Comments on: What to Do With a 4 Month Old Worm Bin

By: sam dockman

sam dockman — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 18:52:46 +0000

do baby worms have a propencity to travel the sidewalls of a plastic bin?
while i will be happy to document my 2 month learning curve saga, but saving you all the painful tale, on two separate occasions i have had two explosions of baby worms on the sidewalls — as in a bazillion of babies – well certainly countless hundreds, approx 2 weeks apart. nothing i know that i did the day before to trigger it — i was just wondering if in a mature bin (2 months= no probs) do the babies (ie. 1/4 inch size) prefer the walls as opposed to the bedding.

By: papajohn509

papajohn509 — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 06:44:09 +0000

The dirt is going to accumulate at the bottom of the bin. If you are turning every two weeks you are mixing the dirt in with the bedding. You will never get pure dirt. I top feed my bins with horse manure and have never turned a bin. See my post from 9/13. I have seperated over 3 tons of dirt in a year out of 10 bins and a 4×8 incubator.

By: Jes Anderson

Jes Anderson — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 00:53:37 +0000

Update!

I was feeding and turning my bin every week since April, but got really busy and missed a week. When I went to feed my wormies, to my surprise there were new worms! So for the last two months I have been feeding and turning the bin every TWO weeks and holey moley meee ohhh myyy, there are SO MANY new juvi worms. It’s so exciting!

BUT…My bin is not turning to dirt. The food is being eaten, but I just have brown ‘almost’ dirt that has bedding still in it.

What do I need to do to get this bin to be dirt? I’ve already split the bin and my main bin is becoming too big again.

Any advice I greatly appreciate!

By: Jes Anderson

Jes Anderson — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 23:46:41 +0000

Bentley (or anyone)

I had 5lbs of worms originally, but I killed all but two because I stopped adding bedding… I’m a terrible person I know! So I have been trying to get my population to bounce back ever since. I have 8-9 fully mature worms, one I affectionately call Fatty. But it’s taken me 6 months to get those guys. I see baby worms in my bin all the time, sometimes they leak out the bottom with the liquid from my bin, but not all of them.
Why is it taking so long for these guys to get big?

By: Priswell

Priswell — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 13:51:54 +0000

I’ve really had no problems keeping a worm bin beyond a year without a total overhaul. In fact, I’ve gone 2 or 3 years before removing compost.

Generally, old compost is at the bottom and the new material is closer to the top. If you’re always adding, the bin always has someplace reasonably “fresh” for the worms to go.

When harvesting compost, it always helps to not be in a hurry. When the bins start to fill up to the point where it becomes unwieldy, I’ll start feeding at one end of the bin only. The worms will move over to find the new food. If you’re patient, any new worms will hatch on the “old” side, and migrate to where the other worms are.

After there are few or no worms left on the side where you want to remove compost, you can do that. You remove compost from that end up until you find where the worms are, then stop. Then, you can either fill up that end with new bedding and food material, or you can level the bin and spread a new fresh layer on the top.

Now you can use your compost, and your bin is rebooted.

By: Bentley

Bentley — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 15:58:21 +0000

JES – Unfinished material simply gets added to the new system (or remains in the original one. Splitting is very easy – you are literally just removing half of the contents (make a split down the middle and dig out everything to the right or left). In the empty half of the old system and the new system you then simply add a heap of moistened bedding – perhaps with a little food waste in it. I would then top everything with a thick layer of dry bedding. So, approx half your original worm population is in the original bin – half in the new bin. Hopefully this makes sense.
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DERMY – I’m sure lots of people have done this without thinking about it (myself included for that matter). What happens will depend on how much bedding is being added and how much food is being added. If not much bedding, but food continually – I doubt you’d make it to the year mark before killing your worms. With lots of bedding I think you’d just end up completely filling the bin with compost before then. Interesting idea though! Could be worth trying.
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STEVE – a great way to get them to move would be to use a food/habitat material that is pretty much irresistible. Something like a nicely aged, moistened, horse manure (several months sitting outside) or some form of “homemade manure”. New bedding with food scraps won’t likely have nearly the same appeal unfortunately.
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HENRY – This is borderline “fear mongering” in my mind (ie by the person who wrote the article). YES, there are situations where there can absolutely be some spores released – and I always caution those with any sort of mold allergies to either be very careful, or not get involved in this field at all. The key, though, is making sure you properly optimize the wastes, you don’t use a lot of certain kinds of wastes (bread, pastries etc for example), and that you always keep everything well buried. People have been doing this stuff for years now (many likely not even following the advice I just outlined), and reports of lung damage among vermicomposters are non-existent as far as I know.
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DAVID – thanks for sharing that! Very interesting! Yeah, this is definitely why I recommend aging a bin for a week or so before adding worms and/or using some form of “living material” to help kickstart the habitat with loads of beneficial microbes. And you are right – this is certainly one of the advantages of the “splitting” method!
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JES – that is not very many worms! But hopefully you have loads of juveniles (and cocoons). If so, you’ll be fine – since they will more readily mature once you’ve got two refreshed bins up and running (more space to spread out and better habitat quality). I am surprised you have so few adults though. Did you add Red Worms to this bin? If so how many originally?
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PATRICK – You’ve highlighted something I mentioned above. It ALL depends on how the system is being treated. Hardly adding any food, and occasionally adding some bedding materials (eg napkins) would certainly be one way to extend the life of a bin.
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LARRY – The splitting method I was talking about above assumes that you are going to leave the old wormy-material in both “new” systems, but if you DO plan to harvest the old stuff (obviously not a bad idea – and probably something a lot of people would want to do so they get some vermicompost) you should try adding something really appealing (like the well aged horse manure etc, mentioned earlier), and also just generally expect to wait for a period of time. Unless you give the worms something “irresistible” they will likely prefer to stay in their familiar habitat.
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PapaJohn – WOW, I’m impressed. Sounds like quite the cool set up and methodology you’ve got there. Thanks for sharing!
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DAVE – As mentioned, the idea isn’t necessarily to separate out the worms when you split – BUT if you ARE trying to get them over to the new half of the bins – again, just add some really appealing materials such as well-aged horse manure (mixed with the usual bin bedding etc).
There are various ways to separate the worms from the compost – some form of “light harvesting” approach can actually work quite well, especially when it involves migration from one container/tray to another. Be sure to check out the harvesting section on the hot topics page for links to various articles on the topic:
http://www.redwormcomposting.com/popular-vermicomposting-topics/#harvesting-vermicompost
(at very top of page when you click that link)

