Let Sleeping Worms Lie

Interesting question from Mike:

I was wondering, do the worms sleep? It really seems durning
the day and early hours when I get up I can open the bin and see now
worms unless I dig around. At night (after 9 or 10pm) If I open the
lid to show company the worms, they will be up on the edges of the tub
and on top and moving around and very active. I read it is normal for
them to climb the tub and go back down. But I was just wondering why
do they only seem to do this at night? How do they even know the
different between night and day? These worms are just getting more and
more interesting everyday.

That’s a good question Mike, and unfortunately not one I feel confident enough to give you an authoritative answer for. I suspect that worms have periods of decreased activity like most organisms, but I’m pretty sure they don’t ‘sleep’ the way we do. Their nervous system, while probably pretty extensive for an invertebrate, is actually quite basic by our standards.

I think I can shed some light (no pun intended) on the fact that your worms are more active at night though. Most (if not all) earthworms are highly sensitive to light due to an array of photo receptor organs found in their skin. You’ll notice that if you shine light on your worms they will move down into the bedding fairly quickly. Natural light is especially strong, so even if your house lights are on in the evening, it’s probably darker in your bin than it would be during the day (assuming your house lets in a fair amount of natural light).

Worms are also sensitive to vibration (easily created by all range of human activities), so they are also more likely to venture out from hiding when there is less activity outside the bin in the evening and at night.

Just my 2 cents worth, Mike!

Written by Bentley on August 14th, 2008 with 2 comments.
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Pre-Composting Then Vermicomposting

Here is a really good question from Bobby:

I really enjoy your website and have learned a lot. I have
2 old weber bar b que grills with attached tables and wheels works
great. I am thinking of putting all “food” in a compost pile for a
week or two and then feed that to my red worms. It seems it would be
easier to control quality and quantity of food. What would be the
advantages and or disadvantages of this method?
Thanks

Hi Bobby,
Not 100% sure I follow how you are using those grills for a vermicomposting system – but it sounds interesting nevertheless!

You are absolutely right – composting food waste for a short period of time (often referred to as ‘pre-composting’) before feeding it to your worms is an excellent strategy, but of course there are a few disadvantages as well. Anyway, as per your request, here is a breakdown of the pros and cons of this approach:

Advantages of Pre-Composting
• Partially breaks down materials, so faster vermicomposting
• Microbial colonization of wastes, so lots of food for worms (and less lag time before worms start processing it)
• Allows you to deal with excess amounts of waste and control amount given to worms
• Helps to avoid overheating in vermicomposting system
• Can kill weed seeds and pathogens (when present in your waste materials) if large enough volumes are composted
• Lets you create the ‘ultimate’ worm food mix before it goes in the worm bin

Disadvantages of Pre-Composting
• Requires that you have a yard and space for composting
• Can lead to infestations of outdoor pests (house flies, fruit flies etc etc) in your bin if enough there isn’t enough heat generated during the composting stage
• If not properly handled, materials can go anaerobic and be unpalatable for your worms
• Takes extra effort

As you can see, if you have the space and are willing to put in the effort needed to compost the materials properly, pre-composting can be a great strategy.

Hope this helps, Bobby!

Technorati Tags: composting, pre-composting, hot composting, vermicomposting, thermophilic, worm composting

Written by Bentley on August 12th, 2008 with 7 comments.
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Importance of Monitoring Temperature

This is a topic that is definitely long overdue for discussion here on the blog. In a sad twist of irony (since I’ve been planning to write this post for awhile), I actually received an email from one of my customers last night reporting that he had lost all the worms in one of this bins due to overheating.

I guess part of the reason I don’t think about this issue too much myself is because I generally don’t use large plastic tubs for indoor vermicomposting. As I’ve written recently, my big wooden outdoor bin has been overheating this summer, but it’s generally not a major concern because the worms can simply move to the outer edges where temperatures are considerably lower (moisture is able to easily evaporate through the spaces between the boards).

Heating in a worm bin is essentially the same thing that is occurring in a large compost heap. When it comes down to it, any time you combine nitrogen-rich materials (eg food waste, manure etc) with carbon-rich materials (eg. shredded cardboard, fall leaves, straw) and provide your mix with moisture and oxygen, it is going to heat up. If you have enough mass – generally anything over 1 cubic yard – you will stimulate full ‘hot composting’ conditions – but even with much smaller volumes of material enough heat can be generated to cause harm to worms.

