Worm Gardens

[Kajin]

So... Worm breeding. Simple and easy enough to do. Get a big plastic bin or build a trough of some kind. Fill it with dirt and leaves. Lots and lots of leaves. Maybe rotted food as well. Then acquire worms and put them in the bin. If you've got a garden of some kind you probably already have a bunch.

 

After that just wait. The worms will breed periodically and you'll be able to use them as needed. Use them for fishing bait or give them to chickens to eat as a dietary supplement along with whatever else you're feeding them. Help keep your chickens healthier so they grow up big and strong and give you higher quality eggs and meats in larger amounts. If you've got enough materials on your hands, maybe you could even expand the worm breeding containers to large, long troughs dedicated to a moderately large scale breeding program. That way you can constantly churn out enough worms to keep your chickens happy and well fed year round.

 

Also serves as an excellent composting device. The worms will convert all the leaves you feed to them into fine, high quality soil that you can add to your garden. All you gotta do is remove some of the dirt whenever you go to throw in more leaves and food scraps for the worms. Maybe even go so far as to add some of your worms to the soil with the compost. That way they'll churn the soil and keep it aerated for good root health. Keep the soil at a higher quality for a longer time.

[Kajin]

Alright, did some research into building worm habitats and it's even easier than I thought it would be. All you need is three things:

A Container

A Bedding to use as a base

and a Food Source

 

You take the container and you fill it with the bedding of your choice. It can be leaves, finely shredded paper, wood chips and shavings, or dried grass clippings. Then you add the food source. Any sort of old, rotted food that you can't eat. The worms will get most of their energy from the food source and that's really what enables rapid breeding. But they will also eat the bedding which, along with the food source, gets converted into fine soil.

[fossilrecords]

This is a great idea.  We used to have a compost pile that we grew huge earthworms in for fishing.  Container, grass clippings, and vegetable skins/old food.  You could throw dead rats in as well (not that we had any dead rats)...

[Kajin]

I fail to see how someone could possibly be completely incapable of taking care of worms. They literally have zero physical needs beyond "stay in the dirt" and "eat the dirt". A goldfish is harder to take care of than a worm. If you find the concept of worm breeding difficult to the point of not being able to hazard a guess as to how to do it then you're probably not gonna be surviving the apocalypse.

[Kajin]

It wouldn't take much to come to the conclusion that they can be bred. If you're a fisherman or you're breeding chickens or you're doing gardening work and just happened to find a bunch of them and you think it might be useful to keep them alive for future use. So you build a container and fill it full of things you might find worms crawling around in. You know, dirt and stuff. Maybe some leaves and sticks too. Worms love that stuff, right?

 

Next thing you know they're breeding and you have more worms than before. Yeah, more worms! More bait for the fishing and more feed for the chickens.

[EnigmaGrey]

Box + soil + shredded paper/organic matter == ideal worm growth medium.

One of the simpler things in life.

[Romegypt]

I know a LOT of people who know how to breed worms. But I'm from texas so... I'm guessing it's more common knowledge in the south (not that EVEYone in the south knows about it).