I received as a gift a 5- tray worm farm. i have 2 lbs of
worms. I filled the first tray with coir and potting soil. now i am
ready to start my second tray. what should i put as bedding. i don’t
want to buy potting soil every tray. please give me some advice.
thanks
Hi Kevin,
To be totally honest, I’m amazed you’ve been able to keep 2 lb of worms in a single tray with coir and potting soil. I’ll assume you have also been adding food scraps as well.
Potting soil generally isn’t a great material to add to a worm bin – although it is often a lot better than garden soil. This is because it typically consists of mostly peat moss (whereas garden soil has a lot more mineral particles and thus tends to be a lot heavier and more dense, thus impeding air flow in a worm bin).
One of the risks of using commercial potting soil, by the way, is that it can contain inorganic fertilizer salts which can harm or even kill your worms. If it is old stuff that’s been exposed to many waterings (without any fertilizer being added of course), then it should be ok.
Coir can be a decent worm bedding, but it can also be pretty expensive. Aside from that – in my experience, worms don’t exactly love it either. Your best bet with coir is to moisten it well and mix it with food waste (partially decomposed preferably) and let it sit for a bit before introducing the worms.
Ok – now assuming your first tray has gradually filled up over time and it is time to move up to the next tray, the good news is that you definitely do NOT need to use either of the bedding materials you’ve been using. There are even better (free) options in my humble opinion. Shredded newsprint or shredded cardboard (corrugated and/or egg carton cardboard work best) are great choices.
What you will want to do is moisten the new bedding, then mix it with a fair amount of food waste (again, partially-decomposed stuff works best) – perhaps a ratio of 2:1, bedding:food volume. Simply add this material to the new tray then wait. As it decomposes further, the worms should start to move up into that tray – especially if the first tray has little in the way of good food for the worms by that time.
As all my loyal readers will know, I’m very interested in the topic of winter vermicomposting (and winter composting in general) – and it’s something I’ve been doing myself for the last few years. That being said, I’ve always advocated the use of large-scale systems during the winter, since they will generate and hold warmth a LOT more easily than a typical worm bin ever could. Of course, I’ve always been thinking in terms of natural heating – the warmth generated via microbial (aerobic) respiration during the decomposition of organic wastes.
In all honesty, it would be next to impossible to keep a normal-sized worm bin active (or the worms alive, for that matter) if kept outside in temperatures that are consistently below the freezing mark – when relying on natural heating that is!
But who says you have to heat the system naturally??!
Not Mark Glatting – someone who has recently jumped into the wonderful world of vermicomposting. You see, Mark likes to think outside the box – or the bin, I should say!
He’s come up with a really nifty way to keep his worm bin cozy during the long winter months. Mark decided he was going to keep his new worm bin out in his garage this winter – where temperatures have regularly dropped below the freezing mark – and decided to create a simple system to ensure that his bin stayed relatively warm.
MacGyver would have been proud!
Bin warmth is maintained thanks to the circulation of warm water through the system. All that’s needed is a bucket full of water, an aquarium heater, a fountain pump, a thermometer, and some tubing.
Here is Mark’s brief summary of his concept:
My goal here was maintain a sustainable habitat under the harshest conditions that I could not control…the weather. I felt that if I could do that I would be a success. The purpose of this experiment was to see if I could keep the bin from freezing. The bin is in my unheated garage. My materials consisted of a five gallon bucket,an aquarium heater, a fountain pump, 13 feet of 3/8 tubing (not PVC) and a thermometer. The tubing I coiled around the inside of the bin so the cool water would always circulate back into the bucket. I also put a brick in the bucket to displace some of the water so I do not have to cycle 5 gallons of water but four. It is easier to heat 4 gallons than 5. My project worked! The bin did not freeze nor sour after 3 weeks.
…and some additional information:
The heating system itself is very simple. As you said some insulation would help a great deal. I did not take temperature readings inside the bin. I was looking for frost and to see if it would turn sour. The aquarium heater came from Wal-Mart, it is rated at 200 watts and has a thermostat.The fountain pump came from Wal-Mart as well, but I don’t know how many watts it is. One thing I considered was to have the bucket higher than the bin using gravity as a tool to make the pump not work so hard (water flows down hill).
