Worms!

[Odd Tree]

MY worms are soooo freakin happy, i think. 
they are lively, and slowly, but surly eating away at the food i smear out for them. i found these little black globbs all over the bottom part of the tub. 

i'm pretty sure that's worm terds, castings .... poo ... compost if you will. it's very encouraging to see them poop alot after only 10 days. i give them mostly veggie scraps, leftover pulp from juicing, and when i blend something for them i throw some oats and a table spoon of coffee grounds in there for them. we drink so much coffee, that i would probably kill them if i put it all in there, so most of it goes to the compost. but i still think it's too much. this must be a sign that i need to build another compost pile :)


as you can see. their bedding is 90% shredded news paper. i chose this because i have a paper rout. and i'm trying to turn old news papers into black gold. so far they seem to be living in it happily. i do notice that it dries out quickly along the top and around the edges. i have been spritzing them 3 or 4 times a day. it's no hassle tho, they live in my bedroom, at the foot of my bed. 

when i started them, i crushed boiled egg shells in the with newspaper and spread around a quart of soil from the outside. then i added aprox 100 worms. and now we wait .........  

[Jim Fisk]

Sorry, I meant 1/4" holes.

[Jim Fisk]

Hey Pat, thanks for the details. As to the forum I may have to join to see your pics. I didn't think of that. Often the case. Or I was just being my usual impatient self.

I was thinking of making enough barrel bins that I could wait till the worms finished pretty much everything and then toss the worms and all into the dirt garden rather than sifting, etc. Meanwhile I can steal enough out of each to give the fish some real food. (worms of course) The 55's are only 8.00 ea. around here so 4.00 per bin is pretty reasonable. Do you think 1/2 a barrel is big enough. The one I am using now is about 3/4 of the barrel. Even if I have to use it almost whole it is still cheap considering they should last forever.

I was wondering if worms would escape thru the bottom air holes that I drilled prob 1/2". I raised it on some pvc pipe to discourage such activity when it occurred to me

[Pat James]

Jim, mold won;t hurt anything but I do not like to see too much of it. I generally pull from my 'kitchen scrap' tumbler to feed my worms so most of the mold is taken care of that way. I thought the worm pics are embedded in the discussions and blog posts, or at least they were. My greenhouse is too small to put compost in it, but I think it is a good idea.

I tend to fill my worm bins to the top. But then my 3 main bins are of the flow-thru variety.  I have some totes where I sift the whole contents at about monthly intervals. I add back the larger material and then  I fill with composted material from the tumbler.

I double sift, first through a 1/4 inch screen and then through a 1/8 in screen.

[Odd Tree]

nice system jim. i don't think the mold will hurt the worms. i've already seen a growth spurt of mycelium in my bin, and it seems to actually be helping. when i layer the food on the bin, it takes about 2 days and the then the mycelium takes over for another 2 days, and then after the mycelium has subsided is when the worms will move in on the new food smear. it seems to me that the fungus is beneficial, almost necessary. 

[Jim Fisk]

Hey Guys, Thanks for the link Pat but I still don't see many pics:-?

I've been high rate composting over the years now but I have always put off worms until now because now I want to grow them for the fish. I am getting some white mold and wondered if that could hurt the worms. Here are a couple of pics of the worm bin and the white mold and one of my 22' long high rate rotating composter:

In the composter I first grind up everything including meat and bones and it hits 170 F within a day. I feed it once a week, rotate it once a day and the finished compost comes out the other end continuously and screened. Takes 2 weeks from garbage to finished compost. I will be building one out of plastic barrels this time as the steel drums don't last more than 2 yrs.. Will help heat the AP GH as well.

The composter was featured in Yankee Mag. some yrs. ago. Last Summer I replaced the gas motor on our Mac grinder with a 2 hp electric and it is like a whole new machine. Been meaning to do that for about 20 yrs. Nice to be finally settled in to a place we never want to leave again.

Should I be concerned about the mold?

[Odd Tree]

thanks for the info and links guys! i knew that the newspaper ink is soy based. i use the newspapers because i toss papers on sunday. actually me and 2 of my cousin share 2 paper routs here in town so i am up to my eyeballs in newspapers. my uncle is a famous tie dye artist and most of my extra papers end up being used for his wonderful art, but i am still up to my eyeballs in them. yesterday i discovered a new problem! i have mites! this is unsettling as i have been keeping the bin in my bedroom where it is nice and toasty. i don't have a problem with mites, except that they bite, and i have a small child in the house. i'll be updating today or tomorrow on the mites and what my plan of action is. 

thanks again for the info

[Pat James]

This is a link to my page on the vermicomposting site. I have not been on there for a while except to lurk. But if you look at my blogs and discussions, you will see my systems and how I raise worms.  http://vermicomposters.ning.com/profile/PatJames238

[Jim Fisk]

Sounds like a great system Pat. Love to see a pic or 2 when you get the chance. Been planning to start a worm bin for years and finally got to it. Sounds like you have done your homework and some things have changed since I last read up on it. We always have so much greens that I will stay away from print anyway. Been out catching night crawlers the last few nights and when the temps near 60 at night they are everywhere so it doesn't take long. The Trout love them as well. Lift a board near the sheep barn and collect a hundred there in no time also. Looking forward to those castings and making castings tea to spray on the GH veggies for the critters trying to eat everything.

[Pat James]

I have been raising compost worms for a while now. I usually save back somewhere between 50 and 70 gallons of carefully sifted worm castings each winter.  Right now I have aobut 50 gallons and am using it constantly.

I use both cardboard and newspaper as the basic bedding. Modern newspaper ink is soy-base. While I do NOT use the glossy advertising pages of newspapers and junkmail, I still use other paper that might be considered questionable. like office papers which contain stuff from copiers and the like.

what I do is shred all my waste paper and then add it to my kitchen scraps snd whatever other  compostable waste I might have. All goes into a tumbler where it mixes and gets innoculated from whatever was already there. I grab out stuff as I need to fill my worm bins.

There are as many ways to grow worms as their are composters. I do very well as far as casting production with a relatively small number of worms.

[Jim Fisk]

BTW, I love your avatar. My kind of people