Stacking Bin Euros – 05-28-13

Just a quick update for you on the “Stacking Bin Euros” front.

On Saturday I decided it was time to add a second tray to my WF-360 system. Again, the idea here is to get things moving along as quickly as possible and see how well the Euros are going to adjust to life in this type of bin.

I set up the second tray very quickly – keeping things as simple as possible. I mixed shredded (wet) drink tray cardboard with some food waste and a small amount of aged horse manure (a little extra incentive for the worms), before topping up with more shredded cardboard.


I’ve been monitoring the new tray over the last couple of days and it looks as though some worms have already started to move up. I’ve actually found more Euros than Reds (remember, it was a mix of the two worms I stocked the system with) which is a bit surprising.

Anyway – so far so good! Will be interesting to see how things progress over the next few months.
Stay tuned!

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Comments

    • Kim from Milwaukee
    • May 28, 2013

    Ok, now I’m really confused Bentley. I thought the Euros were the ones who preferred the deep dark regions of the bin and the Reds preferred the shallower regions. How is it the Euros are migrating to the upper bin then?? Are they a ravenous bunch? Do you not have any food for them in the lower level anymore? And do they get stuck when they migrate, seeing that they are the Goliath of the worm community?

    • John W
    • May 29, 2013

    They def won’t get stuck going up to the second tray. The hole in the 360 is more than big enough for them.

    • Melody
    • May 29, 2013

    A question about stacking bins in general: Is it possible to keep 2 trays active at once in a stacking system or will the worms always prefer one? They were all escaping to the unused bottom one last summer, so I filled it with bedding, but now that I have the top bin more moist and balanced they’re ignoring the bottom.

    • Scott
    • May 30, 2013

    Melody – With my reds, I always had 3 or 4 trays active. (They are in a Worm Inn, now) I would spread about a gallon of food per week among all of the trays, unless I was going to harvest one or more of the trays the next week. With the Euros, I feed about a cup of food per tray, or even less. They spread out among all the trays.

    • John W
    • May 30, 2013

    @Melody The problem I had with my WF360 was the worms would move up, but then the eggs would keep hatching in the bottom. So I would always have worms in the lower trays. That’s one of my favorite things about the Worm Inn is I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I don’t know why/how the worm eggs hatch and move up much quicker, but it sure makes harvesting much easier

    • Bentley
    • May 31, 2013

    KIM – hopefully you’ve had the chance to check out my “European Nightcrawlers – In More Detail” post. In that I explain that quite a few of the assumptions I’ve made about these worms (based on the info that gets widely spread) hasn’t been on target. Most of them are still in the first bin – I’m just noticing more and more of them up in the second tray.
    I have little doubt there will be plenty that stick around in the first tray, but I find the same thing with Red Worms anyway. It’s not to difficult to separate them from finished vermicompost by simply positioning the full tray over top of a new tray you want them to move into, and then shining a bright light over top while scraping away the material. Sure – cocoons will still end up in the material, but again this is no different than with Reds. At least they are big enough to be easy to spot.
    🙂

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