Too much waste for worms is more than they can eat in a week.
More food waste than your worm
bin can handle?
This time of year it is easy to have too much waste for your worm bin, particularly if your bin is on the small side. One solution for this, of course, is to get yourself an additional bin and/or a bigger bin. More space means more worms = more waste that can be handled.
Between the garden and the likely hood that you are buying more fresh fruits and vegetables to eat, now that so many wonderful offerings are available, is a recipe for overfeeding the worms.
Don’t!
One of my readers asked if he could cook the excess vegetable waste?
You don’t have to cook it. Just process it in a food processor (small enough that you can take the product and form balls out of it) place it on a cookie sheet and freeze. Then place the frozen balls into freezer bags for storage…. When you are ready to use just take out the quantity of frozen balls you want to use, de-thaw, squeeze the excess moisture out of them (unless your bin needs the moisture) and feed the worms. Processing and freezing the waste helps kill pest eggs on the surface of fresh fruit (ie. fruit flies) and vegetable skins and helps break down the cellular wall of the waste thus allowing the bacteria, fungi, etc…quick access to the food waste.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, the best thing to do with your food waste is to put it back into the earth. This book is an excellent read, and will give you the best picture of the overall process – from soil to your kitchen table. It’s whats gardening is all about…being a good steward, planting, growing, harvesting, eating, handling your waste, being a good steward…
Because red worms are such great composters we think of them as composters. The compost or castings (poop) are usually seen as the true value of the Eisenia fetida.
But when you consider their other name, red wiggler, it comes to mind that the red worm is also a terrific fishing worm. Because of their smaller size the whole worm is used and thus stays alive on the hook, and true to its name, wiggles its way into the sight of a passing fish.
Now, directly out of the “composting” bin one would think that the size of the red worm is too small to efficiently work as fish bait, and you would probably be right. When growing red worms the methods you use depend on the end result. If you are growing for the end product you farm the worms differently than if you were growing for fish bait.
Eisenia fetida
As usual I have received a question from a reader asking me how to fatten his worms for use as fish bait. Therefore I have decided to write this post.
First of all you need to set yourself up a bin specifically for your fish bait worms. You need to separate out mature worms that are already of good size from the rest of the herd. I would bed them in relatively young manure, having composted for at least 6 months but not much more. You could also use Peat or Coir. Keep the bedding dryer than if you were farming for the vermicompost. The bedding should be loose and well aired by turning frequently. Ideal temperature for growth is between 60 and 70 degrees.
Feed the worms with a special fattening food and nothing else. Keep the food supply steady. Do not over-feed.
Here is the recipe for fattening food:
5 parts chicken layer pellets or chick starter
2 parts wheat or rice bran
2 parts alfalfa pellets
1 part whole wheat flour
1 part agricultural lime
1 part powdered milk
I would use a blender or food processor to mix and grind all the ingredients together and sprinkle the end product over the bedding. I use an old flour sifter and it works great at getting a nice even layer over the bed. Then spray the feed with a moistening layer of water, cover and let the worms go to work.
European Nightcrawler
Eisenia fetida is my worm of choice. I have been farming them for 12 years now and have found them reliable, easy, and fast producing. However, if I were to be farming worms for fish bait I might use a different worm. The European Nightcrawler!
These worms are naturally big and plump, 2 to 3 times the size of their cousins, Eisenia fetida. I fell in love with them the first batch I ever saw. They flip/flop around and stay active in very cold water. I do not have these worms for sale at this time.
Manure tea has been around since cows and gardeners occupied the same piece of land – throw some manure in a bucket, fill it with water and let it sit, stirring occasionally. I guess it must of worked because people kept doing it.
Fast-forward to today and we know more about ecoli and other bad nasties that can kill you and we don’t recommend making manure tea like that anymore.
Actually, we have a much safer way now that produces a higher quality tea that will do much more for your garden and plants than any old fashioned tea could ever do.
We are of course talking about Actively Aerated Compost Tea.
We use compost instead of manure because the composting process when handled properly will kill all the ecoli and other bad nasties mentioned earlier. This leaves a robust, friendly bacteria, fungi, microbial filled material that when brewed in a favorable environment produces a tea with millions and billions times more friendly life. This tea will combat disease and pests simply by occupying the space on the leaf surfaces and out competeing the bad guys. A soil drench will fill the soil in the root zone with all the microbial life in the tea.
This is an effective, organic, environmentally friendly way to fight your battle against disease and pests and has been shown to work.
Of course there are terrific brewing systems out there, which when used properly produce the highest quality AACT, proven by examination under a microscope. I have one of the best available on my website.
