1,000 worms on their way....

sounds like the worms are nice and happy at your house LLM cant wait to see your harvest......

funny you say that some friends donated a bunch of news papers for the worms.....my momma came by last night with four large black yard waste bags full of shredded paper for our worms she and my sister/brother inlaw have been saving thier scraps from juicing as well for the worms.....they are all excited about it...... what we dont use for the worms goes straight into the compost pile.....hubby is even going to build a third compost bin

with everyone getting so excited about composting we have transitioned from two garbage cans to one garbage can and no green waste can that cost 15.00 dollars on our city bill......and a much larger recycle can-free.....its going to be at least 50.00 dollars total savings on our city bill now

hugs

rose

Rose, I've never understood why they charge to recycle. Especially when it's optional! They did that in where my mother lived, and she was on a limited budget. Sweet thing she is...she went for recycling!

I've found that there is no way 1000 worms can keep up with our green waste (a family of 4). For us, they eat a day's waste once a week or less (coffee & filter every day, salad every day, fruit throughout the day, a green veggy twice a week...more now with the garden). As someone suggested, I need a guinea pig would to keep up our greens. So would a compost pile, if I had a yard!

Newspaper is keeping mine happiest. Like LM, I should be ready to separate out the castings soon.

Nice Rose and Ava, sounds like we have happy worms and are enjoying our compost efforts.
AvaD maybe we'll share pictures of our worm cast harvest in a few weeks. I was going to wait longer but I am anxious to put castings in the garden. The castings are lighter in color than what I was expecting. Maybe due to the newspaper portion of their cuisine :scratch:
Look forward to counting how many worms are in there since I didn't do a head count when they arrived.

ava our recycle bin from the city is free....we didnt know that we could get an even bigger one...so we traded the old one for a larger one....its the green waste bin that you throw lawn clippings and such in that they charge 15 dollars each bill for.....we didnt even know we were getting charge for it....thought it was free too....so....when looking at our family budget we wanted to cut back on some things.....i started to look closer at our city bill to see what we could do there......composting and worm farming is going to save us about 50.00 each bill this is our first month to only having one garbage bin... ...i know we can do it....we just can not be lazy!

LLM we are thinking about adopting more worms they have a nice spot outside in the shade....the container doesnt smell bad anymore...putting LOTS of shredded papper on top took care of that problem....we only peak a tad bit when giving them their food....and so far...the ones that we see moving as fast as they can are wet and FAT!

p.s.....funny story....our children and us really want rabbits and chickens....we are allowed to have them here in the city but are only allowed 3 *pets*

daughter asked if we are going to get into trouble for farming 200 worms....... our son said....*rabbits & chickens are food! not pets* you dont eat your pets......ha ha ha ha

hugs

rose

llama momma wrote:Nice Rose and Ava, sounds like we have happy worms and are enjoying our compost efforts.
AvaD maybe we'll share pictures of our worm cast harvest in a few weeks. I was going to wait longer but I am anxious to put castings in the garden. The castings are lighter in color than what I was expecting. Maybe due to the newspaper portion of their cuisine :scratch:
Look forward to counting how many worms are in there since I didn't do a head count when they arrived.

I'm wondering how I'm going to separate the casting from the newspaper. I can see them...they kinda look like the letters have rolled off the paper, if you know what I mean. I'll definitely be wearing nitrile gloves, because it is difficult to get your nails clean without!

What they do not look like are the castings you buy. But maybe they will when they are out of 'farm' and in their own bag!

LOL...I've been pulling my spring plants and wondering what to use for compost... DOH! my castings!

Rose...keep an eye on those city bills! I'm glad they don't charge you. We recycle in my city too, but I live in a community with a dumpster so I don't know how it works. When I saw the colored trash bins at the garden I had to ask what each was for!

Here's an odd one...we threw some fresh grape leaves (not decomposing) to the 'non newspaper' level of the 'farm' and the worms were all over it! Anything that gets them to leave the newspapers is amazing!

