By: Mac Bartine

Big Oil, the meat industry, chemical fertilizer manufacturers and queasy people everywhere are shaking in their boots due to recent scientific and agricultural innovations brought about by worm farming.

The buzz is: worms may well save the planet. Consider: worms are one of the easiest animals in the world to farm, and all you have to do to harvest 100% organic meat is to raise earthworms in organic soil.

Home worm farms are a breeze to set up; they compost your fruit and vegetable waste and your dog and cat’s poop; and their droppings diluted in a water solution to the color of a weak tea make the best fertilizer you’ll ever use in your garden.

And your fruit and vegetable crops won’t be the only bounty you can eat. Raw worms are not the most desirable food, but meat scientists are fascinated with the possibility of processed worm meat.

People will never know what they’re eating was ever worms by the time the processors get through with it. It will taste just like beef, chicken, fish, pork or turkey; and processed worms can be poured, mixed and molded to look exactly like those meats, too!

Processed worm meat, which will be branded as “Weat” by a very large agricultural conglomerate that you know very, very well, is coming soon to a store near you. Weat is nearly 100% fat, cholesterol free, low in calories, high in protein and high in fiber.

Having trouble losing weight? Experiments are still in early stages, but the Weat Diet is expected to be the most successful weight-loss and nutrition regimen in the history of dieting.

Worm counters offering battered and fried Weat, Wilk, Wice Cream, Wenderloin and Wurgers will be introduced in every Starbucks and McDonald’s in America.

Weat will be the end of world hunger. The State of Utah alone would be able to produce enough Weat to provide Weat for every person in the world, three meals a day, indefinitely!

The global-warming-causing methane and ecosystem-leveling solid toxic waste that’s produced by beef, pork and poultry farming will be a thing of the past.

Because worm farms can be packed with worms wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, the farms will be easily designed and manufactured to capture, collect and ship the fertilizer and methane produced by worms for use in all facets of life, business and industry.

Methane is an ideal fuel for creating hydrogen, and the carbon by-product will be easily converted into carbon nanofibers, which are currently revolutionizing every manufacturing process in the world.

And the biggie: worm farms can and will flourish anywhere, and the hydrogen that’s produced will be plentiful enough to be piped and tanked short distances to gas stations all over the nation.

As Al Gore has said, “thanks to worms, the hydrogen economy is now finally becoming a reality, and global greenhouse emissions are expected to drop by 50% in a previously unfathomable space of 10 years or less – all due to the humble worm.”

Are you Weady for the Wevolution?

jariweiser asked:


I was wondering if beer could be added to compost as an inoculant to encourage bacteria growth.
I was wondering if beer could be added to compost as an inoculant to encourage bacteria growth. Good answers so far. I have used the beer and cola approach. I avoid soap as it might repel earthworms and grubs (good helpers).

By: K. Finch

Compost is what is left over when organic matter decomposes. Organic matter can be things like vegetable scraps, leaves, mown grass and any other garden waste. This material will decompose without any assistance at all, though you can help it along and enjoy the benefits of compost faster if you wish.

Because it doesn’t contain a high level of essential nutrients, compost is not considered an actual fertilizer. Instead, it is treated as a soil conditioner or amendment. Compost does supply many good things to the soil. It attracts beneficial creatures like earthworms and it improves the soil composition.

Cold composting is basically just making a pile and letting it sit in the bin. This takes longer than hot composting. Hot composting is when you take a shovel and turn your pile every few days to supply more oxygen to the microorganisms in your compost pile.

Location

First, decide where you will put your compost pile. Check for city ordinances that may regulate where you can put a compost pile, or if you can even have one. A compost pile can get messy, so put it somewhere that you can reach with a hose so you can do clean up if necessary. Bugs will be attracted to your compost pile, so keep this in mind. If you have a free corner in your garden that is far enough away from the house and the neighbors could be the perfect spot for that new compost pile.

Containers

There are many composting products for sale today. They even have gadgets that will rotate your compost for you, but really, the only thing you need is a compost container. Some people simply fence off the compost pile, while others use a bin or container of some kind to put their organic matter in. This can be recycled, home made or purchased at a store. While there are many composting bins to choose from in all sorts of shapes and sizes, the easiest ones are simple. Don’t spend more than you need.

Layer It

A good way to begin a compost pile is with layers. Start with fallen leaves or grass clippings, and then put some soil on it, then put in some kitchen waste. Eggshells, scraps of fruits and vegetables and coffee grounds all make good additions to a compost pile. Do not ever add meat or pet waste to your compost. Once you have more layers, add another layer of soil and manure.

Moisture

Keep your compost pile moist, but not wet. Add a little water if it seems to be getting dry. You may want to consider adding a little beer to your pile. The yeast in the beer will keep the bacteria in your compost pile and make sure they’ll be happy. It doesn’t really matter if you add beer or water, just keep it moist.

Maintenance

A compost pile doesn’t need a lot of maintenance. Just continue adding your garden trimmings and kitchen waste to the pile. Occasionally mix in a little soil and manure to encourage decomposition. Keep the pile moist and if you remember, turn the pile about once a week to improve air circulation and aid the decomposition process.