5-gallon brewer
However, I know that there are many people out there that will not spend the money because they do not have it or they are simply people who like to build their own.
Here are a few things you must know and must follow to end up with a safe, quality, effective brewed tea.
You must start with a quality product. If you are using dead or sick compost you are not going to have life in your tea. This is not magic, it is science. You are taking a high quality compost, full of life and you are going to put it in an environment where you can effectively grow more of that life. You are going to provide air and food to grow massive amounts of this life. As soon as the conditions change and are not condusive to growing this life, the life will start dieing.
The water you use must not have chlorine or other chemicals in it that would kill off the life in your product. The water must gas off by sitting or being aerated.
You must provide adequate air to all portions of your material.
You must keep your brewer absolutely clean between brewing cycles.
That being said, here is a simple system that can be built for those of you on a budget or who just want to do it themselves.
The compost is loose in a pail and bubbled with a 50-65 gallon standard aquarium pump with two outlets and two standard airstones.
Standard recipe is a couple of handfuls of compost and/or Alaska humus small handful of greensand, handful of brewers malt for fungal growth and a touch of molasses. You can also use some wheat bran or oat bran if it is available.
Bubble the mixture for about a day. It should smell rich and earthy.
Strain the mix through cheesecloth and spray the resulting solution immediately. The purpose here is to spray all surfaces, top and bottom of the leaf. You can also use as a soil drench.
Very simple, very effective, and cost effective. This system was shared on a group I belong to. Follow the must dos above:
use quality product
gas off your water
keep it aerated
provide adequate food
keep it clean
and the results will be a tea that will do the job. Just remember to use it immediately. Once you turn the air off the microbial population will start to die.
Make sure you follow standard protocol for spraying edibles when you spray plants that have edible food on them. And as always, make sure you wash the food well before eating. This is just common sense, right?
The picture here is of finished, dried and sifted castings which are the bomb when it comes to soil amendment. You know that means good, right?
Anyway, the longer you let your worms work your material the more percentage of castings are going to be in your finished material.
For someone who is a home composter producing product for themselves to use in their own gardens, you would not need to process the product to this point. However, for use in a seed starting mix, this product is perfect as it is so fine.
Now for the reason of this post. I had a comment left on one of my YouTube videos about a statement I made about the worms and their castings. The comment was made in reference to worms eating their own cast. This is something I have read from the experts and not concluded on my own.
Quote from Kelly Slocum – “expert”: “Let’s debunk this myth that worm castings are bad for worms. Worms need the most biologically active environment they can find in order to grow at maximum. The cast of the worm can be as much as six times MORE biologically active than is the OM [organic matter] they ingest. As such, castings are beneficial in the system since they increase the microbial activity. In fact, worms will reingest their own castings over and over again, even in the presence of a rich food source. Some of the most productive worm beds in the world are maintained by removing castings just once per year. Now, having said that, castings can also be very dense. If you get a castings build up low in the bin it can sometimes restict air movement. You’ll want to watch bin conditions and, if you find the worms are reacting to low O2 levels, clean out the castings.
For the longest time, when I was new at worm bin composting, I was under the impression that the cast was toxic to worms. I now know this to not be true.
Within in two days of each other I have had questions about worm bin composting in the heat and in the cold. I thought I would try to address each of these issues at the same time.
Please note: specific temperatures are guidelines only and are established through my own experience. Each situation is unique and has many other variables that will come into play such as exposure to wind, sun, excess moisture, size of bin, ambient temperature, etc.
Good sized, healthy redwiggler, not mature yet - no clitellum.
Red worms, specifically Eisenia fetida, are very hardy and can withstand temperature extremes better than many other species. Even so, as the temperatures ease out of the optimum range the worm will become stressed and will cease to eat and become lethargic.
This is a mature worm, as you can clearly see the clitellum.
Surprisingly enough, Eisenia fetida likes their home environment to be in the same temperature range as the rest of us, between 68 and 72 degrees. While this is the ideal range, the worm will happily continue working at a low range of 50 degrees all the way up to the low 80’s. Once the temperature extends beyond these extremes the worm will cease eating. Ideal mating temperature ranges are probably a bit narrower than that, but if the herd feels threatened they will often produce more cocoons, as the cocoon can survive extreme hardships.
Specific question dealing with heat issue is this:
I am in North Texas and we will likely have extreme temperatures in the summer….at its worst we can go several days with highs in the upper 90s and lows in the high 80s–plus we will have some stretches of 100+ degrees. Are there ways to keep the worms cool in these conditions? I could put them in the garage I guess…but I would rather have them outside.
