How long does it take all the wigglers to eat up the food?..

[Spongegirl]

I wasnt sure where to post about my worms. I started a worm bin for castings to make tea. I started it at the beginning of spring. I only started with a 100 or so worms but a couple of weeks ago added a few hundred more. I expected them to turn their food faster than they are. I need tea now and was wondering how long I can expect them to give me some earth to use to make tea. I've read different opinions about this method but no one ever mentions how long it takes for them to eat food. It seems to be taking forever. It's been like 3 months. I am feeding them potatoe & carrot scraps, crushed egg shells, and not even that much because I still see what I have given them. I don't know. My garden does look good but I know the soil needs help. Maybe I still need more worms. Thanks. This is a great site; so much information!

[cynthia_h]

If you wait for all the food to disappear, most likely all the worms will be dead, too. Feed them. Don't put so many eggshells in, though; it could be that the shells are still too large. I use an old blender and absolutely pulverize mine before adding them either to my main compost or the worm habitat.

I can drain liquid off of my worm habitat and dilute it for what *I* call "worm tea." Technically speaking, it's diluted worm leachate, but it works well as a tonic for plants. This you can make at any stage of the game, if your worm set-up has a way to drain off liquid.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[Spongegirl]

right...with the egg shells. I also put mine in the blender and have just given those once. How do you know what is too much food? And thank you!

[cynthia_h]

Too much food will produce a terrible odor in the worm habitat. If none of the new food is being eaten by the worms, there's too much food. If opening the box to check on the little beasties suffocates you, there's too much food. Etc.

I feed mine about once a week (sometimes more often), a full quart yogurt container of kitchen scraps. Sometimes I forget on the weekend; sometimes I make it up to them and feed them twice during the same week.

If the box goes acidic, add more bedding/newspaper/whatever you're using for your "dry" ingredient(s) and stop feeding until the bad odor goes away.

Cynthia

[Lunacy]

100 worms is not a lot of worms! I started with 85 and they didn't eat much at all so I bought another 100 and they still might not be enough to get me a good turn over of castings, I think I'll buy even more.

Ps Toil really knows a great deal about vermicomposting, he must have missed your post, he's extremely helpful. If he doesn't see it, I would pm him.

[Spongegirl]

I think I probably have about 500 worms. The bins look really good and the worms are at the top just under the newspaper. I just fed them some shaved squash, and some herbal teas and roots. Yum!

[cynthia_h]

Uh-oh; you've got it *bad.* Catering to the hard-working little invertebrates. (I do the same thing; I recognize the symptoms.... )

Separating my kitchen scraps so that "they" will have what "they" like best. The regular compost critters can have the rest.

Worms get: strawberry husks, melon rinds, tea bags (some of the tea bags; some I use for blood stops when I mess up clipping the dogs' nails), banana peels, generally soft stuff. Compost critters get: onion peels, corn cobs and husks, carrot peels, broccoli trimmings, orange peels (well, most of them; worms get some, too), bread with spots of mold, small pieces of cheese with spots of mold, beans that *someone* forgot about after cooking them and now cannot be consumed by mammals, etc.

Sound familiar?

Cynthia

[soil]

first off, how big is your bin. second, when you stick your hand in and grab a handful, how many worms in that hand?