Generally, it is when you are first setting up a system that this is most likely to be a major issue, since you are adding a bunch of materials at once. Also, as mentioned, the likelihood of this being a major issue increases as the size of your system increases. Once your system is up and running and has reached an equilibrium (or close to it anyway), you won’t likely run into too many more heating issues. You can still definitely get hot zones in larger systems – especially those influenced by hot outdoor temperatures, but it’s still less of a concern.

So how do we prevent disaster from striking?

Aside from simply becoming aware of the potential for overheating when setting up a larger system, I highly recommend that everyone adds a compost thermometer to their vermicomposting toolkit! Aside from the worms, it is definitely a vermicomposter’s best friend!

If you can’t find one locally (and don’t want to order one online), feel free to use a meat thermometer instead (or even a health-related thermometer) – the longer the probe the better, however. You definitely want to be able to reach all regions of your composting mass.

I also (as always) recommend that systems be set up well in advance of the addition of worms – obviously this won’t always prevent issues (as illustrated by my customer’s disaster), but if you also use a compost thermometer, and only add worms once the system has cooled down, you’ll certainly be better off.

Of course, systems can also overheat after the worms have been added – in fact, the worms themselves can even act as a catalyst of sorts. Whether it be the result of moving materials around or the addition of castings to the mix, they can actually help to stimulate excess microbial heating, thus ending up at least partially responsible for their own demise. As such, it is really important to keep an eye on temperatures in the bin for the first while after adding your worms. If you see the temperature starting to rise past 30 C (86 F), I’d highly recommend splitting the contents of the bin between several different containers – preferably without lids to allow for more air flow (and thus cooling).

This is yet another limitation of using plastic tub worm bins – because they don’t allow for much air and moisture release, heat is slow to dissipate once generated. Wooden bins are great for keeping worms cool, especially if they have spaces between the boards. Unlike plastic, wood can actually ‘breath’ – that is, allow moisture to pass through, thus helping to keep the contents cooler.

Anyway – just some food for thought, especially for those of you planning to set up larger systems!
By the way – if you live in a colder region, you can actually use this excess heat to keep your worms warm in the winter, but you’ll definitely need some insulation and quite a lot of organic waste to ‘fuel the fire’ so to speak! You’ll be hearing a lot more about cold weather vermicomposting later this year, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Technorati Tags: composting, hot composting, vermicomposting, worm composting, worm bin, compost thermometer, thermophilic

Written by Bentley on August 12th, 2008 with 2 comments.
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Adding Red Worms to Your Garden

This question comes from Cindy – she is wondering what she should do with what seems to be an overcrowded worm bin.

Hi, I’m new to worm farming, and I really find it
interesting. I have a plastic bucket farm with wire screen over
bottom holes, and a screen mesh top. I hae a piece of burlap over the
compost.

I got my worms May 21st, and at the end of June, I gave them a fresh
bin, and moved the black gold to the garden.

Now my worms are getting bigger and more plentiful. I came home this
week to find 20-30 worms trying to crawl out of the container. I’m
wondering if they have reached the end of their current
bedding/compost and are looking for more food?

I’m also wondering if I should glean out a bunch of worms with the
bedding change and add them to my garden? Will I need to feed them in
the garden? The current worm farm is in my cool basement, will the
summer heat be too much a change?

Will the liquid from my current farm, help get the new bedding ready
for worms faster?

Also, I’m wondering what happens this winter when I have too many
worms, and the garden is frozen outside…my turtle can only eat so
many worms!

I guess I’m looking for ongoing maintenance info.

Thanks.

Hi Cindy,
It sounds like you are doing quite well for someone who is “new to worm farming” – congrats! The fact that you have already been able to harvest vermicompost, and your worms are breeding quickly is definitely a good sign.

If the worms are trying to climb out, it may indeed be an indication that you need to refresh your bedding materials yet again, or better yet, split your worm population and start up a second system. How does the material in the bucket look to you? Is it dark and crumbly, or is there still a significant amount of unprocessed materials? If it is mostly made up of processed bedding/food (ie vermicompost), then you are likely right. If on the other hand there is still a lot of unprocessed bedding/food there may be something else causing the worms to want to leave.

