Hank, if you'll google orchids, then worm tea you should get a hit for a forum where they should be very helpful. I don't remember the name, but it's connected with a Fla grower, Jerry Meola, I think.

You can brew worm tea but I have found a better method. It takes months to make worm castings. I have 5 worm bins made from Kitty litter buckets and 2 inside bins (rubbermaid containers). I have a lot of potted plants and hated tossing the spent potting soil (expensive) into the garden. I have 2 compost tumblers and when the exothermic reaction is done I add worms to speed up the process. All bins are raised and have collecting trays. The drippage is the best worm tea. I collect it daily using a turkey baster,bulb syringe, or toomey syringe if you have one. You can collect the tea long before the castings and pour it on your potted plants. I have a 5 foot cilantro that really loved it and have brought back many nutrient deficient plants. Recycling potting soil in worm bins really works too and the worms love them.

Mostly for entertainment, look at the Design an Outdoor Bin thread. This is a homemade experiment based on the Worm Factory design. Wormers with Worm Factories can add to our understanding of red wigglers by observing what the worms actually do. I've seen one ( Worm Factory) that was not watched closely. Nor had the caretaker taken much care. There were sluggish worms in the bottom tray and unappealing scraps in the food tray. There were good size pieces of egg shell too big for any critter to mouth. There was minimal bedding. For example, do the worms use the "worm ladder" ? We have a thread about worms climbing a wall . This is the manufacturer's instruction: http://www.naturesfootprint.com/community/articles/worm-factory-standard-setup I'm going to write some semi informed opinions so that we can argue about how to use the WF & I can learn how to use my outdoor bin: 1. I wouldn't use tap water to dampen paper. I'd use rainwater or aerated horse manure tea. This highlights the gap between a worm whacko and someone in an apartment with no access to some of the refinements that worms seem to like. 2. I wouldn't use unshredded newspaper as a lid. It doesn't breathe. Burlap can be bought by the yard at a fabric store if you can't get it free from a coffee roaster. Any fabric that will drain water and exchange air would be better than that newpaper lid. See the burlap effect thread. 3. I think "a handful" of food in that small tray is quite a lot, could be too much depending on what the food was. In My Experience, red wigglers like melon best of all. When I was harvesting the bin that was crowded, I put the worms that I had to pick out one by one ( they didn't go through the burlap) into a melon shell bowl. When I upturned it to dump them in the bed, they didn't drop out. They were embedded in the melon. Putting new worms on a melon shell bed might be a sweet way to go. Optimally, egg shells should be cooked (microwave a moment or two ) and powdered. Optimally, food should be pureed. 4. Density matters. Check the Please Help with Math thread to decide what the WF tray capacity for worms is. Pete read half a pound of worms per square foot. If the worms double, split the bin. I think "we/they" say the worms will eat half their weight each day. Mine have horse manure bedding and food, so I don't feed that much. I put in maybe half a cup of pureed food and don't add more until it is gone. In a WF tray, 1/4 cup might be enough. 5. Bedding. For worm health, you can't overdo good bedding. If the bin isn't very crowded, there might not be enough worm orgies to make more worms. They do crowd into a melon bowl. If you can't get horse manure, work hard on developing other optimal bedding. 6. Burlap. I wonder if the worms would like those trays better if there were a burlap lining ? Footnote: Too bad the subject isn't "Worm Factory", because the subject as phrased won't lead new readers to helpful opinions. Please phrase your subjects with newcomers in mind.

What then is worm tea, and how is it made? I assumed that this leachate was the same stuff as what many people call worm tea. For example on this page http://www.localharvest.org/store/item.jsp?id=4435 I see the below as their definition of worm tea, and I assumed it to be the same stuff as what I'm getting from my lower-most bin: "Earthworms put out a by-product called castings, worm tea is obtained as water runs off or drips through the castings in the worm beds thus picking up the nutrients of the castings." Is this leachate that I've been collecting not as valuable as worm tea, i.e. should I just throw it out? How does one make worm tea -- take finished castings, rinse them with water, and collect the run off? Thanks. --James