Man, I should be a professional sale name thinker-upper!
Ok – enough monkey business! As I mentioned in my last post, I was recently contacted my my main worm supplier and informed that he has some mixed batches of European Nightcrawlers (Eisenia hortensis) and Red Worms (Eisenia fetida) available for sale at a reduced price. This is a great example of a ‘making lemonade with lemons’ kinda scenario, and I am really glad that he decided to go this route rather than considering the mixed beds a write-off.
Also, let me reiterate the (important) fact that these worms are not coming from my main European Nightcrawler person (ie when you order Euros from my “Buy Worms” page, they come from someone who deals only in Euros), and they are smaller than your typical ‘bait-sized’ Euros (the ones in these mixes, that is).
Although you obviously won’t be getting a nice pure culture of worms, in my mind this is definitely a ‘win/win’ situation – since you’ll pay $10 less than my regular ‘5 lb of Red Worms’ price (and $29 less than my current SALE price for Euros)!
In other words…for $89 USD you can get a 5 lb (worm weight) mixed bag of these worms shipped to your door!
Unfortunately, these worms ARE only available to those of you located in the continental U.S. (and actually only the ‘contiguous states’, for those of you who still consider Alaska part of the continent, like me 
) – and I don’t think the offer will be available for long.
As I discussed in my previous post (linked to above), there is definitely some evidence to indicate that these two worm species will do just fine together in a single vermicomposting system, despite the fact that Red Worms tend to grow and reproduce more quickly. If you are still worried, and want to ensure that they don’t negatively affect one another, you can of course try to hand separate them as well – or at least collect a bunch of the Euros to start up a Euro-only bin.
Anyway, I don’t want to write another essay here (but do recommend you read my ‘Do Euros and Red Worms Get Along?‘ post) and also want to keep things simple. So here is the order button for anyone wishing to buy some of these worms:
UPDATE: THE SALE IS OVER – MIXED WORM ORDERS ARE NO LONGER AVAILABLE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
This will be the only order button for this sale (but I’ll put a link to this post at the top of the “Buy Worms” page). As always, payments are handled by paypal, but you do not need a paypal account.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to fire me an email (please include a subject that relates to all of this).
Also as per usual, these worms get sent out early in the week, and the deadline for getting your order in is still mid-Saturday-afternoon (EST). If you don’t think you will be home to receive the worms mid- to late-week, please also let me know so we can place a post office hold on the order.
Ok, nuff said!
Written by Bentley on August 19th, 2009 with no comments.
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Small European Nightcrawler (Eisenia hortensis) found in one of my vermicomposting trenches
When you are a professional worm farmer selling multiple species of worms, it can be a real pain when one species invades the bed(s) of another. In fact, a lot of times this can mean that the batch of worms is no longer good for sale. This helps to explain why a lot of worm farmers prefer to stick to one species – and one species ONLY!
Late last fall, my main Red Worm grower (for U.S. orders) decided to start dabbling in Euro growing. Some of you may recall the “Euro Shipping Sale” I held back in January to showcase these smaller-than-usual Euros (not to be confused with the Euros I currently sell here on the site – which come from a completely different, Euro-only worm dealer).
Well, as I recently learned from my supplier, some of the Euro beds at the Red Worm farm have now been invaded by Reds, meaning that the worms can no longer be sold as either Euros or Reds. Rather than giving up on those beds however, he’s decided to now offer mixed batches of worms – at a discount!
I thought this was an interesting “outside the box” approach to what many worm farmers would consider to be a ‘problem’, and have decided to start offering (very soon) these mixed batches for sale here on the site – at least for as long as they are available. (more details about all this in another upcoming post)
Now, this brings us to the topic of this post – a question I get asked a fair amount. In a nutshell…can Red Worms and European Nightcrawlers be kept in the same system?
The short answer is ‘of course!’ – but you know how I feel about ’short answers’!
Red Worms and European Nightcrawlers are very closely related species of worms (they share the same genus name, after all), but are distinct enough that they cannot reproduce and create ‘hybrid worms’ (sorry folks – that’s a myth!). What’s interesting about this topic is the fact that when people ask if they can keep their Euros and Reds together, I tell them ‘yes’, but normally recommend not doing so.