Ava

good thing then that our worms havent tasted new's paper they get to feast on our shredded bil's each month not only are they saving us money on our composting/garbage bill....they are eating the paper and envolpes the bil's come in.....

hugs

rose

that's pretty clever! Most of my bills come electronically now. I do use paper I've printed on though...faxes I don't need, etc. (We just had a RE sale closing so there is a LOT of that!). I do use the non-shiny flyers that come in the mail...munch munch!

checking in to see how all the worms are doing .....

our container with 400 + worms is doing great!!....still havent bought more yet....gonna one of these days.....and will also post some pic's soon.... now that we may have a few days of a break from the rain

wanted to share a pic we took today while we were pulling up some broc, cauli's and cabbage in our back to eden-sqf-raised beds.....just by disturbing the dirt...out came a bunch of worms!.....we didnt even dig the dirt....just pulled up on the plants and before the plant had even lifted out of the ground....all these worms came out like *wondering what was shaking the earth*..... ....and no we can not read worms minds either....we just new by the look on their faces.....

pic of the wild out in nature worms doing their thing.....



hugs

rose

Nice worm photo Rose! Happy worm kids.
Today I lifted the lid, first time in 9 whole days. That's a record I believe. A little worried as to what I might find. Shoot they looked really good, found the largest amount of large and plump adults so far. Added 4 different kinds of moistened bedding, newspaper, gray egg carton paper, brown packing paper, and torn up cardboard. The moist bedding depth is back to 8+ inches deep. Threw in pulverized egg shell, and more ground up eggshells inside the moistened packet of food. Added dry torn paper on top of it all. I was quite surprised this time at the number of worms evenly spread out over the bottom. Perhaps the last packet of food was finished days ago so there was no need to bunch up around the buffet. I've got to get another bin this week to prepare the aged bedding for a new bin. Plan to harvest castings and separate out the gang into 2 bins the end of this month.
Happy worming everyone!

Hi family gardening, I have been doing lots and lots of digging trying to make beds etc., and the worms just seem to come from out of nowhere.
I often dig and then go to dig a second time and suddenly there is another worm. I try VERY hard not to hurt them, but every now and then
TImely message about worms, I had to put my worm farm out side because I got invaded by bugs (they do not seem to mind the worms)
I have them in my greenhouse and it is open all the time and so not hot.
Llama momma:
Just a few days ago I put the second level on the worm farm.
So there is the lower level that everything is supposed to drain to, but I never have any drainage, and that layer has a very good thick layer of worm castings, then the layer above it is where all of my worms have been all along, it seemed to be getting crowded and so I thought I would try out the next layer.
So I put some wet newspaper shredded, and the rest of the bed I used 2 year old manure, and took what food was left from the main level. OH and some sand.
AND SO I guess I am waiting for them to MOVE ON UP.....
Does not seem to be very many here who have these layered farms, (I bought it before I found out about the make your own ones)
So I hope I am doing the right thing

Here's an odd one...we threw some fresh grape leaves (not decomposing) to the 'non newspaper' level of the 'farm' and the worms were all over it! Anything that gets them to leave the newspapers is amazing!

That sounds great, I have lots of grape vines.
I am curious though, what do you mean by NON newspaper level.
Do you have a multi level farm?

I hope so too. My experience is very limited. You may want to check out redwormcomposting.com Loads of info there that might help you.

This is for anyone who is using white paper, like phone bills etc., for bedding. On the website, redwomcomposting.com the author of the site says about bedding; that long term exclusive use of bleached white paper for bedding, such as bills, can be harmful to worms. Since he has been worm composting for over 12 years, I thought it was useful information.
That's all I got for now - Have a great gardening/worming day.
LM

AvaDGardner wrote:As someone suggested, I need a guinea pig would to keep up our greens. So would a compost pile, if I had a yard!

Our guinea pig gets a lot of our kitchen "waste" - and her bedding is compostable, so I just throw it into our compost bin. I have also used her bedding for the worm towers when we installed them in the SFG, but I don't think those are working out; so I'll be relocating the worms to worm bins, and will definitely be putting at least some of Stella's used bedding in with them. Stella will still have first dibs on the green stuff since it will make it to the worms eventually anyway.

