Well, shit. I guess I’ve been doing this wrong for a decade or so. Honestly I shouldn’t have made such a broad generalization. Whether or not liming agents are used really depends on a number of factors. RD
I understand. This sport can be as complicated or as simple as we want to make it. There aren’t many rules. A guy could open a bag of compost or soil, add a half gallon of water and a handful of worms and come back a few months later. Or you can feed em grain, veggie scraps, dry amendments, etc etc. It just takes a lil time to figure out what works for you. Happy worm farming. RD
Are these PH issues a problem in bedding made from mostly leaves and table scraps? A few grass clippings?
This may be of interest to read. And less typing for me. https://wormfarmguru.com/ph-worm-bin-acidity/
I dont know how fast you guys produce you ewc? I find mine to be slow, but seems like there is no problems otherwise
I run a stackable worm bin. But, run it as a static bin. I mix my bedding all at once and fill all three trays. I takes between 3-4 months per cycle. HTH
Thanks for the reply. When the time comes , do the worms migrate? Do you scoop them out? I keep them in stackable bins myself, one bin has soil, brown paper pieces and green leaves. I spray with water often
They will migrate to the next bin if you run them that way. When I harvest. I sort my worms the old fashion way. I dump the bin in the daytime on a tarp and the worms will go to the inside of the pile to avoid the sunlight. I just slowly keep harvesting the outside of the pile. Sometimes, I screen my bins with a frame I made with 1/4" hardware cloth. HTH
Got the bedding in the trays yesterday and will get worms today or tomorrow. So just peat and rice hulls now with 1 tbsp of lime and 1/2 dolomite, watered in with aloe and water to just one drop of water when squeezed.
Got the new worms in the bin yesterday. When I went to check up on them to my delight I saw none on the floor, great sign but lets open her up and see if they're hanging around on the edges of the bins or on top of the cardboard then.. To good to be true they were super active playing around in the new home! The new worm bin is off to a great start fingers crossed it stays that way. So am I letting these guys settle in for a week then start adding one amendment at a time per week? Example next week 1tbsp malted barley, week 2 , neem, week 3 kelp week 4 OSF, and so on? I have two trays going now I just topped up the original one with the new bedding mix as I didn't want to waste it Will I need to also throw in one banana peel in there weekly with the dry amendment? I'm excited for sure @Organic sinse
That sounds like a solid plan. Starting with one banana peel a week sounds good. As time goes by you can raise that number. Cheers Os
Hi Organic sinse, What is your thoughts on putting my WF360 in my flowering tent to save some space? My bin is very clean: no fungus gnats and no fruit flies... Any thing I should be worried about?
While I certainly do not claim to have the knowledge base that OS possesses, it seems to me that as long as things are going well, there should be no problem putting them in there. You are after all having them create the soil for the tent.
As long as its not too hot, ie too much above 80-82’F, you should be fine. If you are using HID lights, put some white shade on the bin. If your running leds, no worries about absorbing IR light. I know that most resources say 80’F should be the upper limit for red wigglers, but as long as there is sufficient moisture in the bins, its no worries. Its especially no worries if you have a cooler night cycle. The worms will go to lower shelves during high temps, and move back up when its cooler. Expect a bunch of free CO2 as well for a bonus. Just keep an eye on things, if you see them escaping or dead on the floor, its just too warm for them. Cheers Os
Dear friends, Reaching out to you for advices. I have a worm factory 360 bought in April, with originally half a poud of Red Wigglers. Bin is kept inside in the proper temps. Problem I see are, population not growing enough, not being able to process a lot of food scraps, and mostly, feeling like it takes for ever to get my first tray of compost. As of today, half of my second tray is filled. I feed my worms about once a week with a blend of frozen chopped fruits and vegetables, like banana peel, melon rinds, apples, cuckes, carrot peel, zuchini, squash, etc... along with finely chopped ondulated cardboard. Sometimes, bin gets overly wet. I know when the inside of the cover gets full of condensation. But I never had a drop of runoff from the spigot. No worms have been trying to escape. I had a few springtails but they seems to be gone. Got a few wormpots... Original bedding when starting a tray was included coco coir, shredded news paper and rock dust. My observations are that I am still processing about the same amount of food since day 1. I won't feed the worm until almost all the food is gone, and one side at a time. I saw a video online of what a pound of worms should look like and I felt like I could have been shorted. On the other hand, other observation I see, is worm poops are small curds, and I can understand it feels like taking forever to collect 4-5 gallons of castings... I am also starting to use living soil along with cardboard for the brown matters when I cover my food scraps. Worms seems to love it and are visibly more active and present. So I am reading again about the basic operation of a WF360... Instructions still call for a month per tray. I am calling out for inputs, and maybe you can tell me how many time should It really takes for worms to fill a tray of poop. (That is a lot of poop...) Thanks gardeners!
I run a worm cafe. I run my bins in a static manner. I fill all my bins with my finished compost and add. Crab,neem and kelp meals along with some rock dust. I also add rice hulls,biochar and chipped bark for aeration. It takes my 1 pound of worms around 4 months to process the bins. My 3 bins hold a little over 12 gallons of finished castings.HTH
I run two wf360’s with 5 trays each. Luckily for you, a great portion of this thread and the vermicomposting sticky thread talk about running them and making bedding mixes. Forget what the instructions say that came with the kit. What you want to do is get some good old fashioned compost and bulk it up with rice hulls or bark. This kind of bedding mix will increase your population to max quickly as well. Below is post 5717 from page 286 in the Vermicomposting sticky thread. There is lots of additional info on wf360 on that page (and surrounding pages). “Here is my mix for bedding that’s tried and true. Sinse’s mix vmc starts out as 2 gallons leaf mold or compost 1 1/2 gallons small pine bark nuggets 1/2 cup rice hulls 1 cup glacier rock dust 1/4 cup each fish bone, kelp, crab, and neem seed meals and mbp 2 tablespoons osf 2 tablespoons gypsum I generally just feed banana peels or pumpkin or melon rinds. For example 16 banana peels a month to a tray. Not a lot of food. As mentioned by others. Partially finished compost works just fine. The worms will finish it. For food sources I like things high in K, Potassium. Organic K is hard to get in good amounts without a lot of strings attached to it. Coir is also a great k source. I urge a little caution if using coir and the finished product is going in a soil mix. Don’t use a lot. Use it with compost or something else. If it’s just a top dress, I wouldn’t worry at all. HTH Cheers Os” Start with that and ask me anything you can’t find. HTH Cheers Os