By: Dabernathy

Dabernathy — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 02:26:16 +0000

Hey everyone. . .I’m the new kid on the block from Florida. . .

I split my bin after 2 months, but the split was excruciating!! Trying to separate the worms out of the compost, sifting, etc. I almost gave it up. The new bin didn’t seem to be doing so good so I combined them back to a single bin.

With some input from Bentley, I’ve decided to split my bins, add the required bedding, feed slowly and carefully, etc.

THE QUESTION! What is the easiest or best way to separate the worms from the compost? Can anyone direct me to an article, or something from Bentley?

Thanks!

Dave

By: papajohn509

papajohn509 — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 16:03:48 +0000

My beds are 36x60x12 and hold 90 gallons. Bedding is 1/4″ ribbon cut shredded newspaper. Feed is horse manure that is broken up and run through a 3/8″ screen from an old combine so there are no lumps except for 1 bed that gets all of the lumps that are left over. To start a new bed I add 3 33 gal leaf bags of bedding with about 30 gal of water. The worms are put in the middle and feed is added when they have gone down. The beds are covered with reflectix insulation to keep in the humidity and keep out light. As the population increases the area where the feed is spread also grows. A full bed will get 6# of feed every couple of days.

After 3-4 months the newspaper is all consumed and the bed is ready to be processed. The top feed layer is removed, about 2-3″, with the worms that are in it. The rest of the bed is vermicompost and worms. It is run through a home made shaker with an 1/8″ screen. Most of the material passes through the screen but some will ball up and fall off the end with the worms and whatever paper might be left. Each bed will produce 50-60 gal of vermicompost each cycle. It takes under 3 hours to process a bed.

The worms and balls are returned to the empty bed followed by 2 bags of wet paper and the feed layer removed from the bed. If I need to harvest worms they are much easier to seperate from the concentrated ball material. The new bed is actually a ‘mature’ system from the start.

I developed a community garden for our small town this spring and plan to use vermicompost sales to support it.

By: Larry

Larry — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:53:15 +0000

Does anyone know why the worms fail to migrate to the “fresh” side when a bin is divided as mentioned above?

I have tried this method as well. I have also noticed that when new food is added, even a nice handful of mushy pumpkin or other worm treats, that many worms stay on the other side of the bin. While MANY or MOST will go to the good stuff, there will be worms, both small and mature, that will not.

I just finished moving a batch from one bin to a “fresh” one. This last time, I placed a screen type panel plenty large enough for the worms to crawl through on top of my old bedding and layered it with aged horse manure and topped with shredded newspaper. After a few days, MANY of the worms had moved up. But over a third of the worms (at least) remained “below”. I manually sorted a large number by hand and moved them to the new bin.

Since many eggs were still in the OLD bin, I plan to leave them and will harvest the bin again in a few weeks. This way, the works will be large enough to harvest but to immature to lay eggs themselves. This is a win- win for those trying to build up their herd.

One observation. Several of the worms that didn’t migrate UPWARD through my screen to the fresh food on top seemed to be of a weaker sort. It could be that most that failed to migrate we’re just content in the area they were bedding, but I have to wonder about worms that still refuse to move, even after a few weeks, to the BETTER food supply. Are these worms OLD? Sick? Or impaired in some way?

If there is any reason for the failed migration, should these worms just be left out and not transferred to the new bin? Since this only represents a small portion the new bin may be more productive in the long term to use this method to weed out the weak or impaired worms? Less aggressive may mean less productive – consuming less and producing fewer eggs?

Thoughts?

PS: In moving to the new bin. I set it up a short while before the move with new bedding and some starter food. Then I moved the worms that had migrated UP through the screen panel, food, bedding and all, into the new bin. This keeps them in the familiar “home” and they never know they are in a new bin. Seems to work well for me anyway.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 03:08:00 +0000

I have a small system in a 5 gallon bucket that has been just sitting for about three years. About once a month or even longer I throw in a banana peel and a napkin or two. Never been changed or harvested and the worms are still quite content – although small. I was even able to use some of the worms in that system to restart my regular 5 bucket systems after they froze solid last winter.

I’ve read statements like Bentley’s before and heard it from a local place that does environmental education but I haven’t found it to be true for my system that suffers from benign neglect.