Comments on: Gardening With Red Worms – Additional Thoughts

By: Bentley

Bentley — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:53:17 +0000

DAVE – it’s tough to provide any sort of concrete estimate for the amount of water (and how often) to add, since there are so many variables to deal with. I am definitely like you in that I usually only do something about it when I notice that things have really started to dry out.
The beauty of outdoor systems that are open to the soil is that it’s tough to add too much water, so if you want to keep your worms really happy and ensure that conditions never get too dry, simply water every day or two.
Materials with an ‘ideal’ moisture content for compost worms should look wet. As long as the worms were getting enough oxygen, they would more than likely be happy to basically live in materials with close to 100% moisture content (tough to achieve though since water can only hold so much oxygen).

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CANDIN – Forcing worms to breed by drying out is an interesting idea and does make sense since the worms will want to ensure the success of future generations. Cocoons are certainly a lot more resistance to drying out than the worms themselves. This is why people should never give up on a bed that’s dried out – there will still be LOTS of future worm potential in the material. As for checking moisture levels, while you certainly can do so with your hands, I generally look for visual clues (literally as basic as ‘does it look wet or not?’)

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CATHERINE – Thanks for sharing your observations. This is very similar to what I have seen myself. When I first started harvesting vermicompost from my backyard worm bin last year, I found a HUGE number of teeny tiny worms in the material. It was likely a combination of factors – primarily low nutritional content, and low moisture content – that caused this. Red Worms are able to adapt to pretty harsh conditions, and often this involves conserving resources by shrinking greatly in size.

By: catherine

catherine — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:09:49 +0000

I’ve noticed that when I’m ‘curing’ castings and letting them dry a bit, the worms hatched out of the cocoons in the castings are much smaller than the ones in the worm bins themselves. I’ve seen mature worms (with good fat clitellum relative to the rest of their bodies) under 2cm long.

By: Candin

Candin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:32:59 +0000

I too wonder how often an outdoor bed should be watered. I had read that if you are attempting to force breed, you allow the top few inches dry out and the worms will mass produce. I have open ground pits with good drainage so overwatering is not a real problem. Perhaps tomorrow I may go and add some more water to one of my beds. Plus using rubber gloves its difficult to check the moisture level of the beds.

Candin

By: Dave Pawson

Dave Pawson — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 06:45:01 +0000

Extrapolating from this, just how often should we be watering a bed?
Perhaps some sort of combination of weather, cold, cool, warm, hot and
indoor plastic, outdoor ‘bin’, mixed veg/worm bin, mixed veg/worm bed.

I tend to only water my worms when I’ve noticed it has been dry for a long time,
i.e. I’m even lazier than you! Perhaps a better solution would be to tell us the signs
that we should be looking out for when the bed is too dry?
I guess in my case (slatted sides) it’s when the sides of the bed have totally
dried out, even if the centre is moist.

Any advice please