Also, can you just use a meat thermometer to measure the temp of the bedding?
Now, it is important to remember that ambient temperature (outside air temperature) is not as important as the temperature in the bin. While the outside air temperature does ultimately effect the temperature in the bin, the bedding acts as insulation. The bigger the bin, the better the insulative qualities. Also, the length of time that the outside air temperature is at the extreme will come into play as well. The best thing to do in these extremes is to have a compost thermometer to accurately gauge the temperature in the bedding where the worms are.
That being said, the temperature of the bedding is where it is important to keep tabs on the temperature. It is imperative you understand that you are working with a composting system here. Ideally the worms are doing the composting for you, but as you add various components to the system (bedding, food stock, water, air) you are providing the perfect conditions for the material to start composting without the aid of the worms and thus the temperature will be on the rise.
In these situations, when the outside ambient temperature is on the rise as well, it will be very important for you to keep a very close eye on the conditions inside the bin.
HOT AND DRY WILL KILL YOUR WORMS!
THE ONLY THING WORSE WOULD BE A TOXIC CONDITION !
Here are some things that will help keep your bins cooler in extreme heat:
Watch what you are putting in the bin. Don’t mix it up too much when the temperatures outside are on the rise. Add food stock in small amounts. If you have a lot of food waste to process, build an additional conventional compost pile where you can put your food waste to pre-compost.
Additional moisture – evaporation is a natural cooling mechanism. Think of how your own body cools itself when it is overheated, you sweat! However, care must be taken that you do not create a toxic condition where there is too much moisture and not enough air. The moisture needs to be applied lightly and often. I have found a nice insulative layer of shredded newspaper helps.
If the bin is smaller and mobile make sure it is in plenty of shade and out of any drying wind. Also see to it that the excess moisture has somewhere to go. If the bin is too big to move and is in an undesireable location then protection must be provided.
Finally, if you have a stretch of hot temperatures and the temperature in the bin is rising to an alarming level you may have to help the evaporation process along by adding some air movement along the surface of the bin. I have been known to set up a small fan at the end of each bin to blow across the surface of the bin. More moisture will have to be added to compensate for the moisture loss. But don’t overcompensate and drench the bedding. Keep a close eye on the moisture level in the lower portions of the bedding.
The heat issue is a delicate dance and can be a bit more complicated than the other end of the spectrum.
Here is the question about extreme cold:
You commented that E. foetida impressed or surprised you in their
ability to take the cold. I was wondering how cold have they been and
survived it? I keep mine in the kitchen nearly year-round without much
trouble-only an occasional fruitfly explosion when there’s lots of
fruit in the summer–it would be nice to know their tolerances should
there be some sort of outbreak like the fruitflies in cold weather. It
would be really useful to know how cold they can take it, so I know
when it’s safe to have them outdoors on the porch and when they must
come in.
I live in zone6-7 and we do sometimes get down to zero, but not every
year and not for long when we do. So…could you elaborate about the
cold? Or if it’s already covered somewhere in your blog, perhaps you
have a link? Haven’t got round to reading it yet, but I mean to. I’ve
had my worms about a year now.
What this person is referring to is a video I made about my bins one spring after spending the winter without heat. The differentiation here is that my bins are big compared to most indoor bins. My bins are 4′ x 8′ heated fiberglas bins. Again the mass of bedding aids in insulating the worms from extreme temperatures.
I also work my bins in such a way as to have active composting producing heat in the bins as we go into winter. However, even considering these specifics, I was still amazed that my worms survived frozen bedding. The bedding was not frozen solid, I could still insert a compost fork into the bedding, but the bedding was definitely in the freezing zone.
But, I would still advise against putting an indoor bin outside regardless of the situation for a couple of reasons.
An indoor bin does not have the insulative mass of a larger bin.
The bin has been acclimated to indoor temperatures and would not adjust to suddenly being thrust into any extreme, be it cold or hot.
Once you have an outbreak of fruitflies, putting the bin outside will only serve to leave the fruitflies flying aimlessly around your kitchen or where ever you have had your bin.
Instead I would avoid any fruitfly problems by handling the food waste in such a way as to discourage them. Besides, I have never had a fruitfly problem in the winter.
Wash all fruits and vegetables well before you use them. This is something that is encouraged anyway, but especially wash the fruits that harbor fruitflies – bananas, cantaloupe, etc
Freeze all food waste before adding it to the worm bin, this will effectively kill the eggs that have hitched a ride home with you.
Bury all food waste beneath a thick layer of moistened, shredded newspaper. This acts like a blanket over your composting food waste and is easily pulled back to check on the bin and to add fresh food waste. It creates a barrier to any flying pests that would try to use your food waste to lay eggs in.
