Growing a Greener World

- [Male Announcer] "Growing a Greener World" is made possible in part by... - [Female Announcer] The Subaru Crosstrek.

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Built in a zero-landfill plant.

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- [Male Announcer] And the following.

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And Milorganite.

- I'm Joe Lamp'l.

When I created "Growing a Greener World," I had one goal, to tell stories of everyday people.

Innovators, entrepreneurs, forward-thinking leaders, who are all, in ways both big and small, dedicated to organic gardening and farming, lightening our footprint, conserving vital resources, protecting natural habitats, making a tangible difference for us all.

They're real, they're passionate, they're all around us.

They're the game changers who are literally growing a greener world and inspiring the rest of us to do the same.

"Growing a Greener World," it's more than a movement, it's our mission.

The earthworm.

Most of us were introduced to this little guy young, maybe on a fishing trip with our grandparents, or on the sidewalk after a rainstorm, or maybe the first time we went digging in the dirt.

But the earthworm is about as basic as it gets in the animal kingdom, which is why it's the star of the show in the biology class in school.

But there's so much more to the earthworm.

Scientists and gardeners are just now barely scratching the surface in understanding just how vital a role these little guys play in growing a greener world for all of us.

But some people have become a little more clued in than others.

We first met Jack Chambers back in our very first season.

An airline pilot by day, he started a small side business after a bucket of worms in his own compost pile opened his eyes to the awesome power of one of Mother Nature's simplest creations.

A lot has changed in 11 years.

The tiny worm farm has increased its output of vermicompost by an incredible 1400% since then.

And there's lots of exciting new science that Jack's team is still learning.

But to really appreciate the scale of how much things have grown, you have to go back to the beginning.

When a guy who spent his days in the clouds realized that the real magic was happening right underneath our feet.

(gentle music) So Jack, how does a guy that spends his life in the glamorous role as a pilot traveling the world end up spending so much time with the nondescript worm?

- Well, a friend of mine told me I should come out here and buy some worms for my garden.

And I came out and I bought a five gallon bucket of worms, and I put it in my compost bin.

And I went away on a five day trip.

And when I got back, I couldn't believe what the worms had done to that bin.

I mean, they'd gone through it, and it just was beautiful.

And so I came out and bought another five gallon bucket, and I was hooked, I was just hooked.

- So what were some of the things that you noticed about your garden at that point?

- Well, I came out and started hanging out in Earl's garden here, and I noticed that all of his flowers stems were strong.

All of the things that he grew, like these potatoes, these potatoes were planted in these beds 30 years ago.

- [Joe] Wow.

- And they've been here ever since with no disease, they're the best tasting potatoes that you've ever tasted.

And I know just by watching it, that there's disease suppression.

And so it was originally starting with the worms, but then it turned into how good the food tasted, and then the disease resistance that was there.

And then I started seeing that the worms were the workers that could produce the worm castings or vermicompost, and that's, that was the deal.

We work with a soil microbiologist, and she was talking about pseudomonads, and pseudomonads being related to taste.

And so our vermicompost is very, very high in pseudomonads.

And I think there's a correlation there between taste, because everything that we grow in here has superior taste, the peppers, the garlic, the shallots.

And then we have a vineyard that we grow, and you can taste, you can taste it in the wine.

- [Joe] Wow.

- Kind of what we were talking about earlier, the whole idea here now for me is about growing better food, growing food that's healthy, growing food that tastes good.

It's the way of the future.

I think that worm castings are gonna revolutionize agriculture.

And there's several different things that we'll talk about here, but I think it's really, it's the wave of the future.

- So this is your home now, and this is your garden.

- Right.

- And it really is apparent that the worm castings and the worm compost are making a big difference.

But you're the kind of guy that does everything in a big way.

You fly a big jet and then you don't just settle on the worm castings.

You take it to a whole nother level, right?

- Right.

- So you've got quite a system that I'm dying to see.

So as we make our way through the garden, can we make a turn into your worm factory?

- Sure.

And I'll show you how it's done.

- Okay.

(gentle music) So I take it this is where it all begins.

And I've always said, if it looks like manure, smells like manure, it's probably manure.

And you have a lot of it.

- We do.

Every Monday, we go out to the dairy in Big Red, and we pick up a load of manure at Strauss Dairy.

And we bring it back here and we pre-compost it.

And we do that for three reasons.

We wanna get rid of the pathogens, specifically E. coli.

We wanna make sure that we get rid of weed seeds, people don't want weed seeds in their compost.

And then we need to take some of the heat energy out so that when we feed it to the worms it won't heat up the worm beds.

After that, we'll leave it in here for about a week.

And then we transfer it to one of the outside bins where we'll reheat everything, make sure everything is mixed.

Do that for about another week.

