I’ve decided to finally set up the Worm Composting Canada email list – which will initially be used simply to let people know when worms (and castings) are available again.

Please sign up below if you wish to receive updates, and/or just generally want to keep in touch:

 

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Happy Holidays!

If you would like to order Eco-Mix, please refer to these pages:

Pick-Up Order Pricing
Shipped Order Pricing

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In all honesty, given the amount of rainfall (or lack thereof) we are likely to see this month, there’s a decent chance that we won’t have Red Worm Culture bags available until September, but I don’t foresee any more shortages of the Eco-Mix prior to the end of the season.

We also still have plenty of worm castings – still available at our ultra-low price! I’ve been seeing fantastic results with my crop plants (mostly tomatoes & squash this year) – so if you want to provide your veggies with a nice late season boost, this is definitely a great option! I’m planning to add a blog post with photos of the garden a bit later this week, so stay tuned!

Unfortunately, a very dry summer (and limited available time for maintenance) has taken its toll on our outdoor worm beds, so we’ve decided to shut down worm selling for a couple of weeks while we get the beds back in good shape and our worm densities back to where we want to see them.

Our “Crazy Castings Sale” is of course still on, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you are interested in purchasing some of this material.

As mentioned on the homepage, we now have worm castings (aka “vermicompost”) available for sale in 11 litre quanties. For the time being, these bags are for pick-up orders only (so ideally suited for those living in the region) – but we are getting things rolling with some TRULY “crazy” pricing! (shop around for castings and you’ll see what we mean).

$5/11 litre bag (HST inc)

Some may be wondering what exactly “worm castings” are. Technically speaking, the castings themselves are literally the poop pellets (for lack of a better term – haha) created by earthworms – in this case “Red Wiggler” composting worms. In some ways the term “vermicompost” is more appropriate, however, since it’s next to impossible to create a material that is 100% pure worm castings (some material simply will not have passed through the digestive system of a worm).

Worm castings, and vermicomposts in general, have been found to have unique beneficial properties not found in most “normal” composts (ie those not produced via vermicomposting). While they are certainly a valuable natural “fertilizer”, academic research has demonstrated that there is something beyond the N-P-K fertilizer value of this material that can stimulate additional growth in plants – even when plants have been provided with all the nutrients they need in the form of a typical inorganic fertilizer.

This is a “living” material, absolutely loaded with beneficial microorganisms which can help plants to obtain nutrients and fend off attack from pathogens. As such, we recommend that you store your unused castings someplace protected from temperature extremes (a garage or basement could be a good location).

To learn more about worm castings be sure to check out the new Worm Castings Page.

If you have any questions or want to arrange a pick-up, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line!

As some of you (who have been in touch recently) will know, this delayed spring certainly hasn’t helped me get things rolling in terms of filling worm orders. I am now getting ready to start taking “Compost Ecosystem” (aka “Eco-Mix”) orders (hopefully starting this week), but “Red Worm Culture” bags won’t be available until later in the month.

In an effort to make things more efficient, I’d decided to add online ordering to the site this year. In case you are wondering why I haven’t done so already it’s primarily because Canada Post is simply far too unpredictable and highly variable with their shipping rates/times. If I was shipping stereo components or something like that it wouldn’t really matter, but with live organisms this is certainly a very important consideration. As such, I’ve always handled orders on a case by case basis. While this certainly works just fine, as you might imagine it is WAY too time consuming, so I need to try something new this year.

So I’ve decided to pare down my product offerings and to come up with all-inclusive pricing for the regions I’m able to ship to. I’ll write more about this fairly soon, but the bottom-line is that ONTARIO|MANITOBA|QUEBEC will be my primary shipping range – the only provinces I will be shipping Red Worm Culture to – but I will ship Compost Ecosystem to BC|AB|SK|NB|NS|PEI.

For those who are still a wee bit confused about all this “Compost Ecosystem”/”Red Worm Culture” stuff, the good news is that I will finally be creating a video explaining what exactly these are and how they differ from one another. It a nutshell, the Ecosystem mix has a lower concentration of worms in it (although I’m actually including more worms in the Eco-Mix this year than in previous years) – but it’s still a GREAT mix for inoculating a composting system (especially your typical “backyard composter”). Apart from the worms, the material typically contains plenty of worm cocoons, beneficial microbes, and a wide array of other composting critters.

Anyway -that’s basically it for now! You can definitely expect to see more posts on the blog this year and more exciting stuff coming your way!
Stay tuned!

I made this short video earlier today when I came across a Red Wiggler crawling up the sliding door leading out to my deck!

If you want to see the sweet little ditty I wrote about it, be sure to check out my post over on Red Worm Composting!

I’ve written previously about my vermicomposting trenches. Well, I’m happy to report that I was finally able to put together a video offering an overview of this approach.

Hopefully this will help to inspire others to give vermi-trenches a try!

As my own worst critic (and then some), I found it difficult to listen to it myself – but hey, you can’t get better at something unless you actually DO it, right?

I am very glad I took part, and want to thank Frank Aragona, host of the Agroinnovations Podcast, for inviting me to participate.

Episode #84: Red Worm Composting (Part I)

I will post a link to Part II once it is published next Monday.