I generally wouldn’t recommend adding composting worms directly to your garden since they are not really soil worms, and will more than likely leave the area or die if they are unable to find a decent amount of decomposing organic matter. As I’ve discovered this year, vermicomposting trenches can be a great way to keep your red worms active in the garden – it’s like setting up an inground ‘worm bin’. The major difference is that the plants can make direct use of the vermicompost as they grow. You may also want to try out what I’ve referred to as ‘Garbage Gardening‘ – basically you lay organic waste directly over the soil, then add some sort of mulch over top – once it has aged a little, it should make for an ideal habitat for your composting worms, not to mention an excellent bed for growing plants.

If you live in area that has a real winter, I can’t imagine that it would be too hot outside in the summer for your worms. We have some pretty hot weather hear during the summer months, but I’ve had no problems with my worm gardens. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my big outdoor worm bin – it has been overheating periodically. Just make sure you have a thick layer of mulch (straw is ideal), and add some water periodically if you are having a dry summer.

It will be tough to keep your outdoor systems completely active during the winter months – unless you have a pretty major supply of organic waste, but it should not be difficult to at least keep most of your worms alive – especially in the trench systems (since the earth will help to protect them). The key is to add a LOT of bedding over top – fall leaves, straw – whatever you can get your hands on. It wouldn’t hurt if you added a lot of food waste as well.

As for what to do with excess worms during the winter – here are some options:
1) Give them away or sell them (just post an ad on any free classified site, like Craigslist etc, and you’ll likely get some takers) – you could also encourage friends and family members to get into vermicomposting.
2) Start up another vermicomposting system – I’m sure you could find room for a few small worm bins in your basement.
3) Have you ever tried fried worms? Mmmmmm…
Ok, I’m KIDDING!

Oh – almost forgot – the liquid for your bin is probably ok for soaking your new bedding IF you let the bedding then sit for a few days before adding worms. Straight from the bin it will likely be pretty anaerobic and potentially harmful to your worms. Cardboard soaked in it then allowed to sit would likely be fine after a few days since aerobic microbes would likely breakdown any anaerobic bi-products that may have been in the liquid. If it REALLY stinks though, I would avoid using it altogether.

Anyway – hope this helps, Cindy!

Technorati Tags: red worms, red wigglers, garden, gardening, worms, worm composting, vermicomposting, worm bin, vermicomposter, composting, winter composting

Written by Bentley on August 7th, 2008 with 10 comments.
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The Vermicomposting Trench – Part II

My vermicomposting trench has helped me grow big, healthy plants this season.

I think I provided a decent overview of my vermicomposting trench system with my first post, but I thought it might not be a bad idea to add a follow-up – this way I can fill in some of the gaps and provide a general update on my progress.

As you can probably tell from the image above, my plants are continuing to thrive thanks to their close proximity to the trench (no I don’t have scientific proof to back it up – but let’s just call it a ‘hunch’ on my part! haha). As you may recall, I’ve added no inorganic fertilizers this year, yet my tomato plants are quite a bit bigger than the maximum size reached by my (fertilized) plants last year. I’m looking forward to seeing how my crop turns out – I’ve done absolutely nothing with the plants other than support them (after they started falling over), so I’m not sure that the quality of the tomatoes will be as good as it could have been, but we shall see. There are loads of really nice looking green tomatoes now, so I’m sure there will be at least a few good ones harvested.

My zucchinis have certainly been growing like crazy as of late. We’ve been enjoying some of them on the BBQ already – delicious! I can’t get over how quickly the plants are replacing the ones being harvested, and just how quickly the individual zucchinis reach a good harvesting size! I think just for fun I may let one of them continue to grow, just to see how big it will get!

There were some great questions asked after I wrote my last trench post, and while I did do my best to answer them in the comments section of that post, I thought it would be beneficial to include some of those topics in this post as well. Here then are some of the things people have been curious about:

Heat / Cold – One of the great things about an in-ground vermicomposting system is that it is protected from weather extremes. In comparison to an above-ground worm bin for example, it will generally be easier to keep temperatures cool enough during the hot summer months, and be able to prevent it from freezing during winter months.

