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I GOT WORMS!!!

crazy8

crazy8

Ok my new bride is getting very mad at me because I drag my butt across the living room carpet...Ok that's been kind of the running joke but seriously I ordered 250 Super Red Wigglers from Uncle Jim. Well I have been doing a lot of research and starting to wonder if I totally missed the mark on something. I have my bins put together and even had a lot of shredded paper (printer paper ran through my paper shredder) and cardboard and also threw in the seeds and skin of a musk melon. Well I saw one video that actually said you should let food sit in the bin up to a week before the worms arrive and I did that with the melon. At the same time I also learned that if the environment is not what the worms like, they will run from it. Maybe I should say crawl up the walls and sneak out the top of the bins. Needless to say, when my worms showed up to my house yesterday I put them in my bin and THEY RAN. I figured they would considering how bad that melon smelled.



So after they ran away that time I gathered them up and dug into the bin to remove the melon leftovers. I also added 5 or so coffee filters with coffee leftovers in with all the paper and stuff with two banana peals and some crushed egg shells. Well I woke up this morning and found my little wormies making a dash for it. I know its damp enough but are they so sensitive to that bad melon that I need to start over? What am I doing wrong? What do I need to add that will make them happy and want to stay?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
 
Try a bin of regular soil? yep i just read up on em try regular soil as a base see if they like it. then add scraps little by little don't overwhelm them. I bred superworms for awhile they make awesome compost but had to rotate bins every 3-4 days in the summer once a week in the winter. get some peet moss for their bedding it also help with moisture control. You can put it in dry or soak it in water depending on your needs. also I used to put a line of aluminum tape around the rim of my bins to stop escapes. you may need some pam or veggie oil also tah keep em in.
 
Coco coir. Worms love it, and if you have proper drainage, it holds the right air/water mix for them. Just rinse it really well before adding cause it can contain high levels of salt.
 
Ha Crazyman.

About 15 years ago, i tried the same thing, twice, before giving up on the wigglers.

First time, i put the worms in a tote in my basement bathtub, added some dampened newspaper, a bit of soil and potato peels. Thinking i was saving the earth from all demons a like, i went to bed. in the morning, i went to get ready for work and as i walked down the steps to the bathroom, what do i see, a little wiggler on the floor. oh look, i said to myself, one of the wigglers seemed to have gotten out of the tote. as i turned the corner..... a whole lot of wigglers got out of the tote! i was in scramble mode, picking up wigglers before the wife came down to do her ironing. thinking it was still too wet, i removed a lot of the moisture drying things up. didn't help, by the time i got home from work, wigglers were doing the wiggle shuffle all throughout my basement. eventually, i just dumped them into my outside composter.

not being one who submits to failure, a few months later i attempted the same thing but this time a new tote with a lid....... the worms rotted in the tote....back to the outside composter the next batch went.

so, move ahead 15 years and yesterday i contacted this group http://www.wormsatwork.com/index.html , and i am going to buy just some finished compost....i think, i am getting the itch to try it again. so i may walk away with a few wigglers. i have a bokashi bucket on the go right now to see how its going to work, of course, i am not using the bokashi nutrient compound but applied some composter accelerater to the pile. got a couple batches of tea so far.

i spent yesterday studying on the homemade vermiculture and think this time, if i get the worms, that i will put a wire mesh on 1" spacers, on the bottom of the tote, this will allow any excess moisture to fall to the bottom of the pail. then a layer of newspaper/cardboard, then a few handsfull of either garden soil or peat. then add a layer of food scraps. another layer of soil/peat. then the worms on top and they can find their way to the scraps and soil. i will put a covered drain at the bottom of the pail to drain off any tea. i will put some airholes in the pail i will be using and see how i make out. i think i will back off on the citrus fruit to start and just add leafy products and vegetable peels.

good luck on your project.
 
Yeah I have the funny feeling I will be going home to another 250 red wiggler dash. Maybe I will try the "dont overwhelm them approach" along with your ideas Burning. So my design is this....

I have two bins for now. One will collect the "tea" the other holds the worms and stuff. We will call the "tea" bin, "Bin 1" and the worm bin "Bin 2". So nothing as of now has been done to "bin 1" but I am planing on adding a spout or something to drain the tea into milk jugs. Bin 2 has 4 1" holes that are covered with screen. This will let all the moisture out and keep the worms in. I have probably 25-ish 1/8" holes for air circulation around the top of bin 2. Im not sure if this is enough but I am contemplating on adding more. I also have a digital thermometer so at any time, I can see how cozy it is in the bin.

