Being all this gets confusing for many allow me to try and explain in plain English. The earth under our feet is teaming with life, the “richer” the soil, the more beneficial life usually contained within. To give you an idea, in one cup of soil there can be literally billions of live microorganisms contained therein. However, poorer quality soils can also be teaming with life, just not the ones we want or our plants.

Each microbe has a purpose in life which becomes an entangled web by which one benefit another by giving a free ride to another to greener pastures… protects your plants from harmful microbes… or which finds another a delicious treat…

When dealing with soil and worm castings there are two categories of microbes we need be concerned with, aerobic, the good guys and anaerobic, the bad guys. Now some of you know I have written about worm castings as well touched on aerobic versus anaerobic before, however now I am going to explain in more detail as well as back it up by other renowned experts.

The reason this was so important to bring back up and to elaborate on is the fact each year around this time through the fall I have folks contact me stating they have either generated worm castings themselves or moreover purchased worm castings in the past and neither the worm castings nor worm tea showed any benefits. So I figured here was a good time to show why some worm castings are so beneficial while others do not produce results.

First, the definition of aerobic: requires oxygen to survive.

To further this:

“…anaerobic conditions foster pathogenic bacteria and worse, kill off beneficial aerobic bacteria… Some anaerobic bacteria produce alcohols that are toxic to plant life and to other bacteria. These anaerobic bacteria can be avoided when gardening by controlling the conditions that allow them to multiply; poor soil texture, lack of pore space, standing water and compacted soil.” Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web By Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne Lewis, Forward by Elaine Ingham

Anyone not familiar with the authors who are highly respected adding to the fact that Elaine Ingham is one of the leading authorities on soil and well respected when it comes to earthworms, now you know!

Now being the above statement has to do with soil management the same principles apply to worm castings. After all, worm castings help create not only beneficial soil underground to approximately 6 inches in depth but also are one of the main components to generating the top soil which resides on the surface to a depth of approximately 1/8 of an inch.

For instance, “standing water and compacted soil” is one reason Organic Worm Farm has refused to offer worm farms with the spigot on the bottom. Once you overload your worm bin with water you are in essence compacting your worm bedding material and generating standing water, which in this case is leachate, full of anaerobic microbes which come out of the spigot. The manufacturers and those promoting these types of worm farms state it is worm tea, which could not be further from the truth.

Worm tea on the other hand is a delicate process by which you aerate good “aerobic” worm castings in a mixture of non-chlorinated water along with some other additives over a period of 24 to 48 hours at 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, hence exploding the beneficial aerobic microbe count exponentially.

To picture another with readymade worm farms offering a spigot you are creating swamp mud which is anaerobic and a known disease causing environment in humans and animals. Step in it and your shoe gets stuck due to the vacuum created since the air cannot penetrate which would allow you to pull your shoe out freely. If your shoe sank in sand at the beach, you could easily pull your shoe back out since it is surrounded by free flowing air. However go towards the water’s edge and get your shoe stuck in the sand and once again it becomes difficult to pull out.

Worm castings when generated and stored correctly retain millions of aerobic microbes. In order for one to generate the best quality worm castings temperature comes into play since certain microbes you want to survive in the worm bin are active at ranges from 70 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  A reasonable temperature range to raise worms and produce premium worm castings is 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Think about his for a moment. During the main growing seasons throughout a majority of the world the ambient temperature ranges from 70 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and is when microbes are most active in your garden areas.

Here on our worm farm we maintain a controlled environment throughout the year maintaining a constant temperature of 78 degree.

A worm bin with bedding material which is not packed down should maintain a 30% moisture level at all times throughout the bed. If the same bedding material were packed the reading on a soil moisture meter would read approximately 70%. It is similar to soaking some paper in a bucket of water. Pick it up gently and squeeze and some water will run off. Allow it to lay in the palm of your hand then and it appears to be drier than if you were to squeeze firmly releasing additional water.

Issues also arrive when storing vermicast. When they are generated at 78 degrees Fahrenheit then stored outside during the winter at 20 degrees, many of the beneficial microbes are killed off since they cannot survive at these temperatures. Vermicast needs to be kept aerated, moistened at 30% moisture and stored in the ideal temperature range they were created in order to maintain maximum benefits.

Another issue of worm castings being stored outside is the fact that airborne contaminants come into play, i.e. unwanted seeds which will flourish in your garden.

When you go to buy worm castings and they are sold in sealed plastic bags or containers, no oxygen can penetrate. This renders the worm castings either useless or harmful allowing malicious anaerobic microbes to take over.

For example let’s assume you go to a local county fair and one of your kids wins a goldfish, which by the way is aerobic. You take your prize home in a sealed plastic bag half filled with water and the other half filled with air, place it on a shelf and forget about it. The goldfish will be fine for several days, however by the end of the week it will be belly up and you will have some explaining to do to the kids!

This is why Organic Worm Farm offers worm castings which have been stored correctly and shipped in breathable bags.

