Cheap way to farm garden worms.

I prefer the big fat garden words, rather than the usual worm farm tiger worms. And several times over the years, I have farmed garden worms, its an interesting hobby, good fun for the kids, and you can simply let them go, if the novelty wears off.

Before I say anything else.... cutting worms in half, will kill them, sure they wriggle around, and look alive, but both halves die...

Ok, that said, now to how to farm them. 

For a start, get an old plastic ice cream container, I used a 2 ltr size. poke a couple of very small holes in the bottle, just in case you water them too  much, you don't want to be drowning them. Put about 2 or 3 cups of soil or potting mix in the container, give it a good water, and let it drain out, and move he soil around so there a hole in on corner of the container, where you put the food later.

Then while you are weeding or digging your garden, or if its just been raining, collect say 20 or more worms and just drop them in the container, replacing the lid so they don't crawl out, they will wiggle away under the dirt to hide.

The first time I did this, we lived near a paddock of cows, so my son jumped across the fence with a gardening folk, and dug under the older dried up cow poo, and got about 50 worms in a few minutes. I also saw an interesting video on youtube, that is worth watching.



When you have collected a few worms to start, leave them alone for a while, and let them wriggle away, and make their first lot of food. They don't need much for a start, so don't go crazy.

They like pretty much any leftover vegetables, except onions, garlic, celery or fruits, except citrus fruit. you can also use leftover vegetables off your plate at the end of a meal. Cut up the food very finely, for 20 worms you probably only need a teaspoon of food, so when its finely chopped or mashed, gently put it in the whole you left, and cover the food up. Then lay a few sheets of newspaper over the top, you could use a kitchen towel or thin cardboard.

Put the lid on, and just let it site in a warm place, but out of direct sun. The last thing you want to do is cook them.

I checked my ones a couple of times I day, and for a start, they all climbed up the sides of the container, trying to get out, but they soon settle down. 

When you notice the soil is drying out, add a little water, on the paper, no need to soak the whole thing. I put about an egg cupful in, and with replacing the lid, the condensation means it will dampen the other dirt.

Now about the life cycle of garden worms.

That raised part circled in green, is actually an egg cocoon, generally your new caught worms will have one. These move off and fall into dirt, until they hatch. 

Earthworms are hermaphrodites, that is, they have both male and female sexual organs.

So first, mating, this is how worms do it... They lay side by side, heading in opposite directions, and since they have both sex organs, they give sperm to each other. (No they can't fertilize themselves) So here they are doing what I call, the worm mating wiggle.

The sexual organs are located in segments 9 to 15.

Mating occurs on the surface of dirt, generally at night. For the full story of how they reproduce read here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm#Reproduction 

Ok, so they have mated, and the eggs are fertilized, over the next week or so, that egg sack moves down the body, and eventually falls off and closes, and the adult worm goes off and mates again. 
The eggs, once they fall off,

look very much like a grain of wheat. I used to collect them, and put them in another container, but you can also just leave them in the dirt with the parents.

Depending on the conditions, its been a while now, but I seem to remember they would take 2 to 4 weeks to hatch, each egg has about 10-15 very small, but fully formed baby worms.

So for each set of mating worms, you get 20 to 30 baby worms. but of course by now those adults have mated again, and maybe a third time, so its easy to see how worms reproduce very quickly.

For a start, the baby's are white, and look like pieces of cotton, or maggots if you haven't seen them before. but in a month or so, you can see they are young worms....

Baby worms don't require much or any food, they will quite happily just munch of the dirt, its important not to have loads of moldy food around.

Once you see the worm eggs, or baby's around, you have two options, depending on what you want to do. you can tip the container upside down on a flat surface, and pick out the adult worms, and put them back into your small container, with new dirt, feed them, and let the cycle happen again. Then if you are interested enough, you can search through the dirt, and find the eggs, and set them on a damp paper towel in a small container, and watch them hatch, and with the baby worms and dirt left, spread it on your garden, in the evening, right before dart. they will wriggle away to safety. Or you could have another container with baby worms is you would like...

Or you can do what I did, and fill up a bucket, about 2/3s full, again with only area to add food, and tip the first container on top. Adult worms, baby worms and eggs, will be happy with more dirt and more food.... After a couple of months, you can upsize their living space again.

The year I started with about 50 worms, I ended up with three 200 litre plastic drums, cut in half lengthwise.

with lovely healthy worms, it wasn't necessary to cover them by them, they knew where the food was.

I did have a secret food though, that had those worms breeding like crazy.....

I met a couple of woman, that ran a pet rabbit rescue, they has an abundance of rabbit poo with straw or sawdust.

They delivered a trailer load of rabbit poo, and I emptied some of it half rotted poo, sawdust and straw into the bottom of the drums, just a bit higher then a white lids,  I added some lawn clippings, mixed it all up, then covered with dirt, and upended a couple of buckets of half grown, and adult worms into it.... gosh did those worms go insane breeding. By then, I was selling the half grown worms to farmers and gardeners by the kg, it was a neat little cottage industry, at $20kg... that was about 20 years ago now.

Another time I did this, more recently, I collected them in early Autumn, so by the time it was starting to get cold for winter, I transferred them into a polystyrene fish bin. I kept it inside, in the conservatory over winter, and because they were warm they kept breeding fast, in early spring, I put some more potting mix on top of the fish bin, I planted some Italian lettuce mix on that, all the worms were still underneath....

Gosh did those lettuces grow, In the picture, on the left bottom, I picked that many leaves every other day for weeks and weeks and weeks. That was a cucumber at the top of the bin, that grew everywhere and became a nuisance, so I don't recommend that :)

When those lettuce leaves weren't so sweet anymore, I cut the plants off at ground level, and pulled them out, the number of worms under there was amazing. Do I just added more seeds, and in a few weeks, I was picking more lettuce for the rest of the summer, autumn and winter.

Once winter started and I started making soups again, I found out that adding a few lettuce leaves to a soup, a couple of minutes before you dish up, added a delicious almost sweet green to the soup... I have cooked lettuce ever since... is good in a stirfry. try it sometime.