Rainbow Worms: a new green business in the East Bay

Rainbow Worms' booth at the San Lorenzo Farmers' Market

Excess dog poo has inspired a new up-and-coming green business in the East Bay that should be on the radar of all serious organic gardeners.  Rainbow Worms was launched April 1st by Bob Swan, founder and chief worm wrangler, from the front porch of his San Lorenzo home and is already shipping to customers across the United States.

Bob says he got the idea for the business while trying to dispose of the waste from his two large dogs who consume and process over 40 pounds of grain-based food product a month.  Wanting an environmentally friendly solution, Bob talked with online retailers about pet poop composters and learned that they are very poor sellers due to the "ick" factor among consumers.  So Bob started experimenting with an old worm bin and a host of hungry worms, composting the poo into a rich organic fertilizer suitable for lawns and ornamentals.  The poo disappeared while the worms grew fat and multiplied and then consumed even more. 

Inspired by success, Bob decided to start his own worm business.  His young daughter Elizabeth suggested the name Rainbow Worms and the enterprise was soon up and wriggling.

Bob with Obi and Ani (think Star Wars) whose poop inspired the business

Currently Rainbow Worms operates from Bob's front porch worm farm where Red Wigglers, European Nightcrawlers, and African Nightcrawlers, all great for composting and bait, are raised in converted wooden wine barrels and hand scooped and weighed for shipping to such far-flung locales as Alaska and Puerto Rico.  Lucky customers in the East Bay are invited to come over, by appointment, on weekends to pick up their worm orders instead of having them shipped.  Bob hasn't quit his day job while he builds his business, but weekends are devoted to worms and he loves to talk about them with visitors.

Red wigglers are great compost worms

Bob has plenty of plans for Rainbow Worms squirming around in his head.  Within a month or two he intends to move the livestock to an off-site worm ranch located in San Lorenzo where the wigglers and crawlers will eat and breed in their custom-made worm bins.  He is also approaching local restaurant owners with a sales pitch to install Worm Wigwams, industrial-size worm composters, to dispose of kitchen scraps.  The restaurant owners save money on disposal costs and can use the resulting worm castings in their own gardens or sell it back to Bob, who plans to start making a line of ready-made worm casting "tea bags".   He hopes to extend this concept to hospitals, schools, apartment complexes and any other facility where large amounts of green waste is tossed out.  Bob estimates that at full worm capacity one Worm Wigwam can process 7 tons of waste per year.

Besides bait worms and composting worms, Bob markets worm bins, worm tea supplies, and a soil soup bioblender.  Plus he has an excellent price on worm castings (24 pounds for $29.00 shippping included) for those who just don't want to deal with the squirming, voracious creatures.

Check out the Rainbow Worms website and plan to visit Bob at the San Lorenzo Farmers' Market.  He is there the second Saturday of each month at 9:00 am to 1:00 pm (click here for the schedule) manning his hard-to-miss rainbow booth.  He is not allowed to sell products at the market but does have his various products on display and enjoys educating people on the virtues and benefits of vermicomposting.

Support an East Bay green business and learn about the magic of using worm castings in your organic garden.