PENGENALAN LANJUTAN…

1. 1

2. 2 • An earthworm can grow only so long. A well-fed adult will depend on what kind of worm it is, how many segments it has, how old it is and how well fed it is. An Lumbricus terrestris will be from 90-300 millimeters long. • A worm has no arms, legs or eyes. • There are approximately 2,700 different kinds of earthworms. • Worms live where there is food, moisture, oxygen and a favorable temperature. If they don’t have these things, they go somewhere else. • In one acre of land, there can be more than a million earthworms. • The largest earthworm ever found was in South Africa and measured 22 feet from its nose to the tip of its tail. • Worms tunnel deeply in the soil and bring subsoil closer to the surface mixing it with the topsoil. Slime, a secretion of earthworms, contains nitrogen. Nitrogen is an important nutrient for plants. The sticky slime helps to hold clusters of soil particles together in formations called aggregates.

3. 3 PENGENALAN LANJUTAN… • Charles Darwin spent 39 years studying earthworms more than 100 years ago. • Worms are cold-blooded animals. • Worms can grow a new tail, but not grow a new head if they are cut off. • Baby worms are not born. They hatch from cocoons smaller than a grain of rice. • The Australian Gippsland Earthworm grows to 12 feet long and can weigh 1-1/2 pounds. • Even though worms don’t have eyes, they can sense light, especially at their anterior (front end). They move away from light and will become paralyzed if exposed to light for too long (approximately one hour). • If a worm’s skin dries out, it will die. • Worms are hermaphrodites. Each worm has both male and female organs. Worms mate by joining their clitella (swollen area near the head of a mature worm) and exchanging sperm. Then each worm forms an egg capsule in its clitellum. • Worms can eat their weight each day.

4. 4 GETTING A BIN • My "room" (worm bin) is where I spend most of my time along with my friends and family. Worm bins come is all shapes and sizes. Worm bins can be made from wood or plastic. • You can buy commercially made worm bins, but you will pay anywhere from $50-$100. The easiest or least expensive way to go is to buy a 10 gallon plastic bin. Plastic bins cost about $5-$7 each. Often, you will find them on sale. • Worms need about one square foot of surface for each pound of garbage added to the bin each week. • Plastic bins are light and easy to move. They will hold moisture. You will need to drill holes into them to allow air for the worms.

5. 5 MATTERIAL NEED • It is pretty easy to put my room together. • You will need the following: • drill • razor blade • liquid nails, caulking gun or duct tape • a plastic 10 gallon bin • fiberglass window screening • an adult to help

6. 5 MAKING A LID • Drill six to eight 3/4" holes in the lid that are evenly spaced. • Cut out 2-inch square sections of screening. • Have your Mom, Dad, or an adult friend use the razor to scrape the area around the holes. This helps the liquid nails to stick to the plastic better.

7. 6 COVERING THE HOLE • Apply an even strip of liquid nails around the hole. Lay the 2" x 2" screen on top of the liquid nails and press down lightly. If you use liquid nails, let dry for 24 hours. • You could also tape the edges of the screening down with duct tape. • You can put holes in the bottom for drainage. If you do, you should place some type of tray under the bin to catch liquids and screening over the holes to prevent my friends and me from escaping.

8. 6 HOW BIG IS MY BIN • Now that you've got my "room" made, you need to fill it with the stuff I love and need. The first thing I need is bedding. • To figure out how much I need, you need to know the volume of my bin in cubic feet. • This is how you're going to measure the cubic feet of bin space. First, measure the depth, width and length of my bin in inches. Then multiply the depth by width by length to get the cubic inches in my bin. • For example, let's say the bin is 8 inches deep, 24 inches wide and 24 inches long. That's 4,608 cubic inches. You got this answer by multiplying depth (8 inches) by width (24 inches) by length (24 inches). • Now we need to convert it to find out how many cubic feet are in my box. A cubic foot is 1 foot deep by 1 foot wide by 1 foot long. There are 12 inches in a foot. • So take 12 inches x 12 inches x 12 inches to get 1,728 cubic inches in a cubic foot. • So how many cubic feet are in a bin that is 4,608 cubic inches? Divide the cubic inches in the bin by the cubic inches in a cubic foot to get the answer. • 4,608 ÷ 1,728 = 2.67 cubic feet • Let's try a few more problems . . .