And then we go ahead and feed it to the worms.

- So how often do you replace this?

Because this is quite a bit of compost manure.

- It is.

Every week we go to the dairy.

So it's just a rotating system.

And we've got about 8 million worms there that need to be fed.

So this is what it takes.

- That's a lot of mouths to feed.

- It's a lot of mouths to feed.

- I guess we should go get to work with that.

- Yes.

- Okay.

(upbeat music) - So this is the bin where we not only make the vermicompost, but we also harvest the worms out of these bins.

We put them in a five gallon bucket.

And we take them over and put them through a trommel screen, where we clean the dirt away from the worms.

We box them up in a wax lined box with peat moss inside.

And we'll ship them all over the Bay Area, so that people can have their own worm bin.

It's kind of like coming full circle.

I started that way and now we can do it for people in the Bay Area.

- Little did you know that you were gonna be going full circle with that.

- I never thought that would happen.

And ironically, another full circle story, is that my wife, who was not gonna be involved with this at all, is now the person who does the phone orders, and boxes everything up, and the shipping labels, and sends out the worms, and talks to the public.

(gentle music) - Jack Chambers and his family aren't the only ones excited about worms, and all the good they do for the garden.

Yet little was even known about the inner workings of worms until Charles Darwin devoted years of his life and his last book to their physiology and behavior.

But you do have to wonder, how could something so nondescript, I mean look at this guy, there's no spine, there's no teeth, there's no eyes, there's not even any lungs, be such a powerful force in the garden?

To transform ordinary soil into something so extraordinary.

Well, for starters, earthworms consume a massive amount of organic matter in the soil.

It's estimated that each year, about 15 tons of dry soil per acre make their way through earthworms.

And as it passes past the gut into the backend, known as the castings, what comes out is far richer nutrients than what goes in the frontside.

And compared to ordinary garden soil, like this, worm castings have five times more nitrogen, seven times more phosphate, and 10 times more potash.

Plus three times more usable magnesium and one and a half times more calcium.

The calcium is important because it helps the plants take up nitrogen, which is responsible for lush green growth, plus a lot of other important functions.

Although there are numerous calcium supplements like dolomitic limestone, and bone meal, and gypsum, many store bought nutrients can quickly leach away in water, break down quickly, or exist in a form that plants can't readily take up.

But in worm castings, the calcium, as well as all the other nutrients, are longer lasting, and available in a state that's easier for plants to absorb.

Want more?

As Jack has clearly observed, worm castings are also known to suppress various plant diseases in soil.

Those same castings also increase soil aggregation and water-holding capacity.

And yet, as the worms move through the soil, they create boroughs, which do great things to aerate soil and improve drainage, especially in clay and compacted soil.

You know, at home raising your own worms, making vermicompost, or even harvesting the castings, is a lot of fun.

And if you're gonna do this, get red wigglers because they're readily accessible, I got these at the bait shop, and they're not very expensive.

They're also not very demanding.

All you do is add some food scraps, or store them in a manure pile like Jack does.

Or, for most homeowners who have a compost pile, put them right there.

Incidentally, in spite of the lack of foes, humans are still the earthworm's biggest threat.

Rototilling destroys worm burrows and can cut and kill worms that never regenerate.

Chemical fertilizers high in salts can be harmful to them, as well as some pesticides.

The soil is a living ecosystem, supporting a multitude of organisms from earthworms to microbes.

It functions best with minimal disturbance on our part.

You know you're doing your part to create a worm-friendly environment if there's a noticeable population of worms in your soil.

A lot of worms means there's plenty of organic matter for the worms to eat, along with the absence of synthetic fertilizers that are high in salt.

Now, if you're not into raising your own worms for the castings, don't worry, because you can usually find them at a retail garden center, and always online.

And the good news is, a little bit goes a long way.

(dynamic music) - So this is the compost that we started out with as manure.

We've composted it.

Now we're gonna feed the worms.

So we'll bring it over, we'll lay it out.

We've got a million worms in each bin, so we'll feed them twice a week.

And we've got all these mouths to feed.

So you can see that we are feeding them well.

There's also other things in here.

There's springtails, all kinds of other life.

- [Joe] All doing good things for the soil.

- That's right.

Huge microbial populations now too.

So they will munch on this.

What we feed today or what we fed yesterday, will come out the bottom of the bin in 60 days.

So it's a 60 day process once we feed it to the worms.

- So as you keep adding new material, the older material is consumed, and it's processed, and it just works its way down.

And that's what's harvested.

That's one of the things that you're doing is getting the vermicompost out of the bin and selling it.

- Right.

- So how do you that?

- [Jack] There's a blade that sits on one end of the bin.

And then we pull it through with a pulley system.

And we pull it both ways.