Part of my rationale behind this advice has to do with the fact that I often tend to think like a worm farmer, and forget that many of my readers are vermicomposting explorers (ie people who simply want to play with worms, reduce their wastes, and grow big plants). As I alluded to above, if you mix these worms together, your chances of easily separating them again are slim to none (again, a situation that can be a real pain if you are a worm seller)!
Difficulties with future separation aside…
The fact that Euros are typically more expensive than Red Worms, coupled with the fact that they usually prefer somewhat different living conditions than Reds, adds some justification to my recommendation to keep them apart.
Also, as I’ve written about in another post, academic research has shown that Euros are typically a ’slower’ worm, in terms of development, reproduction etc. Here again are some interesting results I shared (from two different sources) previously:
From Edwards (1988)*:
Eisenia fetida
# of viable hatchlings per cocoon – 3.3
Time to Maturity – 85-149 days
Eisenia hortensis
# of viable hatchlings per cocoon – 1.1
Time to Maturity – 97-214 days
From Dominguez (2004)*:
Eisenia fetida
# of viable hatchlings per cocoon – 2.5-3.8
Time to Maturity – 28-30 days
Life cycle – 45-51 days
Hatching viability – 73-80%
Eisenia hortensis
# of viable hatchlings per cocoon – 1.1
Time to Maturity – 65 days
Life cycle – 100-150 days
Hatching viability – 20%
*References listed at end of post
This information seems to suggest that there is some potential for Red Worms to outcompete Euros if they are in the same system – yet another reason to think about keeping them separate. My own (limited) experience with mixed beds, seemed to support this possibility…but as I’ll explain in a minute, I’ve made some intriguing discoveries this year that have made me question my ‘no mixing’ advice.
Let’s first chat about the previous experience. Quite some time ago I wrote about one of my Euro bins going ’sour’, and how I subsequently added the contents of this bin to my big backyard Red Worm bin. Well, long-story-short, those Euros basically vanished without a trace – I did find one or two when I was harvesting vermicompost from the bin the following spring, but for the most part the system seemed to remain a ‘Red Worm bed’.
In hindsight, there are certainly some possibilities re: what may have happened here. For starters, Euros tend to prefer the deeper zones in a vermicomposting system, where temperatures are often lower, and moisture content is higher. This actually reminds me of the funny experience I had when I tried to introduce Euros to one of my Worm Inns. In that situation, when I couldn’t find any Euros within a matter of days from the time I introduced them, I also felt like they had ‘disappeared’ on me. What I discovered however, was that they were simply congregating down in the lower reaches of the Inn (the irony being that this was actually a drier zone than near the surface).
Something else that’s really important to keep in mind is the fact that most of the worms I found in the vermicompost harvesting zone of my backyard bin (and there were a LOT of them) were teeny tiny! There wouldn’t have been much food value in this material by that point, so the worms ended up getting smaller and smaller. As such, it is perfectly reasonable to guess that some of these little wigglers could just as easily have been Euros (since it becomes more difficult to distinguish these species when they shrink really small).
Moving on to my interesting discoveries from this year…
Last summer/fall I added a batch of worms – that happened to have a few Euros in it – to my sandbox trench. Given my previous experience with adding Euros to Red-Worm-dominated systems, and given the fact that I was literally only adding a handful of them, I was sure that would be the last time I’d see Euros in my outdoor beds (unless I added them again).
Well interestingly enough, this spring and summer I have been finding Euros in my trenches – and not just in the sandbox trench either (although most seem to be in this area). I clearly remember how shocked I was early in the spring when I found a JUMBO Euro in my main trench – believe me, I’ve been kicking myself ever since for not running to get the camera, then writing about it on the blog. Speaking of which, I was actually very happy to get the news about the mixed worms from my supplier, since it reminded me of the fact that I’ve been meaning to write about this topic for quite some time now!
So…the moral of the story (haha), is that I am no longer convinced that keeping Reds and Euros together is ‘bad’ – well, at least not in vermicomposting trenches!