Im thinking of adding more air holes and taking all of the current bedding I have in the bin now and taking your approach Burning. Some newspaper and cardboard plus I have some sandy soil I can add and some great 85% broken down compost they might like. That all added in with the coffee/filters and banana peels might provide something a little nicer for them. Then I will top it off with the printer paper shreds I made. Oh yeah while I am at it Im thinking I will rinse out bin 2 so it doesn't have any rancid leftovers that I may have missed.

Does this seem like a better approach?
 
sounds like plan Crazyman, go for it and let us know how it works out. you probably watched all the same youtube type videos on vermicomposting that i did. lots of interesting ideas, wish the Internet was as strong 15 years ago. who knows maybe i would now have a web-based vermicompost company...damn, i'm always one step behind!
 
I have had a successful and thriving 7 tier worm bin up for almost 2 years now and have done quit a bit of research on how to keep them and manage the bins and how to "BREW TEA".

The first problem is I think your mistaking "Leachate" for worm tea. Leachate is the liquid coming out of the bottom of a bin and definitely is not as desirable (from a gardening standpoint) as actual worm tea (aka castings tea, vermicompost tea, compost tea).

Leachate is produced when excess water is released from decomposing wastes and/or is added directly to the system. Partially decomposed materials are not nearly as well stabilized as mature composts, and thus can contain a variety of potentially phytotoxic (i.e. they can harm your plants) compounds.

Generally, if you dilute leachate and add it to your garden you will likely see some benefits because it will carry some beneficial micro organisms (especially if your worm bin is quite mature), but again you are better off to make tea using finished vermicompost to avoid introducing photo toxins which will deter growth and can lead to various plant dieses.

The reason why the term "TEA" is used is because you actually have to Brew it just as you would drinking tea. If your not sure how to brew tea I've listed instructions on how to brew here several times, but the basic concept is using worm castings or compost and aerate it in a few gallons of warm water with the addition of unsulphered molasses and or fish emulsion. The goal is to grow the existing beneficial bacteria found in the worm casting or compost to the point you have billions of cultures living in the water. Then you either foliar feed those living organism to your plants or introduce them to the plants soil.

As far as your worms I think they may be smothered. I typically allow my scraps to break down for 2-4 weeks and then add a bit of water to it until it makes a thick slurry that I actually pour over 3-4" of soil/paper shredding then add 3-4" of leaves/grass clippings with more soil over the top and place that on the top of my bin and remove the "black gold" from the bottom tier. Since I have a 7 tier bin I repeat the cycle once every month or so. Then I store the "black gold" in a large trash can and add it to the current years soil and or give some to friends and family. I think I will probably do a step by step post on my worm farm and brew tea sometime in the future as it seems more and more are going in that direction, but need help with the projects.
 
i think lightman is our man, he has done all the necessary research and experimentation that saves us from screwing around. glad you weighed in.

Leachate, of all the things, should have known. rookies!

i think the plan of putting in the necessary drainage and aeration holes will assist in past issues.

thanks lightman.
 
Yeah I think he might know a few things...lol Well here is my update. I am uploading pics I took with my new toy. The wife let me upgrade to the HTC Thunderbolt Android phone....any who, Im uploading the pics to my Photobucket account and I will show you all what I have done last night. But to give you a quick idea I did everything I posted earlier and was set out to do. For the most part I think they seem to be a little happier but I woke up this morning STILL finding a lot of the worms crowding at the top of the bin where the lid sits. I even thought the new bedding was much better than before.

The good thing is they seem to already be fattening up (the lost about 70%-75% of their size in shipping which Uncle Jim says is normal and expected. So if they are eating and seem to be kind of happy, why the attempts at running away? :( Besides my wife already said "I already don't like this idea"...lol I just keep telling here "Once its established it will be fine." And I love it when the wife is happy so you can see how getting this all going correctly benefits everyone...lol
 
So here is what the bin looks like as a finished setup.
IMAG0035-1.jpg


As mentioned, took out all the old bedding and put down cardboard on the very bottom.
IMAG0031.jpg


I then shredded up a decent amount of news paper and sprayed it down a bit with water. I also purchased some peet moss and put that and some of my compost that was in the garden on top of the wet news paper
IMAG0033-1.jpg


Then I added another nice layer of wet news paper and on that layer I decided to do only ONE coffee filter with grounds and two banana peals. I had to take the hard work of working though all the old bedding to find all them worms and some got added to the soil layer and some got added to the food layer.
IMAG0032.jpg

I also put one more little layer of news paper on top of this layer and sprayed it down just a little.

