I can’t believe it’s been nearly 20 days since my last Worm Inn Journal update! Yikes.
With my WF-360 check-up yesterday, I figured it was only fair to see how my poor, neglected Worm Inn worms were doing today.
My last feeding (~ 3.3 lb of shredded carrots) was back on Jan 5th and, other than the occasional addition of water, the system has basically been left alone since that time…and it shows. The level of material in the Inn has gone down quite a bit, and while there was certainly some evidence of there having been shredded carrots in there at one point, there really wasn’t much.
I was happy to find LOTS of worms down below in spite of the less-than-optimal conditions. Aside from processing the food that’s been added, they’ve clearly been munching away on the shredded cardboard bedding as well.
Before feeding today, I decided to water everything down a bit since it was looking pretty dry.
Given how low the level of material was, I decided to use the old cover layer as my base layer below my new food materials. The amount of food I added today was 1.039 kg (2.29 lb). As was the case yesterday, I didn’t have access to any (thawed out) frozen food scraps so I decided to make do with a fairly fresh collection of scraps I’ve been collecting for the past day or so. Again, I made sure to compensate for this by cutting everything up as best I could with a pair of heavy duty scissors (as you can see below, that cluster of leaves at the top of a pineapple is really tough!!).
Once I was satisfied with how finely chopped everything was (minus the pineapple leaves! lol) I simply spread the materials over top of my base bedding layer, before adding a brand new layer of dry bedding over top.
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My aim this time around had been to treat this Worm Inn as a “normal” system – rather than attempting to overfeed as I did with my “Overfeeding Challenge“. Well, it seems I’ve ended up down in the opposite direction so far!
Time to start adding waste materials on a much more regular basis, that’s for sure. With my flying pest problems now behind me (he wrote as he knocked on wood – lol), this shouldn’t create ANY problems!
Stay tuned!
8)
I currently feed two worm inns… Uh… Overfeed is more accurate. Overfeed, underwater, underbed… This inn is the easiest, most forgiving system ever! actually, now that I think about it… I may underfeed these worms… I may never know as they always seem happy!
hi as a first time keeper of earth worms ….for trout fishing purpose
…my question is whats is the main difference between the two…?
…and do i feed them different food…
fussy trout diddnt like compost worms i collected from my dads farm
so we’ve bought earth worms …
dont want to kill them….justine
Hi Justine – when you say “difference between the two” – do you mean the difference between “earth worms” and “compost worms”.
Composting worms are actually part of the group known as earthworms – even though their habitat often consists of rich organic matter (not soil).
It is very difficult to compare worms if you’re not sure what worms you’ve got, unfortunately – there are lots of different kinds of earthworms. If they are larger bait shop nightcrawlers or any other typical soil worm, you won’t likely be able to breed them all that easily in captivity.
Perhaps if you provide a few more details I’ll be able to offer a bit more guidance.
you feed them pineapple? I read somewhere that pineapple has some enzymes that kills all the worms…
I just dump everything on top. No cutting, dicing or chopping unless it already was as part of the food prep process. Sometimes I roll it in newspaper like a burrito – that adds bedding around the foods. Then I usually top that with some kind of ripped up paper.
Hello everyone. I was wanting to know how much and how often I should water the Worm Inn. It averages 80 degrees in my garage and I usually spray 8 ounces every other day. Also, how do you keep a Worm Inn habitat viable during the summer in a garage when it is 90 degrees plus?
Like Andres, I also heard that pineapple can kill worms. I am composting my pineapple scraps and onions separately, intending to give to a friend’s outdoor compost, and I notice white mold on the leaves. Does that mean the leaves are safe to feed to worms?