My red wigglers came in the mail today I picked up a big 27 gallon tub from home depot the other day for $12. I cut up a few of the paper bags I have around the house. Misted them with water until they were nice and damp. From here I mixed in a good bit of the happy frog soil I have. I threw in a couple hand fulls of ewc. Sprinkled equal parts alfalfa meal and kelp meal. Lastly I mixed in a little of my left over vermiculite. I misted everything again to make sure everything was thoroughly damp and mixed. I dumped the red wiggles into the mix and gently tossed things together. I covered all of this with some pre-dampened peat moss and news paper. I've got the whole thing in the grow room with a light over top of them. I've heard the light will make sure they don't try to crawl out. The worms looked fairly healthy and wiggly right out of the bag so, let's hope things go smoothly.
Do you have any ventilation holes? Did you add anything for lime with your peat moss? Careful with the alfalfa it can make your bin to hot.
Do you mean, holes in the bottom for excess moisture to be drained or on top? I haven't used any lime yet. There's a granite counter top store around the corner from me. I plan on picking up some rock dust as well as a liming agent to add in here soon. I only sprinkled in a small hand full of alfalfa. That shouldn't be an issue, should it? The worm have been in for about 12 hrs and they are looking a whole lot more lively.
Do you mean, holes in the bottom for excess moisture to be drained or on top? Bottom, sides, top worm bins need ventilation. If you have moisture coming out the bottom the bedding is to wet. I haven't used any lime yet. There's a granite counter top store around the corner from me. I plan on picking up some rock dust as well as a liming agent to add in here soon. I dont use peat moss in my bedding but most who do add some kind of limindg agent I only sprinkled in a small hand full of alfalfa. That shouldn't be an issue, should it? Should be fine When I make my bedding I chop up some leaves and straw cut up some corrugated cardboard dampened (worms love the stuff)some of my compost, finely ground egg shells, a handful or so alfalfa. coffee grounds, couple hand fuls of kelp moisten it all let it sit for a month. Add it to the unused side of my bin. Then I cover it with a damp piece of corrugated cardboard.
I do have some holes in the bottom and planned on leaving the lid open. The does sound like a fantastic mix. How big do you usually go with your worm bin? When I start mixing in more.food and bedding I plan on trying to mix in some more if the ingredients you listed.
My bin is a horizontal flow through. Its 2'x4'. It has 1/4" screen separating the bin in half with bedding in one half. When I harvest my castings I stop feeding the worms. I then fill the empty side with bedding and when the worms are out of food the migrate to the new bedding. IMO I you could add more bedding to your bin. My bedding is around 18" I also mix in a few handfuls of neem/karanja when I mix my bedding When I mix up food I mix it in a 5 gal bucket compost,kelp,ground up, egg shell,neem/karanja,coffee grounds. I feed a one pound coffee can of this mix every couple weeks covering it with some of the dried comfrey that I dried this fall. When I do feed kitchen scraps (not very often) I make sure there well broken down. Heres my bin. The thing you see setting on top of the bedding is a thermometer to monitor my bedding temperature. (it actually sets outside on the top) I have a heat cable in my bedding so I could keep my worms producing through the cold Michigan winter.
Hello! Just wanted to pass on a very small but very important piece of advice. Keep a very close eye on the moisture content of the bedding material in your worm bin. Worms prefer 80%-90% moisture content in their surrounding environment. If things get too dry (or wet!), your worms will begin to bail on you. Generally if you can take a handful of your bedding material and squeeze the hell out of it with only a few drops escaping, that's proper moisture content. Slightly drier than this is also acceptable. Really try to keep an eye on this as you learn about raising worms in your particular environment and how various amendments/additions to your worm bin affect the bedding environment and the microbial community living in the bedding. Keeping them happy is just as important as keeping the worms happy. I would argue even more so... It's really dry where I live and my first two attempts at worming failed miserably due to lack of knowledge and proper monitoring on my part. Have you spent any time reading here? http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/334921-vermicomposting-make-your-own-worm-castings.html http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/916171-vermicompost-production-bins.html?view=findpost&p=21233947&hl=vermicompost+production+bins
Yeah, I noticed that after I had everything mixed up. I thought I was going to have plenty, but the volume of my bedding material really shrank as I mixed everything and got it all damp. I would really like to add in leaves, straw, and when I get my garden going I'd like to try my hand at growing some comfrey to throw in here as well. Neem is something that I plan on adding into my garden here very soon. I might as well pick up some neem meal to throw in here as well. Thanks for the tips From what I had read, moisture was probably one of the most important factors to keep an eye on. Either too much or too little can really affect the little guys. I've been going by the old adage of it feeling like a damp wrung out sponge. So far it is looking good, the little guys are wriggling around going to town I've read through a good bit of both of those posts as well as some other sites that are dedicated to worm bins. Thanks for the links though, it never hurts for me to go back and re-read a few different threads. There's just so much good information around here, can't soak it all in with one pass.
