Worms

[Green Mantis]

Well I'll be darned your'e BACK!!!!! Glad to see your back on the site, I missed your conversations!!! I'm sure everyone did. Don't know about the colour coding?????

[Ozark Lady]

I was thinking one color maybe red for manure and compost, and another color maybe blue for kitchen scraps, minus milk, meat, and eggs.

With them being color coded less chance of a mix up.

I do find worms in the soil, but also in hay piles, I wonder if they are the same kind of worms, or different...

Time to experiment?

Yes, I had a bit of a rough fall and winter, still not overly mobile, but feeling better bit by bit.

I have been back for a couple weeks, just not so vocal...
But, I haven't been vocal in person either.

[Ozark Lady]

I found some worm links.

The first 2 are for buying them, and the third tells about setting them up.

http://www.gardenworms.com/1000-red-wig ... 7QodiCtpGw

http://www.wormsetc.com/webstore/red-wo ... ida-1.html

http://www.trails.com/how_40507_raise-b ... worms.html

[Green Mantis]

They really are interesting to raise. They really do eat a lot after awhile. In the spring I am going to make a bigger bin, and buy more red wrigglers, quite a few this time. But won't be emptying the tub every 2 months, I want them to get lots of nice compost in there for spring planting. With all the snow, and -30 weather, they can happily stay in there and work away! The worm sites you posted ozark lady are very interesting. Fun to go back and see why I started my first ever worm bin.

[rainbowgardener]

Yeah, I'm impressed. My few worms that I dug up in late fall, manage to chew through quite a bit. I put a cup full of kitchen scraps in twice a week as well as adding more leaves now and then.

In the spring, I will dig up more worms and then I expect my worm bin will really go to town!

[grassroot]

ok, this might be a little silly to ask, but i might as well because the only dumb question is the one not asked! is vermicomposting smelly? i have a garage, but it's not heated and i don't want to kill the little guys so i was thinking about just getting a bin or two in my closet so i can start making use of all the scraps I'm letting slip through my fingers (i work in a group home and there are literally too many organic solids/carbons that just get tossed/recycled each day - i may be starting to develop a tic about it lol) i guess i could line the top of the bin with charcoal if need be .

how many would anyone advise for starting say... a 12 gallon rubbermaid tote bin (i don't mind growing wormopolises). thanks in advance for any help!

[rainbowgardener]

No, absolutely not smelly. The only smell to it is a bit earthy from all the fall leaves I put in there. And I have had my nose right down in it, because I like to inspect, see how it's all working.

I have no idea how many you would need, depends on how much organics you are trying to get rid of, but I would start smallish and see how it all works and then you can add more bins. I just dug up some worms from my garden, but people usually buy them. You can order them on line. I think a pound of worms is around 500 of them. A pound of worms should eat half a pound of food a day, once they are established and happy. As your worm population grows, so will the amount of food they eat.

[cynthia_h]

Purchasing may not be essential; I've given composting worms to a few people who requested them on FreeCycle, so that may be worth a shot. At this time of year in Minnesota, though, most worms may be less active; it all depends on how the people have their worm habitats set up.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[Bobberman]

You can buy red worms by the pound in many places. A pound run about $27 and 10 pound is about $209. You get about a 1000 worms a pound but can buy smaller ones and get more per pound! Shipping is about $10 a pound. I suggest that if you want worms go to the local playground at night after a rain and get a 100 in a half hour.My playground has 1000,s all over the place on a rainy night and I pick them all summer 200 a clip! Keep them cool or they will die fast where the red worms wil tolarate even a 100 degrees! The playground worms are not red worms but will work in the garden or planting boxes!
+++ I ordered a pound of very small worms about the diameter of spegeatt and made a box for them with a screen at the bottom but did not make it deep enough and lost most of the worms! Imay try it again this year since I fish alot!
+++ I found a worm about 10 years ago near my house in a rocky dry soil that was really strange because they moved like a snake very fast and their tail would break off when you tried to grab them. The tail that broke off was about a 1/2 inch long and was good bait for catching small fish for bait! You could not hold the worm in your open hand it would wiggle off fast and would dig into the soft ground very fast! I put them in my garden and have them all over the place now especially in the drier soil!
+++Walmart does sell red worms and they are fat and about 3 inches long. I think there are 30 in a box. They also have a trout worm or a small version of a night crawler. Another place I buy a thin worm is at a pet store where they are called trout worms and sold for the small lizzards and small animals they sell for $3.99 for 50 and our in a dry back soil in a styrofoam cup!