I have a two car garage that has no insulation at all, is not heated and it did get below freezing in the garage a number of times.I probably spent $50.00 US for the whole thing. I am not sure how much electric I used, the system itself can be used in case of an emergency. If we were expecting bitter cold I would fire it up.Remember the heater has a thermostat
I think Mark’s idea is fantastic, and I was really pleased when he enthusiastically granted me permission to share it with everyone here. A lot of people have asked me whether or not it was possible to keep a small bin active during cold weather, and up until now I’ve just assumed it would be more trouble than it’s worth.
In my mind, Mark’s system changes that. This is something that would be very inexpensive to set up, and – given the low wattage of the heater – almost certainly pretty cheap to maintain. I suggested that one could increase the effectiveness of the system even more if the worm bin sat in a larger box filled with straw, or some other type of insulation material (even scrunched newpaper would probably work well).
Did I mention that Mark is planning to come up with a system to keep his system cool in the summer?
Stay tuned!
[UPDATE]: I received an email from Mark, letting me know that credit for the worm bin warming system should actually go to his wife Letty. My apologies, Letty!
I watched you video on how to make a bin and I am excited to try this
new way of composting our kitchen leftovers. We easily have 1+ pounds
of scraps a day……what size rubbermaid bins would be good to start
with and how many pounds of worms……will the colony of worms grow
fast….and need to be moved to another bin? What is fast? months or
years?
Thanks
Denise
Hi Denise,
Those are good questions. I would say that with that amount of waste, you should probably start with at least two pounds of worms, assuming you want to deal with all that waste from the start (more on that in a minute). That being said, I should mention that this is in no way set-in-stone advice. Every worm bin is different, and there are a LOT of different variables at work here. Just for example – let’s say that you keep your bin in your garage where temperatures are quite cool (eg 50-60F). The processing speed of the system at these temperatures will definitely be much slower than they would be if the temperature was 75 F.
How you handle the waste is another important consideration. If you just throw it in fresh, with little or no chopping etc, having 5 lbs of worms in the system probably wouldn’t even help. Helping the worms/microbes along as much as possible is one of the keys of effective vermicomposting. Freezing/cooking/chopping/blending/aging etc are great ways to get things moving more quickly.
Another important consideration is the fact that worms will rarely be processing at their maximum efficiency right off the bat – generally, they’ll need some time to get used to their new system and settle in. As such, it is really important to be very conservative with your feeding early on, at least until it is clear they are consuming the food materials quickly. Basically it just comes down to letting the worms be your guides (rather than simply relying on guidelines provided by people like me – haha)
As for the size of bin you should use, let me share with you my personal favorite. I think the best all-around Rubbermaid bin is the ~ 12.5 Gal (24″ long x 16″ wide x 8.75″ deep) Roughneck tote. It is large enough to easily house up to 3 or 4 lbs of worms, yet it’s not so huge as to take up a lot of space in your house. I love the relatively shallow 8.75″ depth – this helps to ensure that the lower reaches of the tub don’t end up sloppy and anaerobic. I generally use these tubs without a lid (further helping to ensure good air flow), but not everyone is going to want to do this obviously.
If you put 1-2 lb of worms in a bin like this they will grow fast to take advantage of available space/resources (assuming they are taken care of), but the population growth will slow down once conditions become crowded for them. At this point, you can start up a new system, and simply move half of the contents over to this new bin -OR start up an outdoor system (eg. vermi-trench), give them away etc. Check out this post for ideas – What Do I Do With All My Extra Worms??.
I guess there really hasn’t been all that much in the way of exciting news to share with you. I still haven’t started harvesting vermicompost from my first system, and will likely wait for at least a little while longer before doing so. That being said, there are a couple things worth mentioning.
I’ve noticed something unusual in my Euro Inn – the worms have disappeared!
Believe it nor not, this is actually quite interesting – and may be an indication that Euros aren’t the ideal worm species for a system like this. Of course, they haven’t really “disappeared” – they are simply hanging out lower in the system than the Reds in my other Inn.
ENCs tend to like going down deep where there is more moisture. The problem is that it will likely be more difficult to harvest castings from the bottom (without getting a bunch of worms) because of this. I’m certainly not ready to throw in the towel just yet, however. I’ll give the system a few more months before I draw any official conclusions.
Thanks to a tip from Worm Inn creator, Robyn Crispe, I am testing out a new (for me) way to deal with a minor fungus gnat invasion in my Red Worm Inn – coffee grounds!
