Side experiment update!

Oh boy, where to start. So the container I had for my side project was great… it locked, it was vented (perhaps not enough though), worms couldn't get out, etc...

However, I had put some food in the bin(bread and strawberry ends) and the food had molded. 

Apparently the mold had an adverse affect on the worms because the died about a week after the the food started to mold. 

I guess to prevent this from happening again in the future I will have to keep the food in the bin proportional to the worms eating abilities. With less than ten worms in the bin the ammount of food that can be consumed is very small. I am finding that the small scale tests that I am performing are delivering worse results than my large scale worm bin. 

With my large scale bin I am adding about a blender full of food scraps a week an the worms are keeping up. If any of the food starts to mold it isn't a problem because the worms eat the mold by the end of the wee. This leads meto believe that as the bin becomes larger the worms will not only thrive better, but the food will process faster, and the worms will reproduce faster. 

Having been burnt out on these small scale expirements I have decided to wait for a while before I start up again.

Thank you for sticking with me on this.  I will keep you posted in the weeks to come.

As always, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave it in the comment box below

Side experiment!

Today I would like to fill you in on a side experiment I am having regarding worm reproduction.

I have taken about 5-6 adult worms and put them in a very small container.  It will take quite a while for this container to fill up with castings, my guess is about 1-2 months.

Once the container is full I will:
•count out how many worms are in the bin
•divide the worms into adults and non adults
•and finally count the cocoons, and divide the cocoons into hatched and unhatched.


This should tell me about how fast worms can reproduce in a confined environment. It is pretty hard to guess how many worms are in a larger bin, and forget about counting out worms in a large bin!  It will be nice to know how quickly a few worms can reproduce.

Mini worm bin made from old blank CD case

Just a few bits of shredded paper, some crushed egg shells and some strawberry tops makes it easier to view the worms.

Moisture content of your worm bin

Good day everyone!

Last week I wrote a post regarding things that are bad for your bin. In that post I briefly mentioned the moisture content of the worm bin because I wanted to go in depth on the subject.  

Worms are very simple creatures, they need little to survive, but some people go overboard (giving too much), or on the other hand they neglect their worms and give them too little.  Worms need moisture. Have you ever been digging in your yard and found a worm? The soil is usually moist to the touch when you find worms like that. This tells us that worms, in their natural environment need moisture, but not too much. Have you noticed that when it rains worms will come up out of the ground(their natural home)? Too much water is bad for worms. 

So how wet is wet enough for the worm bin?  The worm bin contents should be damp to the touch, but not glistening (with water). Generally when I restart a bin (put in fresh bedding: shredded paper, dry leaves, etc) I will get a few cups of water and sprinkle them around the bin. Worms absorb water through their skin, and if their bin is too dry they will die.

Once the bin is damp it should stay that way. The top most layer of your bin should have a "bedding layer" that helps keep moisture in. Generally the bin will stay at the appropriate moisture level if you are keeping it indoors. If my bin is looking a little dry I will take a spray bottle with water and mist the top layer of the contents a few times to get it moist again.

Like I said earlier there are some people that over water their bins. The video below is an example of a bin that has too much water, and has no ventilation. If you look closely, the bin contents and the worms 'glisten' with water. This is a sign that they are too wet. This guy probably adds too much water to his worm bins, and that mixed with poor ventilation is causing his worms to flee from their home. As I said before worms are simple happy creatures and they want to stay in their bin, but if the conditions are less than pleasant they will leave.

Well, I hope this post has helped in your understanding of bin moisture and ventilation. Keep in mind that even though the moisture and ventilation of your worm bin are crucial, it is very simple to achieve and maintain a proper level in your bin.  Just don't over do it!

That is it for today. As always if you have anything you would like to add or if you have any questions leave a comment below!

Thanks!

The Bugs

Hello again!

There are just a hand full of problems that can occur in your worm bin, as I mentioned in a previous post.  Today, as promised, I am going to go into further detail on bugs in your worm bin. How they get there, and how to get them out.


If you refer to my Do's and Don't's list on my previous post you get a good idea of what types of food to avoid to prevent certain pests from invading your bin. However, even when sticking to the list you can get an invasion of fruit flies, which if you don't take care of promptly you can have a pretty nasty situation on your hands. If you are not careful you could end up with more flies than worms!!

I got my worm bin in April 2013 and started feeding kitchen scraps to the worms right away using methods I will talk about in future posts. Well, after about 2 weeks I noticed a fly coming out of the bin when I opened the lid. I ignored it, thinking that it must have just wandered in the bin and got stuck,  oh was I wrong... Fruit flies are a fairly common occurrence in amateur worm bins.