It cuts off about an inch of material each way.

- [Joe] Kinda like slicing off a cake.

- [Jack] Exactly.

- [Joe] A layer of the cake.

- The bottom of the cake.

And we'll let that sit and air-dry for a day.

And then we'll scoop it up, and then sift it, and make it ready to use as vermicompost, or as the vermicompost tea.

This is the material that we just got from under the bin.

We screened it, and now it's ready to go out to the home gardener or people in the vineyard.

- Yeah, you do a lot of work with the vineyards.

What sort of applications are they using this for?

- They're using it when they plant, they'll put a cup in every hole.

And they find that the vines get off to a really great start.

They lose fewer vines in the planting process.

And I think it's gonna show that there's a taste preference for the grapes.

- And then in the home garden, a lot of people are using this to supplement their planting beds, or even putting it right into the hole too.

- Right.

I think that's a great way.

Put a cup in a hole for your tomato plants, or your peppers, and the plants just jump out of the ground.

You'll get more blooms, more tomatoes, more peppers.

It's really great.

- And so, as a home gardener, how much would I pay for something like this?

- We sell a 20 pound bag for $20.

And there's 85 cups.

So for $20 you plant 85 plants.

And it's just magic stuff.

- Yeah, a little bit goes a long way.

And that is not a lot to invest in your garden.

(birds chirping) Jack's business has grown, and so has his workforce.

His 8 million worms, now 60 million red wigglers.

And together, they're still finding new ways, and doing all they can to educate more and more gardeners every year to the power of worms.

(dynamic music) - When we were here at the worm farm, at my house, we were making 200 yards of material a year.

They were bags that people use for sandbags.

I mean, there was no marketing, no fancy label, no nothing.

But they would come and they would pay money to get a bag of our stuff because they were so successful with it.

And even back in the day, people would come here from all over the Bay Area to get two 20 pound bags of vermicompost.

And drive a long way, and get it not in a fancy bag, and take it home.

And they really wanted the material.

A woman called and talked to Lois, and she said, I just had a baby.

And I don't particularly like worms, they kind of...

But I want my baby to know about worms.

So we're gonna get a worm bin.

And, oh man, I just, it touched me.

And you hear people talk to you about the success they've had in their garden.

I grew the best tomatoes last year.

Or in their vineyard.

People will tell me, we hardly lost any vines.

And just watching what I have done in my garden, and seeing the improvement in my soils, and the taste in the vegetables we grew.

So I get a lot of feedback that way, that in 30 years of doing this, I've never had somebody come back and say, Jack, you know, it didn't work.

I never heard that.

- [Joe] But Jack knew that in order to truly grow the business, and spread the message of worms to a wider audience, he would need more than his own anecdotal evidence.

- In the last 10 years, what we have found is we used to be able to see things, and I just called it worm magic.

And when I got new partners, they didn't like that.

They said, we've gotta establish the science behind the methodology of why this works.

And we've been coming along with DNA analysis.

We found 538 different species of microbes in our vermicompost.

And some of those fix nitrogen, some of those have plant growth hormones, some of those help with drought tolerance, some of those help with disease suppression.

But we can identify those particular species of microbes that are the method of operation, that prove what we have seen with our eyes empirically.

And then it just increased.

And when we did this big build-out, we increased the farm by 15 times larger.

And that was a big, big jump.

And it really was very difficult.

I didn't realize how hard it would be.

- [Joe] That 200 yards of vermicompost that Jack used to pump out in his home garden, it's now 3,000 yards a year.

Coming out of a sprawling facility, supply numerous farms and vineyards here in California, and beyond.

And available to home gardeners everywhere online.

- And now it's available in a nicer package.

We can get it into a retail store, so somebody can drive down to their local store, pick it up, use it in their garden.

And it's being accepted and used.

And people are having success with it.

And it's kind of coming full circle.

When I first came out here, and used it, and saw it in my garden, and wanted to just expand that vision.

And it's happening.

It's taken a long time, it's taken 30 years.

But it's exciting to see that happen.

- Well Jack, I know that incredible product that you make has to start somewhere.

And I suspect it's with this raw cow manure.

When we came in this morning, there was like this huge pile, all lined up here.

And now we're just down to this.

- Right, 40 yards of manure came in this morning.

And we loaded that bin right in front of us.

We get three of those loads a week.

And they go into the red, this is the Monday, Wednesday, Friday bins.

And we compost it here for a week.

- You wanna get rid of the pathogens, as you said.

And by heating it up to the high temperatures of, I think I saw 160 something degrees, that's certainly gonna do that.

And by the time two weeks have lapsed, and you've mixed it from the red to the yellow, it's ready to go, and now it becomes the worm food.

- It's a whole process that we've developed over the years.

