1,000 worms on their way....

FamilyGardening wrote:how are the worm families doing?


question: do we need to bring them inside for the winter?....they are in a rubber maid container under cover with a tarp in with our fire wood box.....the container doesnt smell so i dont have a problem bringing them in....its finding the place to put them that will be a challange...

hugs
rose

I have brought my Wiggler Hilton (Rubbermaid Roughneck tote) indoors as I just know they will freeze and probably die when the temperature goes down to -10C to -20C. So far they seem to be happy as they are very active.
No smell, so far, so I think everything is in balance.

Rose -

Your question about bringing them inside -- First, yesterday I spent a lot of time on worm sites because I couldn't log on here for some reason.
So, I was reading how worms are adaptable to some extreme conditions, especially if they are born into a less than ideal environment to begin with. If you like this next idea- you could bring most of yours inside and leave some out, and see how well they adapt. This way you're not risking possible loss of the entire herd. If you left them outside I would do more than a layer of tarp, because of extended freezing temps, of course you want to avoid making a large worm ice cube. Insulation can be things like surround the container with leaves, then bales of straw to hold it in. More leaves on top of the bedding. Then add the tarp on top. And keep feeding enough things that will compost and heat up during winter temps to keep it warm. It's a bit of a dance to keep it warm but not cook them or the opposite and freeze them, it takes practice from what I'm reading anyway..but not impossible at all. But I'm not reading where plastic bins are kept outdoors. The folks are using wooden bins. There is lots more info on redwormcomposting.com. and The Compost Guy.

Since I have 2 worm bins I am trying to find a simple wooden insulated outdoor box I can build myself and keep some worms outside this winter. Again, redwormcomposting.com is the place I am getting ideas from.

My bucket of pure castings has been in my garage, this morning at 58 degrees. I was concerned about the infants still hatching in these cool temps with supposedly toxic castings. It doesn't seem to matter to the youngsters. I have infants through adults in there this morning munching away on apple cores, banana peels, and spaghetti squash. I need to pull them out and get them into the other established bins.

My 2 indoor bins are humming along. Recently had 4 small world travelers mummify themselves on the bathroom floor. Silly worm kids.
I'm in a comfortable rhythm in regards to their care, and made Thursdays official worm care day. Meaning I really get in there and look around, fluff things up a bit, spray some water, feed them, add paper or cardboard. Maybe spend time tearing up more paper to store for later use. It's nice to be at ease about the whole thing. Though recently I thought I went too far - things looked way too dry, went 3 weeks without looking at the bins. The worms were still OK and squirming around in the very bottom making due I guess with whatever moisture was left down there. There is so much talk about drainage in worm bins, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why. I feed what I would call, lightly, and I'm finding if the bins are sprayed once a week, keeping it on the dry side, then drainage is not an issue.

Kelejan -
I had to use a Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion chart to figure your temps to mine. Oh yes, 14 degrees to minus 4 degrees would have made me bring them indoors too!

llama momma wrote:

Kelejan -
I had to use a Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion chart to figure your temps to mine. Oh yes, 14 degrees to minus 4 degrees would have made me bring them indoors too!

Sorry LM. I usually try to put both F and C when I am quoting temperature.

No problem K!
I keep the chart handy as my son lives in Japan and is comfy with celcius readings, as we often discuss the weather too.

I am a newby to this wormcomposting business, started in August with my first worm bin.

I addition I have a 4x4x4 chicken wire compost heap and in it I have put two worm towers. My idea is to fill the whole lot with my fall leaves, the grass I have been collecting and drying since the summer, plus any other green stuff I can get, add some manure and fill the worm towers with bedding, worms, food for as long as it does not freeze. Then cover it and hope the worms will survive the winter. The worm towers are made inch-square holed plastic mesh from Canadian Tire. Using the two-foot wide stuff, I cut pieces four feet long and rolled them into a four-foot tube. So far my 16 cubic feet pile is half full and I am working like mad to collect enough leaves to fill it to the brim. I am out every morning sweeping up the leaves and shredding them. So far the worm tubes are below the level of the rest of the compost bed and as soon as the freeze comes I will fill the rest of the bed with cardboard, paper and leaves.
My hope is the the worms will survive and multiply in the heart of the heap; if the middle gets too hot they can crawl out to a cooler place through the inch-square mesh. I am really looking forward to next spring when everything thaws.

