Tag Archives: add beneficial microbes to your soil

The Greenest Gift. What to get a gardener for Christmas.

19 Dec
Red Worm Farm complete system. The perfect Christmas gift for your favorite gardener. Red Worms will turn kitchen waste into rich fertilizer for plants and soil.

Save money, reduce waste, your plants water consumption, and produce the best fertilizer available by composting household waste with red worms. Texas Red Worms provides you with the ultimate gardening and composting system. Our shoebox sized starter farm is a perfect no hassle, no smell way to turn wastes into valuable castings for compost tea and fertilizer for your plants and soil.

Red wiggler worm farm $40, includes everything you need (bin, castings, hundreds of red worms, and food). Pictured below, shoe box size, about 5 lbs.

Red worms and castings about 2.5 lbs. $25

Get started reducing your waste today. Delivery available. Farms are located in San Antonio and Livingston, TX

210-310-5046

Perfect time for Red Worming (Vermicomposting)

12 Nov

It’s always the right time to add compost to your soil, and always a great time to get started composting with Red Worms.  It’s Fall in Texas and the cooler weather is ideal for work outside and setting up your worm bed.

TexasRedWorms.com provides you the easiest way to start composting with Red Worms (vermicomposting) today.  Our shoebox sized Starter Farm provides everything you need to produce nutrient rich castings for your plants and soil, and a thriving breeding brood of red worms (eisenia foetida) nature’s best composter.

Check out our latest ad on Craigslist or just give us a call 210-310-5046.  If you are in the San Antonio or Livingston, TX area pick up can be arranged, or call for shipping information.

Texas RedWorms visits Floresville Elementary

26 Oct

Texas Red Worms.com spent lunch today with 300 3rd graders from Floresville Elementary School.  We talked about composting, red worms, and how they could become red worm farmers.  The students have been composting for about a month. Each of the eight 3rd grade science classes will have their own redworm farm to help in their composting process.  Students are learning how to reduce waste and turn trash into nutrient dense castings they can add to plants and landscape around their homes and school.

The students asked some great questions and are eager to begin worm farming (vermicomposting).  Thanks to a bunch of smart, and well behaved students, Mrs. Davis, and the rest of the 3rd grade science department at Floresville ISD.

Compost tea benefits: Get rid of termites, fleas, ticks, chiggers, and more naturally.

10 Oct

This weekend I took a visit to East Texas to work on some of our worm beds.  While loading manure from some piles to start a new worm bed, I noticed some termites in some fence posts, as well as, some fire ant mounds.  I have had success with compost tea applications before in controlling ants, grubs, and fleas.  So I started a small batch of tea with finished compost and some redworm castings.  I also did a little research to see if anyone had had any experience with termites and found this article.  Microbes like nematodes and bacteria can be amplified with a quality finished compost and brewed into actively aerated compost tea. Beneficial predators that can control and eliminate many pests.  So if you have a roach, ant, flea, tick, grub, cigger, termite or other problem chances are actively aerated compost tea can come to the rescue.

Compost “Sweet” Tea

1 Oct

I started brewing a batch yesterday afternoon of actively aerated red worm compost tea (red worm castings, unsulphured molasses, and rain water).

I have collected about 15-20 gallons of rain water to use over the last month or so.  Rain water, well water,  or water from other natural sources are the best choices to be used in your compost tea.  Tap water should be left out in the sun for a day or so to eliminate Chlorine. Next, I harvested some castings from my worms.  I use a mesh laundry bag for my tea bag.  Compost can be added to the water or steeped with a bag.  The tea bag eliminates the need to strain before putting in your sprayer.

Aeration- I’ve got a pond aerator pumping into the brew to supply plenty of O2 supporting beneficial microbial growth.

To make is “sweet” compost tea, I’ve added some unsulphured molasses to feed the beneficial bacteria.

This batch will be ready this afternoon.  I’ll put the finished product into a pump sprayer and apply to my plants.  It’s that easy to add beneficial microbes and add “life” to plants and soil.  Compost tea applications will reduce water consumption by plants, and add balance back to your yard and plants.  Beneficial microbes (bacteria, protozoa, fungi, and nematodes) can eliminate the need to aerate your lawn, the use of pesticides, and commercial fertilizer.

