But where do the worms go?

Posted on 06/20/2007 by Meryl Yourish

There’s a documentary on the History Channel right now. It’s about the history of fertilizer. I caught it as they were discussing bat guano, and stopped at the sight of millions of bats leaving their caves for the night to eat some 500 tons of mosquitoes (go, bats!). Then I watched through that, the segment on the South American Bird Poop War of 1879 that resulted in Bolivia losing its entire coastline (yes, that’s true), and then finally, a segment on turning cow manure into fertilizer with the aid of worms.

So they have this guy going down his row of dirt troughs telling us about the thousand-square-feet of cow poop and worms, and they detail the entire disgusting process (it was truly gross because they started from the dairy farm cows and fresh manurel), and finally, they show us the end result. But while the owner of this worm fertilizer farm was glowing about his seven million worms per trough, and the narrator and he described the process and the end result of the fertilizer, I had one question: Where do the worms go?

Where do the worms go?

What the hell do they do with the worms when they’re done with them, sixty days after starting the fertilization process?

They never said.

This is going to drive me crazy. They never said what they do with the millions of worms. I mean, sure, they’d probably make a great addition to the fertilizer, but I doubt the guy wants to lose seven million worms every time a trough is ready.

Where do the worms go?

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3 Responses to But where do the worms go?

  1. Sabba Hillel says:
    06/21/2007 at 12:22 pm

    http://www.sptimes.com/2003/05/13/Floridian/It_s_a_dirty_job.shtml

    Afterward, another rancher collects poop-laden soil and dumps it into a cylinder. The cylinder, actually a filter, separates the poop from the worms and the soil. The worms and soil can be returned to their rightful bins; the poop is piled into a veritable mountain.

    http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/topic/vermicomposting/pubs/worms.html

    Worm Away Your Cafeteria Food Scraps

    Every day, schools and businesses throw leftover food and table scraps into the garbage. The garbage must be picked up and transported to a disposal facility-at significant financial and enuironmental cost. Through a process called vermicomposting, food scraps are fed to worms and transformed into a nutrient-rich compost for plants and gardens. Vermicomposting can help businesses and schools save money. By diverting food scraps from a dumpster to worm bins, it might be possible to switch to a smaller dumpster and thus reduce solid waste disposal fees. Through a school cafeteria vermicomposting program, students can learn a valuable, hands-on recyc1ing lesson: food doesn’t have to be thrown away. Worm castings can be used to help plants grow in their school or home gardens and grounds. Although this publication focuses on setting up vermicomposting programs in schools, the same guidelines can be used by companies and other institutions that generate food scraps. The Seattle Kingdome and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences are two vermicomposting success stories discussed here.

    Waterville Elementary School (Oregon)

    Fourth grade students helped a parent volunteer build five worm bins, which they set on concrete blocks. To test the effectiveness of different beddings, they placed shredded newspaper in two bins, pulverized cardboard in another, old corn silage in the fourth bin, and composted horse and cow manure in the last bin. Of these beddings, the manure worked best, because red wigglers love manure. Newspaper also made a fine bedding, but dry cardboard was a hassle to handle; when it was moistened, it got too soggy. The class received about 30 pounds of worms from a local farmer, so roughly 6 pounds of worms were placed in each bin. Although it is not recommended to put meat and dairy products into worm bins because they can create odors and attract rodents, the students decided to put hamburgers, tacos, and sub sandwiches into the bins, because they are located at the edge of the school grounds. They also added paper portion cups, paper napkins, and straw wrappers. All of these items were eaten by the worms and turned into castings.
    Each day, students from second through fifth grade (assigned on a rotational basis) scrape off the plates, weigh the food (15 to 30 pounds per day) and take it out to the worm bins. Students spread the food out on top of the food scraps already in the bin, and cover the new scraps with a layer of bedding. Doing this adds more air to the bin environment and allows the worms to eat as they move upward, which is their natural instinct. Students discovered that the best way to harvest worm castings was to leave the lid off the bin, which allows light to penetrate and dry out the bedding, causing the worms migrate downward. Castings can be removed from the top of the bin as the worms move toward the bottom.

    They recommend building the “farm” in layers with frames. then you can harvest without losing the worms.

    Step 10 – Harvest the Castings.

    After about six weeks, you will notice quite a bit of dark brown, earthy-looking worm castings. You should harvest the castings (remove them from the bin and separate them from the worms) every three to six months. When you are ready to harvest the castings, Josh Nelson recommends that you buy a few inexpensive children’s wading pools and pitchfork the material from the top frame into the pools. The highest concentration of worms and bedding will be in this top frame. The lower frames will contain mostly castings and very few worms. After you empty and remove these frames, transfer the worms and bedding from the wading pools into the bottom frame and start the process over again.

  2. Bert says:
    06/21/2007 at 12:32 pm

    I think we should go and tell P.E.T.A. about this. If they are actually so cold hearted as to KILL the poor worms, they (the worms) need an advocate in P.E.T.A.

  3. Adam says:
    06/21/2007 at 3:57 pm

    If I remember correctly from the show, the worms work their way up from the bottom, and there is a scraper on the bottom that collects the castings. New material is added to the top as the castings are removed from the bottom. The worms are on a quest toward a surface that just keeps growing.

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