[cynthia_h]

You can buy red worms by the pound in many places. ...I suggest that if you want worms go to the local playground at night after a rain and get a 100 in a half hour.My playground has 1000,s all over the place on a rainy night and I pick them all summer 200 a clip! Keep them cool or they will die fast where the red worms wil tolarate even a 100 degrees!

Eisenia foetida, or red composting worms (also called red wigglers), are litter dwellers. They live between layers of leaves, straw (hence horse manure), or compost. Earthworms--the ones that come up out of the...ah...earth after rain--are burrow dwellers. Their burrows are permanent.

Neither species can dwell where the other one does. Red composting worms will suffocate in the earth, and earthworms will die if denied the earth.

Red composting worms will NOT tolerate 100 degrees. A worm "farmer" would be lucky if his/her worms were to tolerate as much as 85 degrees in their habitat or less than 50 or so degrees on the other end of the spectrum. Mine are in a triple-layer worm habitat in my carport, under an old Army blanket which seems to even out the temperature swings. We got down into the 20s December 2009, and the blanket/carport arrangement worked just fine: no loss of hard-working invertebrates.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[Bobberman]

I usually only write something if I experience it myself and I have had red worms ive at abve 100 degrees when the night crawlers tuned to mush! Here is a link that tells you just that! I hope its ok to putthis link up!
+++

http://www.thewormdude.com/tag/red-wigglers/

[Odd Duck]

Bobberman,
This a direct quote from the link you posted [wormguy's blog]. I did put in bold the portion I think applies.

"Regardless of what you read on the Internet or in worm books, worms (In damp bedding) tolerate ambient temps over 100 degrees without any problem whatsoever! I usually have over 100 pounds of worms residing in my garage at any given time. Our local temps exceed 100 degrees quite often in the summer. I’ve never lost a pan of worms due to ambient temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. Why? The bedding the worms live in keeps them insulated from the ambient temps. Conversely, I’ve worked outdoor events in 75-85 degree weather where I thought I had shaded my worms well, but the sun shifted, cooking my worms. How does this happen? If the outside of the bin gets warm to the touch, you create a frying pan situation for your worms. As the heat transfers from your bin to the bedding, worms begin to cook."

This is why others have said that worms don't like temps of 100'F. The worms survived in shaded, moist bedding, but direct sun and actual bedding temps of 100'F will kill your worms.

Bobberman, perhaps your worms were fully shaded and their bedding moist enough that the bedding and worms didn't actually get to 100'F, so you had a good outcome. That would be an exception to most experts recommendations and that needs to be made clear to people new to vermicomposting. JMHO

[Bobberman]

I guess I will have to check this year the temp in the container using a aqaurium temperature thermastat I use in my soil testing! Gardening is sometimes like politics you don't know what or who to believe! If I use a styrofoam container to keep worms cool it will work only for so long then the ouside temp is the same in the container as the outside temperature and that is a fact!Thanks for posting the part of the article that I was referencing too!

[applestar]

My daughter found this video. It's for kids, but pretty interesting
http://pbskids.org/wildkratts/videos/?p ... QbimzDRueH

[rainbowgardener]

Video is little slow moving, takes them a long time to tell you the answer. But I confess, I always believed the myth they bust here, that worms come up in the rain to avoid drowning in their tunnels. So it was educational.

In the meantime, my worm bin seems to be a thriving ecosystem. Found a couple more BSF larvae lately after not having found any for awhile. Today I found a couple of roly-poly's (pillbugs). Very pale, looking sort of like ghost roly-poly's. Because it's dark in there all the time? And a bunch of tiny white bugs walking around, about the size of two periods lined up.. And a couple of seeds have sprouted in there.

I would prefer to have such a diverse colony of insect and other life outside my house, than in, actually, but I'm assuming all the life in the bin will stay in the bin.

I'm still not entirely sure how I will ever get worm castings out of it... it seems like they are mixed all through the food, leaves, etc. But in the meantime, it's now making pretty good quantities of worm tea, which I am now adding a little at a time to the water for my seedlings. Seems like very rich stuff.