So every thing seems to be great with the worms. I haven't added in any new bedding material yet, but did add in the 3 gallons of soil/roots from my first plant the other day. When I added in the soil, I mixed everything up pretty well. There were plenty of little worms wiggling around doing there thing. Edit: so I just cut up a few more paper bags, dampened them, and threw them in. I've mixed everything up again and still see plenty of little wrigglers in there.
The worms are looking great. Everything is nicely damp. No off smells and the little wiggles look happy. I picked up some karanja/neem meal and some crustacean meal. I got this to add into my next soil mix. I was wondering what everyone thought about adding some into the worm bin as well? Would it be worth it, or would I be better served by just adding it into my next soil mix?
A small handfull of each, sprinkled on the surface will do fine. DO NOT mix it up! In a week or 2 you can cover it with a bit of bedding. In fact, stop with any further 'mixing'. The worms really do not like this. Do your food on the surface and after a week or so, cover it with an inch or 2 of bedding. Like making a lasanga. Cd
Thats what I was kinda thinking. I'll just sprinkle in a little. The more diversity, the better, right? The reason I was mixing is because be read that they need some good air flow. But I'll cut that out now. Thanks for the help.
Everything is going great with the worm. I have been giving them most of my veggie and fruit scraps and making sure they don't dry out too much. Tonight I cut up a few more paper bags. I sprinkled on a layer of kelp, crustacean, and karanja/neem meal on top of the bin. Then layered on the wetted paper bag strips. since I don't have a flow through setup or multiple bins I'll need to figure out a way to harvest the ewc. I'm thinking of just building a screen. Shacking the good ewc through, separating all the worms, non composted organic matter, and hopefully some worm eggs. I'll then fill the bin with some new bedding and food and dump the worms back in.
Still looking pretty good with the worm bin. Every time I dig around in there to put some new scraps in or add some bedding, the wroms are still wiggling around looking happy. The only thing that I've noticed is I'm getting a few little flying bugs around. They look like they are fungus gnats, I'm hoping not cause those bastards suck. I've sprinkled a little bit of neem/karanja meal on top and I'm hoping that will help a little. Anyone else had issues with those guys in their worm bin?
Thats kind of what I'm hoping for. What did you end up doing to get rid of them? Just made sure you covered any veggie matter or did you do something different?
I think when that happened I quit feeding it and added a fair amount of dry bedding on top. Then I put it out in the garage with the lid off till the worms had eaten all the scraps and the flies were gone since there wasn't anywhere to breed or anything to eat. Then I carefully started feeding again. The only thing I'd do differently now is to give it a sprinkle of neem cake under the dry bedding.
Yeah I've been sprinkling in some neem meal when I put new bedding in. I'm probably going to do what you did. Just cover up with some good compost mixed with some other bedding materials and let them do their thing for a while. I think that will help with most any of the bugs I may have.
So today was the first day that I've gotten to use some of my own vermicompost! I mixed up a new batch of soil today and mixed half compost and half my own vermicompost. After I took some out if the bin I topped up the bin with some leaves and stems from my latest harvest and a good layer of steer manure. Everything is still looking great in the bin. I can't wait to see just how good this next grow is with my own worm castings 😆