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New:
Bait Sellers & Large Growers |
Grow Your Own Worms!
Easy Care & Feeding:
When you receive your worms, dump the entire contents into the tub, bin, bed, container, etc. you have prepared to grow them in. It already has all the food they need for at least a couple weeks. The worms should be kept in the shade at all times.
Once a month, mix the container with your hands to aerate the bedding & remove some of the black castings if necessary. If the compost feels dry to the touch, add a little water. If it is too mucky, add dry (brown) material like: peat moss, hard wood sawdust (no pine or cedar), dry leaves, cotton gin trash, shredded paper or cardboard, etc. Animal manures can be added to the top & down the middle, which is an excellent (green) material to help reproduction of your worms. Fresh cut grass is also a good (green) material, especially if you intend to use the castings for your gardens, plants & flowers, because it adds the nitrogen these plants need to grow healthy & strong. The compost consistency should always be well aerated, not too mucky (60% moisture is close to ideal) or heavily compact. Stirring the compost by hand allows you to check and/or correct all of these things at one time. If the worms appear over-crowded, split worms, bedding & all into two containers. This is when you know you have made your tracks in worm growing!
You can enhance worm production & size by cutting raw fruits & vegetables in half or quarters. Do not use citrus fruits or onions, as these tend to be too acidic for optimum results. Place these items deep in the tub and let it go until you stir the tub again the next month. Try using this trick in one tub, but not in another and see the results for yourself. If you are feeding cooked food or table scraps, place these ONLY on top and lightly cover with soil to control odor & insects. Mixing these types of food into the bedding may cause toxins to be trapped in the bedding and can kill your worms. Only use raw fruits & vegetables deep in the bedding.
If you have a problem with ants, just sprinkle garden lime around your tubs & on the surface of the compost in the tub. Lime is excellent for balancing the Ph of the bin (6.5 – 7.5) and is also good for the worms’ digestive track. When purchasing lime, stay away from industrialized lime products and use only general purpose garden lime. Industrialized lime tends to burn the worms on contact. It may not kill them, but I can assure you, the worms don’t like it much!
If you follow my basic instructions, you should be over-run with worms in a couple months or so. Unless, of course, you fish ‘em all up! If the worms appear to be over-crowded, split the container (bedding, worms & all) into another container, adding new bedding materials like those described above. Examples of ideal containers are: old wash tubs, refrigerators or freezers, drums split in half, or other smaller plastic tubs which can be obtained pretty cost effectively at Walmart (like their 10 – 80 quart containers). According to the amount of worms you have, just about anything that can hold the worms & 4-6 inches (more in colder climates) of moist bedding material without over-crowding the worms will do just fine.
Growing worms is one of the simplest things to do. If properly cared for, you will be the best worm farmer in your circle of friends! Trust your instincts! If you have any problems or have questions, call, email or write Larry Pelletier or Marie Bateman.
Happy Worm Farming!
Magic Wiggler Worm Ranch
1130 Bush Road
Raymond, MS
39154
Phone & Fax:
(601) 885-6096
Website:
http://www.magicwiggler.com
Email:
Support@magicwiggler.com
, that means
you are using Microsoft Word.
This can be a stand alone program or could be bundled in suites like Microsoft
Office or Microsoft Works. There are many other programs out there that can read
word document. Word documents all have the .doc
extension at the end of the file name (document.doc).
Another very popular program, especially in business, is
Corel Word Perfect. If you
see a picture of a fountain pen similar to this one
, you have
word perfect installed on your computer. This program uses the
.wpd extension at the end of
the file name (perfect.wpd).
(Since there are different versions
of each of these programs, the icons may not look exactly like those above.
However, Microsoft
Word always has a
W
&
Word Perfect
always has a fountain pen.)
The one program that is installed on every
computer is a plain text editor like
NotePad,
WordPad,
etc. For these documents, you will see a picture that looks similar to this one
&
they will have the extension .txt
at the end of the file name (feeding.txt).
I have all three types of word processing programs on my computer & you may have
more than one as well. If so, choose the download for the file type you prefer
to work in.|
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Use for Microsoft Word
(.doc) |
Use for Word Perfect
(.wpd) |
Use for Plain Text Editor
(.txt) |
Once you click one of the boxes above, another small window will pop-up asking you if you want to "run" or "save" the file. Here is the difference between the two choices:
RUN -
This option will immediately unzip the file &
pop up another box asking you where to save the file. Then you just go to
where you saved the file and double click it. The file will open and you can
view and/or print it offline, at your leisure.
I always save downloaded files to my desktop, so I can go right to them once they are downloaded. All computers have a default folder in which downloaded files are saved & the location of this file is listed in this pop-up box. Make a note of it or you won't know where to go to open the file once it downloads!
SAVE -
This option will pop up a box asking you
where to save like above, except it will download the self-extracting
executable (.exe)
file only. You then have to go to where that file is saved & double click it.
If you are using Windows XP
(and some anti-virus software)
will pop up a message telling you the
"file not verified"
or something similar. It will ask you if you want to
"run"
the file anyway or cancel. The file is safe, so
click run. You will then be asked
where to save the extracted file. As I stated before, my preference is the
"desktop". The file will then extract itself where
you chose to
save it. Just go to where you saved the actual file and double
click it to view and/or print offline at your leisure. You can then delete
the
.exe
file you originally downloaded or keep it in case the file gets lost,
damaged or deleted by mistake.
I personally would choose "save" but again, all computers are different. You may have to download the executable file and then extract and save it as above! If by some chance you forget to note where the file is saved, let your computer find it for you. It is much faster than you trying to look in a bunch of different folders to find it. Simply click Start - Search - select "Files & Folders" & type in one of the filenames below, according to the download you chose above:
If you selected "RUN" and downloaded the document file only, type in either of these 3 in the filename box: Feeding_Instruct.doc (Word) or Feeding_Instruct.wpd (Word Perfect) or Feeding_Instruct.txt (Plain Text like Notepad). Then click on search and your computer will find the file. Once it does, just double click the file from the right side of the window and the file wile open.
If you selected "SAVE" and downloaded the zipped file, type either of these 3 in the filename box: Feeding_Word.exe (.doc) or Feeding_Perfect.exe (.wpd) or Feeding_Text.exe (.txt). Then click search and double click on the file like above.
Once you have the actual file open, you can print it by clicking on the printer icon, which is located on the toolbar at the top of the window or you can click File - Print, also at the top of the window.
We hope these Care & Feeding Instructions are helpful!
Have A Magic Wiggler Day!
Please bookmark or add our website to your Favorites folder, because we are in the process of totaling re-designing our look and site navigation. This is in response to some visitor feedback that things are sometimes hard to find and a bit confusing. Some of you are not as computer literate as others and we want to make sure everyone has fun on our site and finds everything they need quickly & easily.
On our new site, we are adding a page called Magic Corner! It is our intention to have this page change once a month with new tips, tricks or other worm information. Please feel free to email us at Service@magicwiggler.com if there is a particular topic you would like us to research more and/or write about. Magic Wiggler Owner, Larry Pelletier, is also in the process of writing a small book about growing worms, on a large or small scale, based on his own tests & experiences. As soon as it is complete, we will make it available on CD-Rom & as an E-book for instant download. Although there will be a fee, we will keep it as cost effective for you as possible.