Here are the 1/4" holes I made so now you can see the size difference. I don't know if I need more of them but I figure making them bigger is a good place to start. Also when I was going through picking out all of the old melon nastyness from the old bedding I noticed a couple maggots which I am sure is not good. Because of this I have used NONE of the old bedding and have used ALL new fresh stuff. I am also starting off with news paper and not printer paper.
IMAG0034-1.jpg





Q's:
1) I heard that worms like to live in the top 6" of soil so do I need to make sure I have at least 6" or more of bedding, food, etc. for them to be happy?
2) If this seems like a good place for them to be happy is it just a matter of time before they adapt or do they usually make themselves at home right away?
3) From what is known of my new setup, am I doing anything wrong?
4) Why do my new kids want to squirm away from me and the new home I have provided for them?
5) LGHT, when you say break down do you just let the scraps sit in a bucket out in the garage or something to let it break down for that period of time? I would imagine you would get fruit flies or other unwanted things in this time frame.
 
I am using the same blue totes for my worm farms. I have never had any get away possibly because the holes I have on the sides are much smaller. They crawl up and down the sides, but never leave. My experience with banana peels was not good. I believe the peels caused a huge population of small flies quickly. I quit putting them in and the fly problem went away. If you do add banana peels, chop them them up and make sure they are completely covered up. I would also add a handful or two of sand or dirt spread evenly. I have found that primarily using green leafy material (lettuce) and peels (cucumber) chopped up works quick and easy. Stay away from any fruits or starchy foods. When I have too much material for the bins, I put it in plastic bags and freeze it to use later...works great. Another thing, I am trying to avoid adding seeds to the bin because the worms don't seem to break them down and they often germinate in the bin. I am afraid some might germinate in the garden or pots after applying worm poo. One other thing, worm tea is not the gunky water that seeps to the bottom bin. That is leachate. Worm tea is made from adding a certain amount of poo to a bucket of water and unsulfured molasses and oxidizing the water for a few days. This is much much much better for your plants than leachate. This solution has many beneficial organisms that are great for your plants. These are some of the things I have learned in my first year of having worm bins. Google and you tube the subject and you will see even more good suggestions.
 
Well my loving wife who doesn't care about our new 250 kids as much as I do, was cutting up some potatoes, watermelon, celery and a lot of egg shells. Needless to say we filled our ice cream bucket and then some with everything. So I decided to run the stuff in the bucket through my food processor. Here is what I got...
IMAG0001.jpg


Then the wife and kids decided to make home made fire starters without me, can you believe her? Anyway so I took the left over egg carton pieces and cut it up to smaller pieces and placed on top of the slop as such...
IMAG0036-1.jpg


So now that I have all sorts of material and I am assuming I should wait and freeze it for now...
1) Should I wait or should I keep adding layers?
2) Since this is kind of wet due to the watermelon, when I do poor it on should I add a nice amount of peet?
3) To my understanding your suggesting I throw on some fresh grass clipping to when I add scraps?
 
You are definetly giving them to much food for there new home!!!!!!!! forget the coffe grounds, to much acid!!!!!!!! ad more egg shells, but dont just crushed them, use a food procesor until you get like a powdered egg shells, and add that to the bin, that will reduce the acidity and help the wigglers eat the food, also I get all my food in the freezer and it decomposes a lot faster, if you just leave it to rod it might bring in ssome other pests, like fruit flies, and that will be messy, just add a little food at a time, they wont die of hunger, since they eat the news paper, did you rinse the news paper before adding it to the bin, you know newspaper haves lots of ink, I put everything in the bat tub and rinse it till the excess ink comes out, then i added to the bin, never had an issue, I started with 75 wigglerrs February 2010. Today i have around 1000, and never had and issue of them crawling out. It takes around 2 weeks for them to get comfortable in their new home, but definitely dont over feed them, even if there 250 wigglers they need time to settle !!!! by the way the only time i had an issue, it was when i added the coffe grounds, they were all over the bin. Hope this helps!
 