@ Coelli ya know a Wiggler Hilton could be a fantastic addition to your compost material problems. https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t997-wiggler-hilton

I don't think you can beat worm castings for your soil.

llama momma wrote:This is for anyone who is using white paper, like phone bills etc., for bedding. On the website, redwomcomposting.com the author of the site says about bedding; that long term exclusive use of bleached white paper for bedding, such as bills, can be harmful to worms. Since he has been worm composting for over 12 years, I thought it was useful information.
That's all I got for now - Have a great gardening/worming day.
LM

aaack .....say it aaaannnt sooooo.....

shredded bill's is what most of our worm bedding is made up of .....eeek.....

we just got another 200 worms last week they all seem to be doing well.....need to find differnt bedding to keep them that way.....

hugs

rose.....who thanks LLM for the info!

FamilyGardening wrote:

llama momma wrote:This is for anyone who is using white paper, like phone bills etc., for bedding. On the website, redwomcomposting.com the author of the site says about bedding; that long term exclusive use of bleached white paper for bedding, such as bills, can be harmful to worms. Since he has been worm composting for over 12 years, I thought it was useful information.
That's all I got for now - Have a great gardening/worming day.
LM

aaack .....say it aaaannnt sooooo.....

shredded bill's is what most of our worm bedding is made up of .....eeek.....

we just got another 200 worms last week they all seem to be doing well.....need to find differnt bedding to keep them that way.....

hugs

rose.....who thanks LLM for the info!

Your welcome, I thought of you right away because of your prior post about using bills for bedding. Wish the website owner had more information like what kind of symptoms to look for or how long it took to affect the worms. In a pinch if you need newspapers a friend of mine once suggested to locate a public recycling bin that only takes newspapers. We won't call it dumpster diving, Ahem, but if you are stuck and need newspapers... p.s. congrats on the additional worms!!

Hi Llamma mom
Thanks for that info

I have been using shredded paper from my office, but only small amounts
Think I will not.....Someone said it was made from cotton, so I thought good.... but bleach...bad

good point

checking in on our worm families how is everyone?....any harvesting yet?

we added some news paper to our bin.....i checked on them yesterday and even though i didnt see any worms in the new's paper.....i did see LOTS of worm casting mixed in......i dug down deeper lifting each side corner and seen nice fat moist worms moving about

i dont know how many worms are alive in there.....but the few i did see seem to be doing well......

there does seem to be a lot of nats....we layed some cardboard over the top of the news paper in hopes this will help to cut down on the nats.....yesterday when i lifted the lid off the bin....there were a lot of nats on top of the cardboard ....but under the cardboard there wasnt to many nats.....do the nats hurt the worms at all?



hugs

rose

My worms are doing well. Left them well fed when I went to my son's for a week. They still are not climbing into the upper bin which is where I feed now. I harvested enough castings to fill a sock for some compost tea about a month ago. Need to do it again.

Kay

GWN - your welcome!

Rose - re:gnats - my book doesn't say it will hurt worms. It says gnats come in on fruit peels and rinds. Try freezing those first. Also make sure the food is buried 1-2 inches below the bedding, I understand that to mean the moist bedding. Above that I keep a good 4 inches of dry bedding. The book says gnats need exposed food to lay eggs. I put all the food in a wet newspaper and loosely roll it up in a ball. Since I started doing that the gnats disappeared.

I haven't taken any castings yet. Completely got away from me.
Although I did get another 18 gal bin. I need to wash it out, prepare/age the bedding and start harvesting those castings. Thanks for the reminder!

Kay- Yay you got castings! What was your harvest method?

My worms are doing their thing, yesterday saw babies and saw 2 deceased so I'm watching to see if there is a problem developing or if it means nothing :scratch: I'm hoping its just natural circle of life.

Kay- Yay you got castings! What was your harvest method?

Rubber gloves and hand picking worms. Put the picked worms in the second layer to encourage the lower level to migrate. They still haven't.

Didn't need much so seemed the simple way.

Kay

Mine have only been in their bin for a week? Two weeks? I can't remember now - but it's the survivors that were rescued from the worm tubes, plus a bunch that I purchased. So far they seem VERY happy, none have tried to escape, and they're currently enjoying some nice moldy honeydew and avocado rinds. I'm defrosting more food for them right now. Yay worms!

I have a question about the worms and the heat. It is 90 degrees here now and that is about as hot as it gets here
I have them outside behind a concrete wall that does not get any direct sun.
Will that be too hot?
They are in the worm farm hilton.... the layered worm farm thanks

It sounds pretty warm and I hope someone comes along soon to help. My experience is an indoor bin.