Every time I opened the bin from then on there were Fruit Flies that kept coming out! So I knew I had to get this fixed, and quick.  After doing some research I found a few different designs for some fruit fly traps. These traps involved some vinegar and some sort of funneling system to trap the flies in the vinegar. I thought this was interesting, but I didn't think it was the solution to my problem. If I just put out a fly trap the flies can still breed in the bin and live a long time and be a nuisance, and I didn't want that to happen.  So I came up with a fairly simple solution that worked well for me:

Every morning when I got up I would pick up my worm bin, take it the 10 steps outside my kitchen to my backyard and opened the lid!!! The fruit flies buzzed off never to be seen again. When I opened the lid I would fan the castings as to stir up the flies to get them out. After about 5 days of doing this the flies were all gone. I did it for a few days after just to make sure the adult flies didn't lay any eggs.

After doing some more research I came across some preventative measures that have worked ever since. If you have read my earlier post you can see images of the container I store my worm food in before I feed it to them. Once I have a full container of food for my worms I put it in the microwave for about 5 minutes. The heat from the microwave kills all of the eggs/larvae/flies that are in the container. After it cools I put the food scraps in the blender with some water and then pour the mix into my worm bin.  Another option in to freeze the food for 48 hours and then unfreeze the food and serve it to the worms.


In my next post I will talk about bin moisture content and remedies for it.

If you have anything you would like to add or if you have any questions please let me know in the comments below!

Thank you for reading.

The Bad

Hello Everyone!

Today I am going to talk about things that are bad for worms and worm bins. There are a few things that you should not put into your bins, as they are either bad for your worms, bad for your bin, or bad for you.

Lets start out with what you are giving to your worms. Worms will eat darn near anything, that being said there are a few things that you shouldn't feed them very often, or not feed them at all. Below is a list of Do's and Don't's, along with some maybes...



Do's:

Fruit: Pretty much any fruit will be good for the worms, except for citrus (orange, lime etc are bad for the worms.).  A word of caution, the skins of fruits and vegetables are harder for the worms to get through, so make sure you blend them up well or leave them in long enough for the worms to get through.

Vegetables: Again, pretty much all vegetables will be quickly consumed by a bin full of worms. Avoid potato skins, onions, and garlic as they are harder to consume and will add an odor to the bin.

Grains: Cereals like oats or wheat can be added to the bin as well, But avoid breads because they can attract unwanted insects.

Paper products: You can put in just about any paper product and the worms will be happy. This means that you can put tea bags, coffee & coffee filter (too much coffee will make your bin acidic though...), card board, news paper, etc.  Just make sure you shred your paper to make it easier to consume and also make sure you don't put in glossy or coated paper like photo paper or shiny news paper.

Yard clippings: As I have stated in previous posts the worms are able to go through yard clippings. Dead grass, dead leaves, and other dead plant matter is the worms natural food source, so obviously this will be healthy for them.


Don't's: 

Dont add any candy, chips, or junk food. They are bad for the worms, and they attract ants and other insects.

Also, don't and anything that isn't biodegradable. The worms wont be happy.

Dont add cat or dog poo to the bin. Only herbivore poo should be added. So even if your pets eat a veggie only diet don't try to recycle their waste unless they are herbivores.



That should just about cover it. If there is anything I need to add put it in a comment below.



Now, food isn't the only thing you need to worry about putting in your bin. There are two other things that I will breifly touch on and then go into further detail in futrue posts. (The Bugs)

First, water. Too much water and your worms wont want to stay inside your bin. Too little water and your worms will be unable to stay hydrated and they will die. Look out for my future posts on this topic and I will go into much greater detail.

The second thing to watch out for when adding to your bin is insects. I only had my worm bin for about 2 weeks when I had unknowingly added fruit (probably apple or banana) to the bin that contained fruit flies.  Read my post about how to avoid and get rid of fruit flies that I will be writing shortly.


Well thank you all for reading. Please if you have any questions or comments leave a comment below.

The beginning

Hello,

I decided to try a few new things to try to keep me focused for a few years...lets see how it works. First, I decided I would start a blog. This is to try to motivate me to keep up on my second thing, starting a worm farm. All the while I will be going to school to be a high school math teacher. This blog and my worm farm should occupy most of my free time (between full time work, school, and being a newly wed), they should also keep my expenses at a minimum. Which is important because I have a habit of getting into expensive projects (ex:project cars, sail boat, etc.)