Redwormcomposting is a great site and I have now read just about everything there is. I am hoping that I have taken in enough knowledge just by reading it, and re-reading whenever I need to brush up my thinking.

K-

I'm a newby too and started just a couple months before you, my worms arrived March 1st. You have surpassed my efforts already. I look forward very much to hearing about the results of your outdoor set up. I'm leaning towards the outdoor wooden insulated box, about 4 ft long as described by Bentley Cristie. Basically cause I'm being all girly about this - I also like the idea of protecting them inside a wood box and keeping critters out. I'm thinking drainage holes in the bottom filled with crushed stone and screen covered. I like how you are giving them ample room to move around as conditions warm up or cool off. I hope to accomplish that too. If you like the idea of adding coffee grounds, it sounds like the worms sure love that stuff too. My funds ready to purchase the wood and Styrofoam insulation, hinges, etc, but need to finish up my little worm box design and get going asap. And a few neighbors have been rounded up who know I want their leaves. This is a really nice Autumn project we are working on. Lets continue to compare notes along the way!

After posting on this thread earlier today, I have spent the intervening time in raking up another four bags of leaves, and, together with the four bags I collected yesterday, shredded them into five bags, put one on the new compost heap along with a bag of dried grass, and managed to clear up just before the rain came.

Not heavy at the moment but 10mm plus is forecast today and then rain for the rest of the week. The heap needs the rain and I have been waiting for it for too long, putting off watering. I will wait for the rain to give the heap a good soaking before I add the rest of my leaves and grass etc. So far I am up to about 2 1/2 feet of the four foot high wire. Next time I do this it will be a three-foot high wire; I'm a little too short to work it comfortably at four feet. I'm five feet short. All my future SFG beds will be three feet wide so I can reach the 18 inches needed to get to the middle.

LM, I look forward to hearing of your progress in an outside worm bin. We read the same Redworm site and it is nice to know what you are talking about. Actually, it was you who recommended that site and I thank you for getting me interested in such a subject.
I was never a girly girl, more a tomboy type, but I cannot stand the big fat earthworms (I know they are essential to mother nature), but have no problem n handling the little red wigglers. I don't snail or slugs, but no problem with lizards and snakes (small ones).

ETA: LM, I did not mean your progress in an outside bin; I meant your progress in building an outside bin.

found a great video on large scale worm farming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53pT99iXOtk&feature=channel&list=UL

went to their web site and found this info

*Our worms are a species of nightcrawler especially bred for producing castings. They are highly efficient and have different care requirements than other worms. They are not the red wrigglers commonly used for composting. Our worms are also great for fishing as they do not require refrigeration like normal fishing worms (usually Canadian nightcrawlers). *

hugs
rose

here some pic's from the other day

pulled back the top thick layer....found at the bottom was thick black *looking soil* = all worm castings!



lifted up a chunck ....lots of fat worms and you can even see an egg by my thumb....its yellow



found a mass of them in and around a big root ...... we thru in there just to see what they would do....dont remember what kind of root it is...but they LOVE it!



here is one of our happy workers



hugs
rose

Kelejan wrote: LM, I look forward to hearing of your progress in an outside worm bin.

ETA: LM, I did not mean your progress in an outside bin; I meant your progress in building an outside bin.

You know what Kelejan? All of a sudden I'm getting cold feet with this project. I want to do it right the first time. I'd be pretty annoyed if I killed off the worms if insulation and heating attempts went awry over the winter. Having just spent 7-1/2 months learning to keep them alive and multiplying indoors..
Obviously losing my confidence here, whoa. I guess I need to plow ahead anyway, prepare the box and bedding and keep the thermometer on it before adding any worms... can't believe I'm so concerned about worms....

Rose
Those are great pictures! The video was cool. That's a lot of black gold.

Rose, those look like nightcrawlers in the mix. Are they the European ones or some others?

No_Such_Reality wrote:Rose, those look like nightcrawlers in the mix. Are they the European ones or some others?

Rose, did you get your worms from a seller, or like me, did you pick out the worms from your compost heap?
Mine seem to look like the worms on redwormcomposting.com but I am not 100% sure.
In any case, I am happy with them as they produced my best compost ever this summer.

llama momma wrote:

You know what Kelejan? All of a sudden I'm getting cold feet with this project. I want to do it right the first time. I'd be pretty annoyed if I killed off the worms if insulation and heating attempts went awry over the winter. can't believe I'm so concerned about worms....