I will need about 5 gallons or a third for my use, and will be glad to share the rest.  I’ll be giving a gallon away with any worm purchase this weekend.  First come first serve.

Compost tea results

16 Aug

I had mentioned in my previous post that positive indicator for my compost tea application was to rid a section of our hay patch of ants.  The spot of concern has been infested for a few years with “town ants” or Texas leaf cutter ants.  Town ant hills were sprinkled throughout a 20 yard X 20 yard area.  The operative word being “were” because two weeks later the ant hills are vacant.

Beneficial microbes in compost tea are parasites to ants, fire ants, fleas, ticks, and chiggers.  I had had success in my lawn in getting rid of some of these pests with compost tea, but never on this scale.  This alone is encouragement enough for us to continue compost tea applications, and we’re looking forward to the next batch.

Compost Tea Party part 3

11 Aug

We ended up with two batches.  In both we used @80 lbs of finished compost (40lbs in each of 2 mesh laundry bags that we purchased for $1.87 at Wal-Mart).  Both batches we used 500 gallons of well water, and aerated with our 1600 gallon rated Aquascape 4 pond aerator.  Where we tinkered a little was on the food source (molasses + brown sugar) and brewing time.  1st batch we used two jars of unsulphured molasses and 1 lb of brown sugar and 24 hours of brewing time.  The color was light brown and the smell was pretty much neutral with a hint of earthiness to it.  Batch #2 was brewed for 36 hours and was fed 4 jars of molasses and 1 lb of brown sugar.  The smell on batch #2 was the same faint earthy tone with a hint of sweetness from the molasses.  The color was a shade darker brown than batch #1.

One thing we will be judging the success of the compost tea application on is in the reduction of ant hills.  We don’t have a big fire ant problem, but one hay patch has several ant hills in an area.  Adding beneficial microbes began for me as a way to control fire ants, grubs, and other pests in my yard, and have had some terrific results. We’ll keep you posted.

10 minute Red Worm Setup

28 Jul

We had some local customers ask me to come help set up their worm bed.  I delivered the worms and helped them set up their own worm bed in about 10 minutes.  We found a nice spot in one of their flower beds, grabbed a plastic pot, some post hole diggers, and went to work.  I dug a hole large enough to bury the pot, placed the pot inside with the bottom cut out, put the worms in with bedding and food, and placed the lid on top.  This took about ten minutes and now Dave and Patty have their own TexasWormFarm.com worm bed.

500 gallon Compost Tea Party part 2

27 Jul

Let the Compost Tea Party begin.  The holes in our mesh bags were too large, and we were concerned that our sprayer might get clogged.  We grabbed some old panty hose and stuffed our bags into them.

We brewed up our first batch for about 24 hours.  It had a nice weak tea color and had a hint of earthy smell.  (I pulled out my old Sears microscope that I got for Christmas in ’85, but figured X600 would not be quite powerful enough to see any microbes.) The first batch went well and was applied at a rate of 15 gallons per acre.

The next batch that is brewing right now.  This batch will brew for 36 hours.

500 gallon Worm Compost Tea Party

18 Jul

Brewing a 5 gallon batch of compost tea is no trouble.  In a couple of weeks I will kick it up a notch and be brewing up 500 gallons at a time.

We purchased a 500 gallon spray rig from Rozell Sprayer Manufacturing Co. in Tyler, TX this Spring.  In order to add beneficial microbes to our hay fields and pasture, I’m going to replace the water soluble fertilizer with compost tea.  I don’t have enough compost to spread over 100+ acres, so compost tea is the solution.

I just ordered my aquascape 4-stone pond aerator today, and this is what I will use to aerate my tea to ensure it stays aerobic.  Most of the beneficial bacteria are aerobic and will need plenty of O2.  To keep the ratio of finished compost to water the same as a 5 gallon brew (1 lb. -1.5 lbs. per 5 gallon)  I am going to need 100 -150 lbs. of compost and some larger mesh bags.   I am planning on using onion sacks for my tea bags.

Stay tuned for more information on TexasRedWorms.com “Big Time- 500 gallon Worm Compost Tea Party”