With additions to the staff, the Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia is now busy implementing new projects. One of the projects that the home wishes to jump start is organic farming. A fertilizer used by most successful organic farmers is vermicast, the manure produced by earthworms. Vermiculture is the art of growing worms, which in turn produce the vermicast..
Five months ago, with the help of Goducate’s consultant for agriculture, the home started vermiculture with 20 earthworms of the African night crawler species, obtained from the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines. The older boys at the Home are being trained in vermiculture, and the estimated population of African Night crawlers is 2000. In a year’s time, there should be enough worms to produce sufficient vermicast to satisfy the fertilizer needs of the children’s vegetable farm, which occupies about 120 sq m of the grounds at the Children’s Home. In another year’s time, we expect to have sufficient vermicast to sell to the public.
The plan also is to include the girls in the training in vermiculture.