9. 7 ADDING YOUR WORM • Now that you've finished building my "room," you can add me and the rest of my worm friends and family. • So why do you need red worms for my bin? Why can't you just use plain old nightcrawlers from the garden? Red worms are better for indoor worm bins because they are more at home in the small space and warmer temperatures of the worm bin. They also reproduce faster than the earthworm. • The big earthworm you see in the garden is not very happy in a small bin. They like the wide open spaces of a garden to live in. They also don't like the high temperature in small worm bins. They like it cool, very cool, like 50 degrees cool. One other things is they don't like to have their burrows disturbed. When you add food and start to scratch around in the bin, it upsets them. So, even though earthworms are not very good for your bin, they are very good for your garden. It's where they are happiest. • I normally come to you in a box from a worm farm. • Take me and the other worms out of the box and spread us out over the paper in our new bin. It's fun to watch us disappear into the bedding.

10. 10 FEEDING YOUR WORM • Now comes the part I like the best—FOOD! I spend most of my time eating and believe it or not I love vegetables and fruits. • I love potato peelings, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, celery, apple peelings, banana peels, orange rinds, and grapefruit. I also like cornmeal, oatmeal, crushed eggshells, coffee grounds with the filter, and tea bags. • One thousand (one pound) of my friends and relatives will eat about one half to one pound of food scraps each day. • Chopping these foods up will make it easier for me to eat them. You might want to keep a plastic tub in your refrigerator to hold food scraps so they will be nice and fresh for me. Don't let them rot and be smelly. • Do not feed me any meat, dairy products (cheese, butter) or oily foods. They can attract Felix the Fruit Fly to the neighborhood, plus these foods will rot and smell.

11. 11 BURYING THE FOOD • If you just lay the food on top of the bedding, it will attract Felix the Fruit Fly. At first, you may have to feed me once a week. At the end of the week check and see if my friends and relatives have eaten everything. As our numbers increase, you may need to feed us more often. • When you do feed me, be sure to bury the food in the worm bin 3-4 inches under my bedding. You might want to mark the spot where you feed me with a straw or pencil. This helps to make sure that you will continually feed all my relatives in all parts of the bin.

12. 12 TAKING CARE YOUR BIN • Now that you know how to feed me, I'm going to give you a few tips on how to keep all my friends and relatives happy. • Check bedding every week to see that it's not too dry or wet. Remember it should feel like a wrung-out sponge. If it's too dry, add water. If it's too wet, add more bedding. Also check to see if food is being eaten and decomposing. Check for odors. Odors may tell us that there is rotting food; if so, remove the extra food. • Place a sheet of plastic or a layer of newspapers over the top of the bedding. This will hold moisture in and will help reduce the chance of fruit flies. • Use a plastic garden fork rather than a trowel to bury food; a fork is less likely to injure us worms. • Check the areas where you buried food every week. Decide what foods your worms like and dislike. Also check for cocoons of young worms. They look like very, very yellowish jelly beans. • After six weeks you will start to see changes in your bedding. The bedding will become darker and will decrease in volume. As the bin becomes filled with worm castings (poop), worms will die. How sad! So you will need to add additional bedding if you choose not to harvest us. • Remember I like temperatures from 55-75 degrees and do best at room temperature. • Now I'm going to give you the straight scoop on redecorating my room (harvesting!) There are a number of ways to harvest the castings (worm poop) from my room (bin).

13. 13 LIGHTED FILE METHOD • A fun method of harvesting or collecting castings is what I like to call the Lighted Pile Method. It's really easy to do and a lot of fun, but you'll need some space to do this. • Lay a large heavy plastic sheet on the floor. • Dump the contents of the worm bin on the plastic sheet and divide it into 8-10 piles. • Shine a flashlight on the top of each pile. Since worms are sensitive to light, they will go down into the pile to avoid the light. You will need to remove a little bit of the castings at a time until all you have is just a pile of worms. • This may take a while depending on how bright your flashlight is. Have a friend hold a light on the pile during the entire process. Notice how the worms crawl away from the light down into the pile. Why?

14. 14 DIVIDE AND SHORT METHOD • Another method of harvesting is called the "Divide and Sort Method." When the bedding in my "room" (bin) is so shallow that it isn't deep enough to bury food scraps, it's a good time to add more bedding to my room. • First you move all of the old bedding over to one side of the bin. • Fill the other side with fresh bedding (newspaper) and prepare it like you did before. Bury the food scraps only in the fresh bedding. • Eventually, most of the worms will move from old bedding into the new bedding. Harvest the castings. There may be a few worms still in the castings, but that's okay. • This harvesting method can be done every 3-4 months. I bet you wish your parents would let you go that long without cleaning your room.

15. 15 USING THE CASTING • If you stop feeding me and do not change my bedding, we will continue to eat any remaining food and bedding until there is nothing left except castings. The castings are toxic to worms, and we cannot live in them. After 3-4 months of doing nothing, you will be left with a bin of castings and no live worms. • The castings can be mixed with potting soil for your house plants as well as being a source of some nutrients for your plants. • Now that you know how to care for me, let's take a closer look at my neighborhood.