Why Don’t Worms Crawl Out of the Bin?

A good question from Mark:

Quick question: Why don’t the worms crawl out of the holes
in the bottom and sides of the worm bin?

Hi Mark – sometimes the worms WILL crawl out, but generally only if the conditions outside the bin are to their liking, or they are in a real state of distress.

Let me see if I can illustrate with an analogy. Imagine it is the coldest day of the year, the winter winds are howling outside your home and the snow is coming down by the bucketload. All you have to wear are your pajamas. What is the likelihood of you wanting to open the door and head out into that, rather than stay inside where it is nice and warm, and there food in the fridge and a game on the bigscreen TV.

Seriously though, the bottom-line is that the condtions outside of the bin are usually pretty harsh for a worm – you’ll notice that if they DO escape from the bin, they will generally dry up and die quite quickly. Aside from low humidity, light is also another serious deterrent.

Hope this helps!

Written by Bentley on April 17th, 2009 with 1 comment.
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Vermicomposting C:N Ratio

A question from Joyce:

I read about the C:N ratio. How do you increase the C? How
do you make sure the N doesn’t get too high? I am not a scientist or
chemist. I lost my worms to the “ammonia smell”. Thank you.

Hi Joyce,
Sorry to hear about your worms! They are indeed very sensitive to ammonia – even at very low levels, this gas can kill them quite quickly.
The good news is that keeping the C:N ratio pretty high is not very hard. One thing I should mention before getting into C-rich materials though, is that it is very important that whatever you are adding to the bin is not already emitting ammonia.

For example, you can have all the c-rich bedding you want, but if you add fresh manure to a standard worm (enclosed) worm bin you will almost certainly kill your worms. Same goes for any really foul, rotting material. The larger the system and the more air flow there is, the greater the chance it will be able to buffer the negative impact of the material being added.

Ok – getting back to C-rich materials…

Any of the typical worm bin ‘bedding’ materials, such as shredded cardboard, shredded newpaper, coco coir, peat most etc are great for boosting the C:N ratio – they also help to provide an excellent habitat for the worms since they are highly absorbent, and also allow good air flow (although the latter two, should be mixed with one of the bulkier types for best results).

The ultimate material however will be something that is ‘living’, such as really well-aged manure/straw, rotting leaves etc. These materials have the added advantage of being loaded with microbes, and potential sites for the conversion of ammonia into much less harmful nitrogenous (N-containing) compounds. This is why composts can work so well as a biofilter medium.

So you end up with the triple bonus of inoculating your system with lots of microbes, providing your worms with an excellent protective habitat, as well as helping to keep your system up in the optimal C:N range.

Hope this helps!

Written by Bentley on April 17th, 2009 with no comments.
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Red Ants In Worm Bin

Here is a question from Karla,

I live in Texas where the red ants are always a problem.
Well at least once a month I find them in one of my bins. My bin or
kept on the deck in the back yard. Will they eat my worms? What can I
do to keep them out? Will ant killer, kill my worms?

Hi Karla,
Ants are a common pest in outdoor worm bins. Generally, if you maintain ideal conditions for your worms however, they shouldn’t create too much of a problem. Ants prefer much drier conditions than worms, so keeping your worm bed nice and moist (assuming good drainage) is a good start.

Ants also tend to be much more interested in the food scraps in a worm composting system than in the worms themselves. That being said, aggressive species like fire ants can probably cause some issues if abundant enough.

I definitely would NOT add any sort of ant killer to your worm bin – this could definitely harm or kill your worms, not to mention the rest of the compost ecosystem. Aside from keeping the system moist, perhaps you could try some other strategies to discourage the ants from coming in to the bin in the first place. Try setting up a perimeter of diatomaceous earth on the ground around your bin – this should greatly harm any ants that try to cross it, since it is essentially like a field of broken glass for bugs (ouch!).

You may also want to try some other relatively innocuous deterents. Put some honey mixed with borax in shallow dishes near the bin. The ants should start focusing on this pretty quickly, and when they take this material back to their nest, it can end up killing off a lot more ants.

If you know the location of ant nests on your property, you might try pouring boiling water on them – not the nicest thing to do (haha), but when push comes to shove, you gotta do whatcha gotta do!

Hope this helps!

Written by Bentley on April 17th, 2009 with 6 comments.
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