I will be sure to freeze the rest of the coffee and not add any more. I also did not think to rinse the news paper since all the videos I watched and articles I read did not mention this practice. I will consider doing that from now on. Just so happens the wife and I are going to inherit a stand up freezer from the in laws so I will start putting my stuff in there asap. Thanks for the pointers. From what I can see now, it seems most of the worms are happy since I do not see them climbing up the walls any more. I will be sure to dig up the bedding a little to make sure they are alive, moving, and looking good.
 
crazy8 said:
I will be sure to freeze the rest of the coffee and not add any more. I also did not think to rinse the news paper since all the videos I watched and articles I read did not mention this practice. I will consider doing that from now on. Just so happens the wife and I are going to inherit a stand up freezer from the in laws so I will start putting my stuff in there asap. Thanks for the pointers. From what I can see now, it seems most of the worms are happy since I do not see them climbing up the walls any more. I will be sure to dig up the bedding a little to make sure they are alive, moving, and looking good.
Click to expand...

Forgot to mention, turn the bed around every few weeks so the moisture will not rot, just put some plastic gloves on before you mix the whole bedding, just toss it around so it wil get enough air. I lost all my wigglers the first time I tried to raise them because all the water was at the bottom, even do I drilled holes on the bottom, everything just rotted in there, it was a mess, the thing is, the rubbermaids hold lots of moisture, so don t over water it, adding the frozen food will also add more water to your bedding, so toss the bedding around every 2 3 weeks, so your wigglers get good air out of that. Good luck!!!
 
Ok I had been meaning to post a follow up but got busy.

As far as the scraps I converted my old trash compactor space in the kitchen to a compost holding area for my kitchen scraps. I just put them in seal-able plastic bags and let them sit in their for 4-6 weeks until I need them. They breakdown to the point where it's just a thick mush. They don't stink at all because you avoid all fish, dairy, and meat products. All you really want is things like fruit and veggie scraps.

I think your problem is you don't have an established bin so the worms are probably being smothered due to lack of nitrogen and low pH level.

Here is a list of what you can and shouldn't compost

DO COMPOST

* All your vegetable and fruit wastes, (including rinds and cores) even if they are moldy and ugly
* Old bread, donuts, cookies, crackers, pizza crust, noodles: anything made out of flour!
* Grains (cooked or uncooked): rice, barley, you name it
* Coffee grounds, tea bags, filters
* Fruit or vegetable pulp from juicing
* Old spices
* Outdated boxed foods from the pantry
* Egg shells (crush well)
* Corn cobs and husks (cobs breakdown very slowly)


DON'T COMPOST

* Meat or meat waste, such as bones, fat, gristle, skin, etc.
* Fish or fish waste
* Dairy products, such as cheese, butter, cottage cheese, yogurt, cream cheese, sour cream, etc.
* Grease and oils of any kind

Why can't you compost
these food wastes?

* They inbalance the otherwise nutrient-rich structure of other food and vegetation waste and breakdown slowly
* They attract rodents and other scavenging animals
* Meat attracts maggots
* Your compost bin will smell to holy hell and back!
 
I have heard that putting the end of a beer in the bin every once in a while is helpful too. I am guessing it has something to do with the yeast but that is just a guess. I have been doing it with my compost bin for a while and it doesn't seem to hurt anything at lease, not sure if it is helpful or not though.
 
Do the worms get a little lazier with their consumption of beer? lol Thanks for all the great info LGHT. I keep checking on the worms and they seem to be doing better now so it could have been just initial shock to being in a bin that wasn't yet established. looking forward to them eatings, pooping, and breeding in the bin. :D
 
Well last night I have looked at the worms. I know I had some issues at first keeping them in the bin but there are not any bodies to be found outside the bin but it does not look like there is 250 or even 200 in my bin, as it did at one time. I'm thinking of getting another 250 I think. Anyway when I looked at the worms I do have, they are plumping up like Thanksgiving turkeys. They look great. I also added some watermelon and celery scraps last week and so I looked at the three little piles I made in the bin and found worms IN the food scraps so that's a real good sign. Thank you all again for all of the help in trying to get this started. I greatly appreciated it. I know I have a lot to learn yet. :)
 
i wonder if the amount of space is too little for 250 wigglers. perhaps adding more worms is not the right answer, don't forget besides eating food scraps wigglers like to do the "humpy humpy" and soon you will have a whole bunch of worm sacs with more little ones. just guessing, but wouldn't that also be part of a healthy indoor compost solution? an ecological system, where one adds worms, worms eat food, worms poop, breed, newling hatch, old worms die, and the whole process is in motion.
 
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