Comments on: Bentley’s “Bad Boy” Bin

By: otis11

otis11 — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 21:53:41 +0000

Hi Bentley: I used to have 2 of these bins in my backyard at the fence, furthest from the house for concern re. critters. When kept moist they would be full of worms. All kinds of “no-no” went into them. It was basically the usual backyard composter that became a worm bin on its own.
Then one day I made a mistake by adding Morning Glory, Boston Ivy and other weed and that’s the end of it. I had to starve and dry out/kill these 2 bins.
Would you add weed to your ‘bad boy” bin? I see Boston Ivy hovering above it.

By: armoured

armoured — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 11:52:38 +0000

My own somewhat limited experience in proper worm farming – as opposed to just outdoor bins where the worms do their thing without much intervention on my part – is that with enough bedding (paper, cardboard, dry shredded leaves), almost anything will work. Within reason, I don’t worry about dairy, meats, stews, soups, fatty stuff, you name it.
So here’s my question/challenge: what about moss? I mean, the type of moss that grows on roofs and sometimes gets rather thick. I should think it would be great for worms – and possibly problematic in most other composting – but don’t know.
Oh, I also have a fair amount of wood chips, sometimes sawdust. I don’t expect magic, and just treat it as bedding, but comments welcome.

By: Bentley

Bentley — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 18:42:47 +0000

This is really interesting, Scott – I wouldn’t have expected grease to be appealing at all! This has the wheels turning a bit for possible side experiments. Thanks for chiming in. 😎

By: Scott Bryce

Scott Bryce — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 06:52:53 +0000

I did a recent experiment where I put shredded cardboard soaked in hamburger grease in my worm bin. The worms were all over it. Maybe grease from cooking is something to try. A followup experiment showed that the grease needs to be absorbed in bedding, or the worms will ignore it.