Whatever you do, I am sure you will have many survivors all ready to spring (crawl) into action next year, not to mention all the cocoons which can stand the cold better than the worms.

the 400 + worms came from our local garden store

my son and grandaughter love hunting for worms they did provide a few....maybe 10 of them or so.. ..

hugs
rose who wonders how do you know when there is to many worms in one container

FamilyGardening wrote:rose who wonders how do you know when there is to many worms in one container

Good Question. I don't know. A head count at intervals to see when they stop multiplying -- but that's too much work for me. Maybe redwormcomposting.com has that answer... :scratch:

llama momma wrote:

FamilyGardening wrote:rose who wonders how do you know when there is to many worms in one container

Good Question. I don't know. A head count at intervals to see when they stop multiplying -- but that's too much work for me. Maybe redwormcomposting.com has that answer... :scratch:

I think the answer there is that the worms will not outgrow their container due to the lack of room. They are self-limiting. In other words, all species are self limiting, even we humans.

Kelejan wrote:In other words, all species are self limiting, even we humans.

hmm...not too sure about that...

CC

I've explored making an outdoor worm bin and decided against it for now. Not ready to risk killing off even some of the growing herd over the past 8 months. It's pretty easy to keep a couple bins in the spare restroom for now and move it to the basement when my kids come home for the holidays. Think I'll keep reading and learning about worms and maybe try
an outdoor system next year.

How is everyone else's worms?

we are bringing in our worm bin that is outside....its in with our wood pile and under a tarp, but i think our temps are going to get to low for them.....

what i was thinking about doing once we get them in is to lay out a tarp and dump the bin, clean it out and try and get all the worms and start them fresh with new bedding and food....the bin now is over half way full....its not solid castings, but there is a very thick layer on the bottom of the bin.....

so what i was thinking is go ahead and put everything but the worms into another container....like a bucket add some better composted stuff from one of our compost bins and let it finish composting until spring.....i know there will be eggs in there and maybe a few parents that we miss.....but....i thought once spring comes around we can take out the bigger worms and add them to the family and then add some of that composted worm castings to each square when we go to plant.....

how does that sound?

hugs
rose

I like your idea, sounds good to me.
It's similar to my situation with 2 bins. Plus the stored bucket of castings that I haphazardly throw food into. The bucket with castings have worms that just keep on hatching. Keep throwing them back into the bins with all their relatives. Kind of feel a little bad for the bucket of worms cause they are truly living in their own pure poo castings with a little food tossed in.. here I've read repeatedly the castings are toxic. But I just don't see that at all! So I guess you could put in compost stuff like you said -- or Not. Honestly I don't think they care, when they hatch I suspect they adapt to whatever the conditions are.

funny how we get attached to our worm families

not sure i can use a worm any longer on a fishing hook i just see them in a differnt light now....they are a blessing to our gardens.....besides we can use fish eggs or fake worms to catch fish with and yes if we had to use a worm....because we really needed the fish for food....then i would use a worm....but not gonna unless we have too

whats really amazed me....is our children and how much they are learning....and remembering and really looking at nature in a differnt way as well....they really get it!....im more excited about how they are learning then anything else....

hugs
rose.....with a hubby that wants to get bunnies for poo and eating .....but thats a another story

My worms seem OK to me. Nice layer on the bottom which I think jsut must be castings. I am thinking of adding my third tier with new bedding and see it the worms migrate upwards.
I intend to harvest in January. Something to look forward to.
LM will be harvesting hers as well so we will be able to compare.
No, we aren't in competition, just that we started our bins in August, my first bin and LM's two split bins.

i had to look back in this thread to see when we first got our worms......april 30th....almost 7 months ago....should we have cleaned out the worms home before now?

hugs
rose

rose, I see a lot of folk talking about worm bins on this and other forums and have a question. How much production do you get from doing this? It doesn't seem like there would be much volume but maybe it doesn't take much to be very beneficial. Just curious. Tks

meatburner wrote:rose, I see a lot of folk talking about worm bins on this and other forums and have a question. How much production do you get from doing this? It doesn't seem like there would be much volume but maybe it doesn't take much to be very beneficial. Just curious. Tks

Meatburner, with worm castings you do not need more than 20% compared to compost. Also castings have many more nutrients than plain compost. Funnily enough, if you use 100%, it has less good effect than using 25%. A little goes a long way.