And if we just fed the raw manure to the worms, it would be too hot, and it would kill all the worms.

So you've gotta get rid of some of that heat, but still have enough food value there that they'll wanna eat it.

- Leave it to a former airline captain pilot to have an airplane hanger to store all your product here.

It's impressive.

- Well, thank you.

It kind of mixes, you know, the two.

- [Joe] Okay, so how many worms are we feeding per bin?

- We're feeding about a million and a half.

- Times 30.

- 30.

- Yeah, so it's anywhere 40 to 60 million worms.

I didn't count them recently, but.

There's usually, in a square foot, there should be two pounds of worms.

- I was gonna say, that's a lot of mouths to feed, no matter how big the mouth, when you're talking that many millions.

- Little ones.

- So they're typically close to the surface, but not right on top of the surface.

They don't like light, right?

- Right.

They're averse to light.

If you take a handful out, they'll crawl right back down within a minute.

I think it hurts them because they're definitely averse to that.

- [Joe] And they eat what, 30% or something of their body weight?

- 38% of their body weight a day.

So what we have here is the pool table effect, we call it.

It's after the bed has been fed.

And a couple of days later, they've mowed down all of the chunkier material, and it's all flat.

And so what that tells us is that they're ready to be fed.

And they're still chewing on this stuff, and it'll get even flatter.

But it's an indicator for us that the worms need to be fed.

- So they're talking to you.

- They're talking to me and they're saying we're hungry.

Feed us.

As a worm farmer, that's something you wanna see.

You wanna see, when you put your hand in there, that a lot of worms are there.

And so this is telling you that you're being successful.

There's a lot of worms when you put your hand in the bed, - That is a lot of worms.

- Yeah.

- I feel bad disrupting their meal.

Sorry, guys.

- They're fine.

They're fine, they're happy.

I see us being able to help more people grow better food, and improve their soils, and have healthier food for people.

Why do we have increasing cancer rates?

Or why do we have people getting ill when they shouldn't?

And I think something has to do with the food that we eat.

And I think, there was a story in The Wall Street Journal 40 years ago when I started gardening.

And it said, organic food, organic gardening is not gonna go anywhere.

It's too expensive.

And now look what's happened in that 40 year span.

People are growing organic food.

They want organic food in their gardens because they don't want pesticides.

And there's an organic space at Walmart, at Safeway, at our local market.

It's kind of like a snowball moving downhill, more and more people are hearing about it.

We were way ahead of ourselves.

10 years ago, you'd tell somebody about the microbial stuff in the soil.

And now people are interested in regenerative gardening, regenerative farming.

But now that story is catching up with what we found a while back.

And it's, people are taking it in, and they like the story, and it's working.

And the future of farming, it's not with fertilizer, it's with microbiology and biology.

That's the future.

We're done kind of with that past of just more fertilizer, more fertilizer.

We need to rebuild the soils and you do that with microbiology.

So that's been my mission the whole time, helping people grow better food.

(dynamic music) - As we've seen time and time again, it really is the littlest things that make the biggest difference.

But it's hard for non-gardeners to see that with earthworms, and how that can play a role in the success of any garden.

And I know that's the case back home for me at the garden farm.

And I'm sure Jack would say the same thing here in his orchard.

But I can't imagine having such a productive garden without the help of those little wigglers.

And that's because it just wouldn't happen.

But I hope that we've inspired you today to get back to the basics, and reacquaint yourself with the magical earthworm.

And if you'd like to learn more about what you saw today, we'll have that information on our website, under the show notes for this episode.

And the website address, that's the same as our show name, it's growingagreenerworld.com.

Thanks for watching everybody.

I'm Joe Lamp'l.

And we'll see you back here next time for more "Growing a Greener World."

- [Male Announcer] "Growing a Greener World" is made possible in part by... - [Female Announcer] The Subaru Crosstrek.

Designed with adventure in mind.

Built in a zero-landfill plant.

So you can roam the earth with a lighter footprint.

Subaru, proud sponsor of "Growing a Greener World."

- [Male Announcer] And the following.

Rain Bird Corona Tools.

And Milorganite.

- Well, that was, I've never used a toy before like this.

Process, step one.

- Hollywood, you've gone Hollywood.

(both clapping) - Is your name Joe?

If you give him an inch he takes a mile.

He wants to be the clapper now.

(upbeat music) - [Second Male Announcer] Continue the garden learning from "Growing a Greener World."

Joe Lamp'l's online gardening academy offers classes designed to teach gardeners of all levels, from the fundamentals to master skills.

You can take each class on your own schedule from anywhere.

Plus, opportunities to ask Joe questions about your specific garden in real time.

Courses are available online.

To enroll, go to growingagreenerworld.com/learn.

(funky music)