded paper
best of it's something nice and lush but
you can
design the end result to emphasize
in one direction or another this is
designer organic fertilizer day by day
year by year running indefinitely for
your food supply
to make sure that you stay healthy
with nutritious
valuable food
you