2018 Annual Running of the Worms

[Rhodie Ranch]

Did anyone dissect a worm in high school? I did and it was fascinating. Also a fetal pig and that led me to dissecting other things along the way...most recently a gopher snake that I accidentally killed in some netting a few years ago. I froze it and then dissected it in front of a Grand and my niece. Interesting.

 

[valley ranch]

1:31
How many hearts does an earthworm have? | Fact - 41 | It's AumSum ...
It's AumSum Time
YouTube - Oct 28, 2016

 

[catjac1975]

i'll go on, at length given a chance on this sort of topic. i'm sure i have already here in TEG...

as a side note, if i ever post a picture here it is very likely i'm linking to it from some place (likely a project) on my website (and a non-thumbnail version of the picture will also be available there):

http://www.anthive.com


here are some of the details:

http://www.anthive.com/project/worms/
http://www.anthive.com/project/taters/


plus a bunch of references and various topics including dirt/worms:

http://www.anthive.com/project/notes/

the shorter answer is, yes, simple system, worms, 10 buckets this year, last year i had 16 buckets and one larger square bin i used, but it was too much space taken up so i downsized, covers (to keep the worms and bugs in or out (or both))... no drainage holes. i control moisture levels by evaporation and only adding some wet items once in a while and extra water if it gets too dry. the worms will do fine in a bucket of dirt and organic materials to eat up until nearly saturation, but it is very heavy to move and smelly (like a swamp) when emptying so i try not to get them that wet.

i dry veggie and other food scraps or store them in the fridge until i can add them to the buckets.

melon/melon rinds are worm crack. those i put in fresh and they're gone within a few days except for a bit of skin left.

i restart the worm buckets each spring from some of the worms i keep back, so i can't use the full contents of each bucket, but about 20-25% are used to restart and then the process repeats each year. so what you see there is one year's results and one bucket of 10.

When we were young and lithe my husband and I would go out at night in the spring with a flashlight. He would catch a glimmer of a nightcrawler and catch and pull until he had a bucket of worms. He seemed to like doing this as he did it many times..They went straight in to the vegetable garden as their new home. We alway have many there so it must have worked.

 

[Nyboy]

Cat you live on a river, I was sure your husbands worms where for bait

 

[catjac1975]

Cat you live on a river, I was sure your husbands worms where for bait

Never caught a fish in this river. I have seen guys who tell me they catch a dozen bass at time. Just never when I am there to see them.

 

[flowerbug]

When we were young and lithe my husband and I would go out at night in the spring with a flashlight. He would catch a glimmer of a nightcrawler and catch and pull until he had a bucket of worms. He seemed to like doing this as he did it many times..They went straight in to the vegetable garden as their new home. We alway have many there so it must have worked.

if your soil is light enough they can dig in right away they'll be ok, but usually a transplanted night crawler is in trouble. it takes them years to make their burrows (they enlarge them as they grow). if i see one away from it's burrow i'll dig up some garden soil for it so it has a chance to start over again.

there weren't any night-crawlers here in some gardens when i first started out so i did transplant some and now i do find them. they do like a little clay in the soil.

i know several people who've picked them for $ to sell to the bait stores. it's not very easy to raise them in captivity.

 

[catjac1975]

if your soil is light enough they can dig in right away they'll be ok, but usually a transplanted night crawler is in trouble. it takes them years to make their burrows (they enlarge them as they grow). if i see one away from it's burrow i'll dig up some garden soil for it so it has a chance to start over again.

there weren't any night-crawlers here in some gardens when i first started out so i did transplant some and now i do find them. they do like a little clay in the soil.

i know several people who've picked them for $ to sell to the bait stores. it's not very easy to raise them in captivity.

We have sandy loam. I don't remember if the garden was tilled and fluffy. Hope we didn't kill all of those precious worms.

 

[digitS']

Did anyone dissect a worm in high school? ...

I did, and managed to get thru it.

I remember rinsing the fetal pig again and again before leaving it to my lab partner. Couldn't get past the formaldehyde!

The earth worm is one of the reasons I like both burying compostables directly into garden beds and having permanent paths. When I dig out a bed every couple of years, I disturb worm habitat. If they have burrowed under the paths, they are safe.

Steve

 

[Nyboy]

Formaldehyde baby pig remember it well.

 

[catjac1975]

For some reason I loved dissecting. Especially frogs. I did all of my friend's frogs. The one's who were afraid to touch them.