I’ve definitely been having a lot more trouble with overheating in my large outdoor worm bin than in my trenches. That being said, when you first set up the trench (and add a considerable amount of organic waste at once), you will need to be more careful – at least if you are planning to add composting worms. You are probably better off waiting for a week or more, and even then you should take temperature readings to make sure it’s not too hot. If you are adding mostly ‘brown’ (carbon-rich materials), or are building the trench in the early spring or fall (when cool), this likely won’t be as much of an issue.

Someone asked about issues associated with being in direct sunlight (fairly important for the success of a vegetable garden). While I suspect that my approach just isn’t feasible in some locations where it is very hot and dry, I’ve personally found that keeping a nice thick layer of straw (and other ‘brown’ organic matter) really seems to help keep the moisture in and the heat out.

I can’t say for sure how well the system will respond to really cold weather. I suspect my larger sandbox trench will stay quite warm during winter months (assuming I add lots of food waste and bedding materials) – not so sure that the other trenches are large enough to hold significant heat. Either way, I’m sure a lot of the worms will still survive the winter (I’ll definitely add lots of straw and leaves over top before the snow starts flying.

Adding Materials to Trench – Depending on the quantity of wastes you have access to on an ongoing basis, you’ll likely want to go with either a ‘continuous’ or ‘batch’ approach. I suspect that for most regular homeowners the latter approach will make the most sense, since they won’t have a constant supply of organic wastes that need to be dealt with. In this case you would simply stockpile your materials, build your trench (likely in the fall or spring), then simply let it sit and compost without further additions. Or perhaps you would simply add more materials (lawn clippings, weeds etc) as they became available.

In my case, it’s been important for my trenches to be ‘continuous’ systems due to the large amount of food waste I’m receiving daily from the restaurant. When treating your trench as a continuous system, it becomes even more important to optimize your methods. As I’ve discovered, it is quite important to chop up materials fairly well before adding them to the trench. Out of curiosity I tried adding whole broccoli stalks (one of my most abundant waste materials) to my main trench. It was amazing how much more slowly they decomposed in comparison with those chopped up with a spade beforehand.

All I’ve been doing when adding new materials is simply pulling back the thick layer of straw (and grass clippings), adding a layer of waste 2-4 inches thick, then covering back up. On occasion I’ve been adding some egg carton cardboard underneath the food waste to help provide more structure for the worms and help to balance the C:N somewhat. Eventually, as the overall level of materials in the trench sinks, each top layer of straw becomes the base upon which new food waste is added, with a new thick layer of straw added over top. Straw is an excellent material to use if you are planning to have worms in your system – Red Wigglers just seem to love crawling around in and munching on moist rotting straw. When there is rotting food waste in there as well, it becomes an excellent combination of habitat and food source – not unlike a well-aged manure and straw mix.

Moisture in the Trench – As with any composting system, moisture is certainly an important consideration. This is especially true if you live in an area with really heavy clay soils and/or abundant rainfall. Too much moisture in the trench can create anaerobic conditions and slow down the decomposition process – something that it probably unavoidable near the bottom of your trench due to the lack of air flow. Situating your trench directly beside water loving crops like tomatoes and various members of the cucumber family should certainly help, especially during dry summer months. The composting worms themselves should also help to aerate the system somewhat via their movement within the decomposing organic matter.

As I discovered, things can really slow down during periods of consistently wet weather – I’m sure this wouldn’t have been so noticeable if my worm population in the trench at the time had been higher. I will definitely be interested to see how the system performs once the wet fall weather arrives. I should have a lot more worms by then, but I won’t have the jungle of plants and hot weather I have now so it might be a bit more challenging – I suspect the trench will become more of a windrow since the level of materials will likely continue to rise above the ground.

Anyway, looks like this follow-up post is getting a little longer than I had planned to make it – but of course, I still don’t feel like I’ve covered the topic completely. Oh well – I’m sure I’ll provide more information in the video I’m going to put together, and will almost certainly provide a few more updates over the next couple months.

Technorati Tags: compost, composting, composting trench, vermicomposting, worm composting, tomatoes, zucchini, vegetable garden, gardening, food waste, straw, grass clippings, red worms, red wigglers, composting worms

Written by Bentley on August 6th, 2008 with 4 comments.
Read more articles on Gardening and Large-Scale Vermicomposting.

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