Worm Bin Mushrooms

After a promising start, our ‘Reader Photos’ section has certainly been quiet. Thankfully, fellow ‘wormhead’ Dwayne C. has helped to get things back on track with this cool photo of mushrooms growing in his worm bin.

It’s not something you see every day, but it is kinda cool when it happens. It has even had me wondering if one could grow edible mushrooms in some sort of worm composting system. I remember reading an article in the print version of Worm Digest (published an number of years ago) describing how the author had put a gourmet mushroom kit in her worm system and ended up being able to harvest mushrooms for several months.

Your chances of seeing actual mushrooms (the fruiting bodies of certain groups of fungi) are much greater in outdoor systems (for obvious reasons) and can be closely linked to the type of material you have in your bin. Manure is an example of a material that commonly is colonized by certain species of mushrooms. Having lots of carbon-rich bedding materials in your bin can also encourage fungal growth.

Last summer I used lots of straw in my outdoor bin and ended up with some big mushrooms in the bin (as shown below).

Generally, the mushrooms don’t last very long (in my experience anyway). I always imagined the worm feasting on the fungal mycelium below, but I’m not really sure if that happens (worms definitely eat fungi - but I’m not sure if they’d actually consume mycelium while it is still alive).

One of the mushrooms that appeared in my outdoor bin last summer.

Technorati Tags: mushrooms, worm bin, compost bins, vermicomposting, worm composting, fungi, mycelium

Written by Bentley on June 9th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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Worms Leaving Bin - Help!

This one comes from Stuart. He is wondering why all his worms are attempting to jump ship.

I bought some red worms and put them in a rubbermaid contain
filled with peat moss, newspaper clippings, banana peels.. All of my
worms seem to be crawling out and leaving. What might I be doing
wrong ???

Help Needed Desperately….

Hi Stuart,
Hopefully your peat moss has been a) moistened, and b) rinsed with water. The second one isn’t quite as important, but it can help. Peat moss is pretty acidic stuff, so it’s not a bad idea rinse it a bit under water before use (a cloth bag of some sort should work fairly well).

Was your mixture of peat, newspaper, and banana peels left to sit for a number of days - or was it mixed up the same day you got the worms? If the latter, there probably just isn’t really anything there for the worms to feed on. It will be a pretty sterile environment.

The best bet is to set up your system AT LEAST a few days before adding the worms, thus allowing a microbial population to develop. Adding a variety of food materials would also help. Worms DO like banana peels, but it’s not a bad idea to provide them with a few options.

See if you can find some sort of semi-rotting food in the back of your fridge somewhere and add that. If you live near a decidous (with leaves that drop in the fall) forest go gather a bunch of dark leaf litter (humus material down below the leaves) and add that - it will offer not only a quality habitat, but also a temporary food source.

Good luck!

Bentley

Written by Bentley on June 9th, 2008 with 7 comments.
Read more articles on Home Vermicomposting and Reader Questions.