By the way – something else I found really interesting about the Euros in my sandbox garden is that I didn’t find them way down deep – some of them (such as the cute little fella pictured above) are actually doing just fine up in the garden itself, where I added some manure and straw for the benefit of the corn plants growing there.
Anyway, I will certainly be interested to hear what others have to say about mixing these two species of worms! If you do have some experiences to share, please chime in – this could make for a really interesting discussion!
Also, as mentioned above – for anyone who is feeling vermi-adventurous, I will be offering batches (5 lb) of Euro/Red mixes for sale very soon at a discounted price (and will write a post about it on the blog – perhaps even up by the time you are reading this).
**UPDATE: Learn more about the sale here >>> The Euro / Red Worm Mixed Bag Sale**
REFERENCES
Dominguez, J. 2004. State-of-the-art and and new perspectives on vermicomposting research. In: “Earthworm Ecology”. Edwards, C.A. (ed). CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp. 401-424.
Edwards, C.A. 1988. Breakdown of animal, vegetable and industrial organic wastes by earthworms. In: “Earthworms in waste and environmental management”. Edwards, C.A. & Neuhauser, E.F. (eds). SPB Academic Publishing Co, The Hague, pp. 21-31.
Written by Bentley on August 19th, 2009 with 5 comments.
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Can Red Worms improve the value of farmyard manure as a soil amendment?
This seems to be the year of ‘challenges’ here at Red Worm Composting! Hopefully everyone is having as much fun reading about these things as I do setting them up and writing about them.
This particular experiment was inspired by a comment that someone left on the blog some time ago – I can’t even remember the particular post it was associated with, but what’s more important is the gist of the comment itself. In a nutshell, the person said that horse manure is generally not considered a good soil amendment by gardeners since it is fairly low in nitrogen (compared to other manures) and often contains lots of weed seeds.
Well, I’m not all that concerned about weeds myself, but I was fascinated by the notion that horse manure doesn’t really have good fertilizer value. It seems to be working quite well in my gardens and trenches this year. Of course, in my case the ‘missing link’ MAY be the large population of Red Worms that happens to be feeding on this manure – and THIS is exactly what I’m setting out to test with this experiment.
Right off the bat I should once again remind everyone that I use the term ‘experiment’ rather loosely. I have a huge amount of respect for the scientific method, but I rarely set up tests that will offer statistically-significant results (since I rarely set up multiple reps or repeat the experiment) – so I hereby encourage people not to take my findings as ‘gospel’ by any means.
Ok – moving on to the challenge…
Yesterday, I filled two small buckets (each with multiple drainage holes in the bottom) with moistened, aged horse manure – the same stuff I regularly feed to my worm herd. To one of the buckets I then added approximately 1/4 lb of Red Worms (Eisenia fetida).
Next, I placed 12 Swiss Chard (‘Rhubarb Chard’) seeds on the surface of the manure (in three distinct zones with four seeds in each), and lastly added an additional thin layer of manure (which I then sprayed down with water).
My goal is to determine if the presence of composting worms makes a difference in the germination and/or growth of the chard plants. Will the plants grow faster/slower? Will they be bigger/smaller? Will they look different in general from those in the manure treatment?
We shall see!
My plan is to select only one plant from each group of four, thus (hopefully) guaranteeing that we end up with three healthy plants for the main growth period. Each bucket will receive the same amount of water, and the same amount of additional manure (if it becomes necessary to add more), and of course be grown in basically the same spot (so identical light, temperature etc). Speaking of which, I have put the buckets up on my deck, with each also sitting on its own set of pedestals to help ensure that the non-worm treatment doesn’t end up with worms.
Judging by all the dirty tracks around the rim of the worm bucket this morning, I suspect that I may have lost some of my worms already. I found some huddled under a nearby planter, and I’m sure any others that ventured out will have gone down through the cracks in the deck. I am not particularly concerned about this since I have every confidence that a decent number of worms will stay put, and enjoy living in the moistened manure.
I am going to take pictures of the buckets as often as I can remember (hopefully every couple of days or so) so as to get a good photo record of the changes occurring in the buckets over time. I will of course also be providing plenty of updates as we go along.
Should be fun!
Written by Bentley on August 19th, 2009 with 2 comments.
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983 lb of Food Waste, and Counting!