The compost is ready to put in your garden when it looks like dark soil and smells like earth. Just add to your garden and mix it in. If you want to add compost to your indoor plants, you need to sterilize it first. Layer it on some foil on an old baking sheet and put it in a 200 degree F oven for about half an hour.

There isn’t one best way to make compost. No matter what you do, organic matter will decompose. Find the style that works best for you and your garden and get composting!

By: Paula Brett

Have you ever thought about what actually happens when things rot? It may be that, like me, you have got confused reading garden books, as they are usually full of vague meanings for words like `stabilised humus’!

Many of you may think that making compost is an unpleasant or difficult process – well, I can assure you, it’s not!

For a fast track way of changing crude organic materials into humus (something resembling soil) read `a compost pile’. The word humus, however, is quite often misunderstood, together with the words organic matter and compost

Making compost is really a very simple process. It can become a natural part of your yard or gardening maintenance if done properly. If you are mowing your lawn or weeding your flower-beds, making compost doesn’t have to take any more effort than bagging up your garden waste.

To me, astounding as it may sound, handling well-made compost is actually a very pleasant experience. Don’t but put off by compost’s `dirty, nasty’ origins. There is little similarity between the healthy-smelling black or brown, crumbly substance dug out of a compost pile and the garbage, leaves, manure, grass clippings and other waste products from which it began.

To define composting precisely, it means ‘enhancing the consumption of crude organic matter by a complex ecology of biological decomposition organisms.’ Many raw organic materials are eaten and re-eaten by thousands of tiny organisms from the smallest (bacteria) to the largest (earthworms).

The components are altered gradually and recombined. Unfortunately, many gardeners use the terms compost, organic matter, and humus as interchangeable identities. However, there are important differences in meaning that need to be explained.

This organic matter food gardeners are vitally concerned with is actually formed by growing plants that manufacture the substances of life. Most organic molecules are very large and complex – inorganic materials are much simpler. Of course, animals can break down, reassemble and destroy organic matter but the one thing they cannot do is create it.

Only plants can make organic materials like proteins, cellulose, and sugars and they produce this from inorganic minerals derived from air, water or soil. The elements plants use to build include magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, sodium, cobalt, zine, iron boron, molybdenum, carbon, manganese, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen

Thus, it is organic matter from both land and sea plants that fuels the entire chain of life from worms to whales. Because humans are most familiar with large animals, they rarely stop to consider that the soil is also filled with animal life consuming organic matter or each other.

Our rich earth is crowded with single cell organisms like bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, rotifers and protozoa. Soil life forms increase in complexity to microscopic round worms called nematodes, various kinds of molluscs like slugs and snails (some so tiny the gardener has no idea they are even there), thousands of often microscopic soil-dwelling members of the spider family (arthropods), insects and, of course, the larger soil animals most of us are more familiar with such as moles.

The entire sum of all this organic matter – living plants, decomposing plant materials, and all the animals, living or dead, large and small – is sometimes called biomass. One realistic way to gauge the fertility of any particular soil body is to weigh the amount of biomass it sustains.

By: Vicki Duong

Composting is easy so long as you have the right materials and equipment necessary, but did you know that even the worms are your best friends in this process? Vermicomposting or vermiculture is essentially the process of composting with the use of worms and their castings (i.e., worm waste). An easy and fun way to compost for your garden or house plants, vermicomposting can be done both indoors or out, and requires very little space.

Red worms or red wiggler worms, which are different from earthworms, are the best worms to use for your composting process. You want to stay away from using earthworms because they weren’t made to be composting worms; red worms will take your food scraps, eat and digest them, making worm castings full of nutrients for your soil. Earthworms on the other hand, are burrowing worms; they’ll aerate the soil and take everything on the surface down with it. Therefore, they’ll be absolutely useless for what you want to do, which is compost!

In order to have a successful vermicomposting experience, always remember to feed your worms! Worms need food too, and they love food scraps, another reason why vermicomposting is so easy. Readily available, food scraps like wilted vegetables, fruit rinds, bread and coffee grounds are great sources of food for your worms. Just be sure to never, ever add scraps like meats, fats, oils, or dairy products because the worms will not be able to eat and digest these items properly. Additionally, they smell bad and attract rodents and other animals to your compost bin or heap.

Be sure to bury your food scraps in the dirt about a few inches deep underneath the dirt. This will keep the annoying fruit flies away, not to mention leaving some wiggle room for your little worms. It’s always a good idea to bury your food scraps in different areas of your worm bin so that the worms don’t get too used to convening in the same spot and so that all areas of the bin receives its fair share amount of worm castings.

After a few months you’ll notice that in place of the dirt bedding you laid out for the worms earlier, you have what we composters like to call black gold, rich fine worm castings that are ready to go into your garden. After that you’re ready to start over! A fun process that students, young children and adults will surely enjoy, vermicomposting is a terrific and acceptable way to get down and dirty with worms!