For those of you who don't know what a worm farm is let me give you a brief overview:

Earthworms (red wrigglers in particular), do two things very well: 1)Eat, 2)Make more worms.  This is good for several different reasons. My big reason for starting worm composting was to reduce my waste output of my home, along with making nutritious soil for my garden.

Red worms eat pretty much anything that comes out of the ground (or anything made from things that come out of the ground). This ability to consume a large variety of waste makes them great for around-the-house composters. Many people, including myself, keep worm bins right in their kitchen. They don't smell, unless you add certain items, they allow you to actively recycle, they are low maintenance, and best of all they give you compost!

Earthworm poop (ie: vermicompost or castings) has a lot of nutritional value. In fact the nutrients in castings greatly exceed the nutrients of most man made fertilizer; making it a great organic fertilizer.

These worms in their worm bins not only eat and poo, but they get busy too. Worm bins have potential to grow exponentially because the worms have both male and female organs and can therefore can increase their population twice as fast. This makes them a great investment. I have started with about 1000 worms in April 2013 and so far (1 month) they have chewed through 3 inches of shredded paper in a standard file bin, along with some added food scraps and card board. After the one month I cleared out the bin of all the castings and placed the castings in my garden. In the castings there were already dozens of cocoons (worm eggs, each contains 3-12 worm babies). I left some of the cocoons with the worms in the bin, but I also threw some into my garden to hopefully add to the oomph of my garden.

Another great use for worms is fishing bait. Once you get enough worms in one place you can bet that they will reproduce just as fast as you can sell them.

Some of the larger companies have 3 sources of income from these worms. First they make money from a recycling stand point. People pay so they can dump their trash ant they just feed the trash to the worms. Then they sell the castings for people to use in their gardens. Lastly the worms are sold as live bait.

This eventually is the goal. I am working on breeding my worms to the point where I can accept recycling product from others, sell compost and sell worms. It will be a sole process, but that is ok because as I said earlier I need a cheap hobby.

I just, 5/15/13, filled up the bin with about 3 inches of leaves and dead grass that I raked out of my yard  and  threw in a few handfuls of clay/dirt from my garden to try to convert more dirt into soil.

Over the next few months and years I will keep updating this blog with: statuses on my ongoing project, breakthroughs in the worm world, different tequniches, tips and more; as well as answer any questions I can, and also asking some questions.  

Well that is all for now, I will talk to you all again soon!   Let me know if you have any questions, or answers for me!

Our Garden!

The Bin

Hello Again!

Today I thought I would describe my worm bin set up and walk you through with some pictures.

So like I have said in my previous post I feed my worms house hold scraps (left over fruits & veggies, paper scraps, tea bags & coffee filters, yard scraps, etc). I found that the most convenient way for me to feed the worms was to store up my scraps and give them all to the worms all at one or two days a week.

I store my fruit and veggie scraps in a plastic container that I keep in my kitchen. I keep it by the sink so when I am cutting up fruit or veggies I just pop the scraps in the top.

 

The picture below shows the slits I cut in the lid to make it easier to insert the scraps. The lid isn't necessary,  unless you are like me and have a curious cat that likes to knock things over.

  

So once my scrap bin is full I but it in the food processor. I have noticed that the worms eat up the smaller scraps that are well blended, as opposed to them trying to eat an apple whole. Also, I add a bit of water to the food when it is in the processor to help it blend easier, but also for added moisture. I hardly add any water to my bin, the moisture in the food seems to keep the contents moist. I keep my worm bin next to my kitchen counter, it is in a cool place out of the sun, and it is easy to get to.

 

To keep an airflow going I drilled a bunch of holes in the lid and it seems to keep the bin aired out, without letting out too much moisture.

  

I keep a few layers of cardboard on top of the bins contents to keep the moisture inside, it works pretty well. These sheets of cardboard have been in the bin for just over a month and they are just barely starting to get eaten. 

 

I keep some skewers inside the bin to help me move the castings around, dig holes for new food, check on the worms, etc.

 

This is the inside of the bin. Like I mentioned in my previous post I filled the bin with yard scraps (raked leaves and dead grass) and some dirt/clay/mud from my garden.

 

Just some of the dirt and yard clippings up close.

And here are some of the little workers that I pulled out of the pile. They are pretty small so it is possible that they are either pretty young, or they are malnourished (lack of water or food, more likely water since there is plenty of food in the bin for them).

 

Well thanks for reading!  I will be coming back in a day or two to talk about some other basics of the worm bin.

If you have any questions or comments please leave a comment below!!