Do Vibrations Harm Worms?

These questions come from Tina. She is wondering if she will need to relocated her new worm bin, and whether or not a certain food waste is good for her worms.

I just got my first bin of red worms set up last night and
was reading and rereading lots of websites to make sure I had
everything right. One thing that I did read was that the worms are
sensitive to noise/vibrations. I have my bin set up next to the
washing machine, which I use once a week. Should I relocate the bin
while running the machine?

Also, I know that worms love vegetables, but does this include hot
peppers? Those seem a little too strong for their fragile bodies.

Thank you!
-Tina

Hi Tina!
Those are great questions. You are right - worms are certainly sensitive to vibrations, so it’s not a bad idea to keep their bin in a nice quiet spot. That being said, if your bin is simply sitting beside the washing machine but not actually touching it, you should be fine - especially given the fact that your laundry days are only once a week. Of course, if you DO have another good location where it can sit, it might not be a bad idea to relocate just to be sure.

In general the worms are pretty tolerant creatures. If you think about it, during the shipping process (assuming that’s how you got your worms) the worms can experience an awful lot of vibrations - and in VERY crowded conditions as well. While they often are pretty restless when you put them in a new bin, for the most part all those vibrations don’t have any long term negative effects.

As for hot peppers - I would personally avoid them (or at least large quantities of them) since the worms skin is a highly sensitive organ and the pepper oils can cause irritation. I would imagine they’d break down rather quickly into other harmless compounds, but it never hurts to err on the side of caution.

Hope this helps!

B

Written by Bentley on June 16th, 2008 with 9 comments.
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