Red Wigglers - Composting Worms

Red Wigglers are an incredible species of earth worm. If you like growing vegetables or really any kind of plants you are going to love Red Wigglers and what they can do for your plants.They are not commonly found in your typical garden soil. They love decaying plants, compost and manure which is where there specialty comes into play. They have a lot of other common names such as red worms, tiger worms and branding worms. Their official latin name is Eisenia foetida. Eisenia is a type of earth worm and foetida means fetid. When the red wigglers are handled roughly they can secrete a liquid that may smell unpleasant (fetid).

One of the most popular uses for Red Wigglers is vermicomposting. Rather than just putting your food and yard waste into a pile and letting it slowly decompose, you can put the Red Wigglers to work for you rapidly breaking it down into a rich compost. And they are fast. They can supposedly digest their half their weight in food waste everyday. So essentially, one pound of Red Wigglers could digest one half pound of food waste in 24 hours. The result is a nutrient rich "casting" (worm poop) that plants love. The castings can be placed directly on the soil around plants as an amendment and it will not burn the plant.

Another use for the castings is compost tea. Essentially, the castings are placed in a fine textured bag and lowered into a container of water (5 gallon bucket is common). The water is percolated using an aeration system such as you would commonly find in a fish tank. Some molasses is added to the water to feed and grow the beneficial bacteria found in the castings. After 12 to 24 hours the compost tea has "brewed" and the tea is then sprayed or poured on the plants and or soil. This tea acts as an innoculant for the soil by leveraging the beneficial biology of the worm castings. This is one of my favorite uses for worm castings.

Vermicomposting is very easy and not gross at all. You can buy the worms you need via eBay and you can get worm bins there also. The best type of worm bin to buy is a continuous flow through design. One of the problems with vermicomposting is seperating the worms from the castings. With a continuous flow through worm bin, the worms move through the bin and leave their castings behind. There is no need to separate the worms from the castings. No fuss and no mess. The whole system makes perfect sense. You feed the worms your food waste and they feed your plants. You also help the environment by reducing the amount of waste that goes to the landfill. It really is a win win situation, especially if you like to garden.