When setting up a bin for Night Crawlers, do you do the same
as if you were setting it up for Red Worms?
Hi Mike,
The term ‘nightcrawlers’ covers a number of different species of worms, so it is important that we cover the bases here. Probably the most common use of this term is in reference to ‘Canadian Nightcrawlers’ (Lumbricus terrestris) – aka ‘Dew Worms’. These are the big soil worms typically used for fishing – the ones you may find in high numbers on your lawn during and after a warm rain shower (depending on where you live though). Unfortunately, as much as people would love to be able to cultivate these worms in captivity, it just isn’t a realistic option. They are deep soil burrowers, and prefer to lead a fairly solitary existence, so they simply won’t thrive in the crowded, warm conditions of a typical worm composting bin/bed
‘European Nightcrawlers‘ (Eisenia hortensis) and ‘African Nightcrawlers’ (Eudrilus eugeniae) on the other hand are indeed composting worms, and can be raised in a typical worm bed/bin. Of these two, ‘Euros’ are certainly ones more commonly used by the average vermicomposter (or worm farmer for that matter). They are closely related to Red Worms (Eisenia fetida) and can be raised in a similar manner.
You may want to give then a bin/bed with a bit more depth however – they seem to prefer spending their time down the the high moisture zones in the bottom of a vermicomposting system.
I love your blog, but haven’t seen this topic covered. I’m
new to worm composting and I’m working on balancing my bedding/food
ratio. After about 8 weeks with my first batch of worms, I had lots
of mushy/soggy newspaper clumps, some compost and some undigested
food, even after I stopped adding food for the last 2 weeks. Any
suggestions for getting rid of these newspaper clumps? Should just
use less bedding? Or would only adding bedding that’s dry do the
trick?
Hi Maria,
To be totally honest, eight weeks is still a relatively short period of time in the life of a worm bin – especially the first eight weeks. Carbon-rich materials like newsprint also take quite a bit longer to break down than most food wastes. There is no doubt that the worms would eventually convert pretty well everything into castings if you left the bin long enough, but this could take quite some time.
Unfortunately, as useful as an enclosed ‘bin’ type of system is for indoor vermicomposting, they are not really the ideal systems for quickly producing good quality vermicompost/castings. You need a lot of air flow, which plastic bins generally don’t provide (in comparison to open systems and various ‘flow-through’ designs). As such, there tend to be lots of zones bordering on (or even completely) anaerobic – i.e. where oxygen is absent. Unless you have good drainage out the bottom, it is almost inevitable that you will have a fair amount of undigested material down in the bottom of the bin, regardless of how long you wait (unless you periodically mix the contents of the bin).
Something else to remember is Carbon-to-Nitrogen ratio. Generally it is the food waste that provides the nitrogen necessary to speed up decomposition of the C-rich materials like bedding. In other words, by completely stopping your feeding for a couple weeks (which is in fact not a bad thing to do every now and again) you may have actually slowed down the process somewhat.
I always recommend adding dry bedding to a worm bin, since one of the key advantages of adding bedding is that it helps to absorb excess moisture (thereby helping to avoid anaerobic conditions). Adding it dry also helps to avoid the clumping you are talking about. Aside from that, I would also recomend breaking up the clumps and mixing them around (just do it carefully, so you don’t disturb the worms too much). The more surface area that is available for microbial colonization and worm grazing, the more readily any material is going to break down.
One final thing to mention – the density of worms in the system will obviously play a major role as well. I have had really high densities of worms in a relatively small system and it was amazing to see how quickly they seemed to plow through everything.
Ok – as promised, here is a video I recently made (I know it’s been awhile). It’s actually intended as a bit of shameless self-promotion for the site (haha), but I think it provides a reasonable ‘big picture’ overview of vermicomposting – especially useful for someone completely new to the field.
I uploaded this video to YouTube, but was disappointed with the distortion, so I tried Viddler – definitely with better results, but still not nearly as sharp as the original. As our regular readers will know by now, I am definitely no video-making ninja – but hey, it’s the content that counts right?
I apologize for making YET another video with super-cheesy music! It’s a long story! I’ll leave it at that for now! (will actually be writing about how I made the video in my next newsletter, for those who might be interested).
Just so you know, I also have some more normal videos planned, featuring some of the topics I’ve written about – in more detail and with me narrating (ok, keep your ‘boos’ under control please! haha). Hoping to get some of those completed in the next couple of weeks!
Ok – it’s video day here at Red Worm Composting! (one of my own coming up next).
The title of this one (along with the dramatic music) made me giggle.
Great advice though – freezing is definitely a solid strategy for speeding up the vermicomposting process. It is similar to blending / aging / cooking in terms of rendering the material far more accessible to microbes and worms.
You might want to be a wee bit cautious with this approach however – especially if you have a lid and don’t have drainage! It will be important to add lots of absorbent material if you have any hope of avoiding a lake forming in the bottom of the bin!
As you can see in this case, they have a nice drainage system in place. You’ll also notice that they are promoting the use of leachate as a worm tea. You know me and my cautions and warnings (haha) – I am at least glad they mentioned diluting it – this is definitely something I’d recommend. I also suspect that if enough liquid is flowing through the bin on a regular basis there will be less chance of nasty anaerobic metabolites ending up in the end product.
Don’t mean to be a supremely “negative Nelly” here, but I should also mention that leaving large amounts of soft food waste just sitting on the surface of you system is like an open invitation for fruit fly invasion! No, they won’t come from the food itself (one of the great things about freezing), but if you end up with even a few fruit flies in your house from some other source (fruit just sitting out before consumption for example) you’ll be battling an insane infestation in no time!
All that said, let me once again point out that I really liked this video, and commend the creator for a job well done! (honest!)
Hi everyone!
Sorry for the lull in posts as of late – I’ve been pretty busy with a variety of things, and just haven’t been hit with the inspiration to write about my own worming activities (nothing too exciting to report on).
Anyway, I happened upon an interesting YouTube video today and thought it was definitely worthy of posting here – especially given the need for something new! It is really interesting how people focused on the same field of endeavour, but working completely independent of one another, can come up with similar ideas! The ‘Worm Tower’ is actually very similar to a concept I’ve had in my head for a backyard vermicomposting system (in particular, I thought it would be great as a pet waste vermicomposter). The main difference is the fact that I envisioned the use of a plastic garbage can buried in the ground, rather than the plastic tube (which is actually a really nice way to simplify (and make less expensive) the concept.
As the person in the video alludes to, this type of system is a great in situ composting system. That is to say that you don’t even need to harvest castings from it. Simply locate it in the vicinity of some plants (you could have several of these in your vegetable garden, for example) so they can directly benefit from it. I’m not sure I agree 100% about the composting worms going out into the soil to deposit castings though – I suspect that most of them would remain within the tube. That being said, just via the activity of all manner of different creatures (including actual soil worms) and plant roots etc, the benefits of the castings would certainly spread out into your soil in general.
Pretty cool! Now I really can’t wait to construct my garbage can system.
Too bad we are still in the dead of winter here (oh and the groundhog also ended up scared by his shadow – haha)!
Oh well – I guess I’ll have to settle for playing with my big winter worm bed (should have an update on that this week for sure) for the time being.
983 lb of Food Waste, and Counting!