Do I need to be mixing more?

16 years ago

I built and filled a wooden worm box, very basic, about 2 feet by 3 feet I think this past June with newspaper strips, a few handfuls of soil, and one pound of redworms. This is my first box, and was kept in a shed next to my house all summer and is now in the basement. I have had a thermometer inside the box since the beginning and it never got over 85 degrees or under 50ish.

My question is, there seem to quite a few healthy big worms in there, but the progress of breaking down all the bedding is much slower than I expected. There is still quite a bit of bedding on top they won't touch. Should I mix it in with what's on the bottom to aerate it more, or just try to keep it moist and bury food not so deep? It does seem a bit dense at the bottom... I really don't think I'm overfeeding, if anything I'm underfeeding them.

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Comments (4)

fosteem1
16 years ago
spiderprincess13,

Worm bins start out slow and you started with a large bin for one pound of worms. Worms need to bump into each other to mate. So things were moving a little slow at first. But as you have more babies hatch. Food processing will slowly pick up. Your herd should double every 3 months. So you should start seeing faster processing in the next couple months.

You don't need to mix the top bedding in. In fact you should be adding more bedding on top as you feed. Keep it about 3 or more inches deep at all times.

If you think you are underfeeding try to use corrugated cardboard as the bedding it is both food ( paste ) and bedding.

Some growers claim that you can grow worms on just corrugated cardboard by itself.
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Jasdip
16 years ago
spiderprincess:
I certainly think the bin is pretty large for just 1 lb of worms. They like to be in close proximity with one another for breeding. Try putting a temporary wall or barrier across the width of the bin to shorten it. I've done this with one of my indoor bins, when I had just a few worms in one. I stuck a big chunk of styrofoam in to to make the bin smaller. It worked great, and the worms multiplied faster.

If you don't see a lot of food sitting in the bin over a period of time, you can certainly feed more. Once the food is gone, or even when the worms are all over it, feed some more in another spot.
Maybe they aren't getting enough food.

I wouldn't worry about the bedding not getting eaten. It's good cover for the food. You want them to eat the food, anyway.
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seamommy
16 years ago
When you have a deep bin the worms will rarely go out on top of the bedding, even if it is moist. But usually it will be much drier than the rest of the bedding and the little guys don't like that very much. You don't say how deep your worm box is, but that air space between the top of the bedding and the lid (if you have one)is kinda like a big no-worms-land. If you have a plastic lid from an old trash can or a rubbermaid bin you could cut it down to fit your wooden box and use it to shield the bedding from the light and keep in moisture. You'll find the worms eating and hanging out in the bedding on the top then.

I bought one of those (immorally) expensive flo-thru bin systems and it came with a nice little plastic lid that just fits the tray. It's very convenient, but the trays looked like they were about 3' square in the picture and when they arrived were only about 15" square. Very tiny and hardly adequate for raising very many worms or making much compost.

DH thinks I'm crazy too for bothering with it. He has 8 compost bins outside, each measureing 4' x 4' x 4'. He has turned out about 300 gallons of finished, sifted compost this summer, while my little guys made about 4 quarts of castings. I think you were a lot smarter than I when you built your wooden worm bin. Cheryl
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sandy808
16 years ago
Cheryl, you're not crazy! Worm castings are a far superior product to standard compost. Regular compost is great for the soil, and it is wonderful your husband is doing this, but worm castings are GOLD. I've had magic happen with my plants when I started adding vermicompost.

Sandy
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Do I need to be mixing more?

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fosteem1

Jasdip

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