Another issue with buying worm castings is the fact that many are produced from waste such as vegetable scraps which include seeds. Being the worm bins cannot be heated as ordinary compost bin without frying the worms, these seeds can sprout within and around your potted plants, vegetable and flower gardens… This is why we have worked and tried to perfect the 14 Day Worm Castings process where one does not use vegetable scraps, manure or any other items which could end up contaminating the worm castings, hence eliminating sprouting of unwanted seeds around your prized possession.

Bruce

The result was that the red wigglers avoided the computer paper side of the bin like the black plague. I decided to fool around with this experiment further by taking bunches of the shredded computer paper and moving it to where the worms has settled in comfortably within the worm bin. This actually chased the worms away from these areas to other areas of the worm bin.

Unlike years ago when households relied mainly on well water, today most homes depend on local municipalities and utility companies for their drinking eater. It is suppose to be better water which could be correct due to contamination of thousands of wells across the country.

In order to be sure that our tap water is free of any unwanted bacteria, the water treatment companies add chloride to our drinking water.

This is when it hit me when a number of people have had problems with worms trying to escape and they state their pH, moisture and temperature levels are all correct. There was a common denominator here; they all used tap water straight from the faucet.

The tap water can actually have more chloride than the residue left behind during production of computer paper.

So how does one resolve this issue? It is actually pretty simple and does not cost anything.

First I have seen where some people state that you simply aerate the water to remove chlorine. This will NOT work!

Anyone with a pool can relate to the consumption rate of chlorine on sunny days compared to overcast days. This is because the chlorine is broken down under the influence of the UV radiation in sunlight.

One of the simplest ways to remove chlorine from your tap water for your worm bin and garden areas using worm castings since they too consist of bacteria and fungi is to set a bucket of water out in direct sunlight for a day or two.

Another way to obtain chlorine free water is to collect rain water. One problem with rain water can be the impurities within the air that are washed out when it first begins to rain. These impurities can be harmful to your worms especially if you live near a factory for example putting out a lot of smoke or other atmospheric pollutants.

Another way to obtain chlorine free water is to purchase a gallon jug of natural spring water. Just be sure they have not added chlorides to help preserve the shelf life. For the average worm bin, a one dollar jug of water can go a long way!

A last note, if you are trying to produce the best possible worm castings, the chlorides will kill off a majority of the beneficial microbes you want. When watering plants using the worm castings, always use chloride free water otherwise you are defeating the purpose.

Good Luck in Your Worm Composting & Gardening Adventure…

Bruce Galle

Mark D. – Texas

First off Alabama Jumpers are different from other worms we sell. One, they do not eat food scraps but rather organic material from leaves (limit oak leaves) hay (not straw), shredded newspaper and cardboard… Basically carbon based products.

Setup an area with clay or sandy soil in your yard or garden area. Place some bedding material and be sure it is wet down so as it is damp.

I recommend you release your worms outdoors once the sun sets behind the tree or landscape background so as not to burn them up.

Place your worms on top of the pile and mist a little water on top of them to get the worms moving.

Do NOT spread your worms out throughout your yard or garden. Rather place at least 500 in each pile. The worms will eventually begin to breed and spread out as they multiply. If you spread them out to thin, they will have difficulty finding each other to breed.

Bruce

From a starting point I wrote another article pertaining to worm castings and the need for oxygen. In short, most are shipping these out in sealed plastic sandwich type baggies. The problem arises when taking into account that the reason worm castings are so beneficial are the number of live beneficial microbes. If you seal off oxygen, you kill off the microbes. If the worm castings are permitted to dry out, you kill off the microbes…

Hence this is why all our 1lb and larger worm castings are shipped priority mail in breathable bags!

Now when you make worm tea from organic worm castings what you are basically doing is exponentially exploding the number of beneficial microbes. Once again these are live organisms which require oxygen and a food supply to stay alive. In fact, brewing worm tea is nothing like brewing tea you and I would drink. It does not require heat for the brewing process but rather loads of oxygen and food which is readably eatable by the beneficial microbes.

After brewing for 24 hours, you end up with super charged plant food which is loaded with millions of microbes, all needing to maintain an oxygen and food supply.

Imagine taking an aquarium pump and turning it off, the over time the fish will begin dying off. Now imagine millions of fish crowded in the same fish tank with no room to swim and turning the aerator off. The fish would begin to die almost immediately and soon you will have an aquarium with nothing left but dead fish and a rotten stench.

The same holds true for the microbes within worm tea.

So in short, if we bottled the worm tea and sold it as others do, by the time it arrived and was used, it would be useless and most likely and full of malicious bacteria and fungus that can actually harm your plants.

This is why we do brew worm tea but sell it locally for pickup orders only on the same day the brew is finished.

Organic Worm Farm does offer a solution for anyone looking to brew their own worm tea, worm casting tea bags, shipped in breathable bags via priority mail. These are the same worm castings used by Organic Worm Farm to make worm tea for use on our own gardens as well as sold locally.

If you happen to be looking for readymade worm tea in the Pickens, Greenville area of South Carolina, simply contact us and we will tell you how to get some! Otherwise, try brewing your own tea as it is not difficult and will not smell!

Bruce