What’s interesting is that one of my readers suggested this a long time ago (I even wrote about it in this fungus gnat post), but I totally forgot to try it out.
For the past week or so I have been adding all our coffee grounds to this system, rather than adding them to my food scrap hold as I would normally do. Luckily we brew up a pot each morning so it won’t take long to get a decent accumulation of the grounds in the Inn. It is hard to say for sure if the approach has been effective or not – there definitely seems to be few adults flying out now, but I’ll have to give it a bit more time. The worms seem to be loving it anyway! There are lots of them up in the zone where the grounds have been added.
If anyone else has fungus gnats, and also happens to be a coffee drinker, please give this a shot. I’d love to hear how this works out for you.
One important thing to mention though – MAKE SURE YOU HAVE FUNGUS GNATS, NOT FRUIT FLIES!
In my experience, fruit flies actually thrive in bins with a lot of coffee grounds, so you’ll want to be careful with this if you aren’t 100% sure of the difference between these two pests.
Fruit flies (FFs) and fungus gnats (FGs) are about the same size, but fruit flies have a thicker (chubbier? haha) look about them. FFs also tend to be lighter in colour (more of a brownish, rather than black), with larger coloured eyes – essentially looking like a mini house fly. FGs look more like mini mosquitos.
Anyway – I’ll be sure to keep you posted on the coffee grounds technique (and of course any other Worm Inn developments worthy of mention).
My dad surveys temperatures in the winter worm bed
Good news on the winter worm composting front!
I was able to get over to my dad’s place on Friday afternoon to see how things were coming along. It was my first visit since adding a large amount of manure (and more straw) to the system, and I was very eager to see if the bed had warmed up at all. As you may recall, the bed wasn’t doing too badly by the time I got around to adding the manure – temperatures in the middle of the pile were in the 15 C (59 F) range.
Temperatures have certainly climbed since then! I am very happy to report that throughout much of the bed temperatures are 20 C (68 F) or higher (see picture to right).
What impressed me even more than the maximum temperatures, was the fact that the warmth was so widespread. On one side, just in from the wall, there still seems to be a really cold zone (just over the freezing mark), but the rest of the bed is averaging 15 C (59 F) or higher. Surprisingly, I found some really warm zones only a couple inches in from the back wall!
Given the optimal vermicomposting temps in much of the bed, I was naturally curious to see what the worms were up to down below. I was pleasantly surprised to find lots of them up in the manure layer, just under the straw.
Healthy looking Red Worm (Eisenia fetida) from the winter worm bed
There seems to be a lot of young/small worms in the upper zone, but I did find some spots with a fair number of decent sized worms as well. This small worm dominance didn’t surprise me too much – in my experience, the larger worms often tend to concentrate themselves further down in a worm bed.
In other (good) news…
It looks like we (or more accurately, my technically-gifted brother) managed to get the weather station system – mentioned in my second winter worm compost post – working as a remote temperature probe!
Remote Weather Station Sensor Gets Buried in the Pile
We buried the receiver in a zone that should provide us with a rough estimate of the average bed temp – that is to say, it’s not quite in the middle of the heap, and it isn’t buried very deep either. It started in the 14-15 C (57-59 F) range just after being buried, and according to my dad’s latest report it is now up in the 20 C (68 F) range.
We’ve clearly reached an interesting stage in our winter worm bed experiment. Believe it or not, the challenge will now involve trying to maintain ideal temps throughout much of the bed, without having any zones overheating too seriously. What’s really nice about this particular system, as compared to my previous (much smaller) winter composting bin, is that the worms should be able to move away from overheating zones quite easily.
Weather will likely play an important role on both sides of the coin (cooling/heating) from here on out. It was mild on the weekend, and this week we’re are supposed to have a couple days WELL above freezing – but I have little doubt that we still have plenty of winter weather ahead of us. It will definitely be interesting to see how significantly the temperature in the system changes over the next few weeks.
As it stands, I’d say this project has been a resounding success! Previously, this would have been right around the time that I was forced to give up on my winter worm bins, since temps were continuing to drop.
In this case, we really got off to a slow start (which in hindsight might have actually helped us), but things have been improving ever since. As it stands, it looks like there’s a very good chance I’ll be able to start harvesting worms from this bed before the end of the month!
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.
1937 lb of Organic Waste, and Counting!