Avoiding a problem during temperature extremes is always better than thrusting your bin out into extreme temperatures to fix the problem later.
That’s it for now. Please let me know if I have created further questions regarding handling your bins in temperature extremes.
Remember that your worms will thrive under specific conditions and your job is to try and keep your bins functioning under those conditions.
The whole package, plus you get an instructional DVD!
Available now in multiple colors!!
Forest Green, Black, and Terracotta
I love the tower bins because they are so flexible. Each tray is managable and when you are ready to harvest the material, no matter what stage it is in, the worms can be manipulated and coaxed out of the existing material.
My favorite aspect of the 360 is the base! Powerful!
How much bedding do you put into each tray of a multiple bin, stackable worm bin when first starting and how full do you get them?
As usual in worm bin composting this question has more than one answer. It depends on the bedding that you are using.
For instance – manure is a dense material and does not allow for much compaction once the next tray is put on top of it. Therefore I would fill the tray almost to the top of the spacer bar, allowing for enough room for feeding and a layer of shredded newspaper over the feed stock.
For newspaper I would fill the tray all the way with dampened shredded newspaper, because there is so much more room for compaction. Shredded newspaper has so much airspace in the material that some weight needs to be applied to push out some of those air pockets. Note: however you do not want to compress the newspaper so much that you remove all of the possibility for air to be present in the bedding. The bedding needs to be able to remain “fluffy” without compressing all the air out of it. The worms need air.
The design of the tower worm bins keeps the tray from putting its weight on the material in the tray beneath it.
The spacer on the Can-O-Worms is on the inside of the tray.
This allows the bedding in the lower tray to build up to the bottom of the top tray. The worms are able to follow their natural tendencies to move up to the food and naturally migrate up into the next tray.
If you start a tray with enough bedding to allow for food stock and a layer of shredded newspaper,your next tray when placed on that tray should start out touching the material in the tray beneath it. As the worms work the material it will naturally settle and consequently need to be worked with your hands to incorporate air back into the bedding.
At some point the material will obviously be blacker, more dense, and ready for the worms to move out of it. At that point I would put a small amount of bedding in the new tray above it and wait to see the worms start to migrate up into it. That is when I would fill the next tray, add food stock and your layer of shredded newspaper and start the process all over again.
The spacer on the Worm Factory is on the outside of the tray
You will continue to work the original tray to keep air incorporated into the material and allowing it to finish composting and perhaps dry out. If the worms do not want to evacuate the material then I move that tray to the top of the tower and work the material earnestly, to dry the material and drive the worms down into the working tray. By the time all the worms have moved out of your original tray your material will be ready to use in your gardening adventures.
Often I have questions asked that really have no right or wrong answer.
Specifically, the question below could simply be answered, you can separate your worm bin at any time once you have it established. Obviously, the more populated the bin, the faster the new bins will populate. But there is no right or wrong time to expand your worm bin.
Dear Christy,
I have a 5 tray system with 1000 worms. I harvested 2000 or more eggs. When do I need to make another home?
Dawn S.
Does your worm bin look like this? Then divide...
Dawn,
Expand your worm bin when the population fills the existing bin. This will be a visual judgment. When it seems that the bedding is overrun with worms just separate the bedding into two separate parts and start two new bins. Keep doing this over and over. Keep the worms happy and they will happily populate your bins. There’s no right or wrong way to do it.
Leave the worm eggs in the bedding to hatch.
Why are you harvesting the worm eggs from the bin?
I am sure there are reasons to harvest the worm eggs from the bedding.
Cocoons in bedding of leaves.
I have a customer in Hong Kong who is not able to receive shipment of worms without an agricultural license. He has asked if I can perhaps ship him cocoons.
But for the typical worm bin composting operation, I don’t really see a need for this. You risk not storing your cocoons properly and loosing them. This represents anywhere from 2 or 3, up to 20 worms per cocoon. That would be a huge loss from your farm.
I recommend not harvesting the worm eggs, but leaving them in the bedding and use the existing bedding with worms and cocoons to start your new bins.
Purina Worm Chow is my main stay feed. The manure and other bedding material the worms happily eat keeps them in the perfect environment, but the worm chow is the best, easiest, daily feed, especially when things get hectic and I don’t have time to process and properly administer and monitor organic waste.
Other bedding I provide consists of partially composted leaves, small amounts of grass clippings, and shredded newspaper. This would mostly be considered carbon material (except the grass, which depending on how green it is could be counted as nitrogen material). Always remember that even though you are working with worms you are still working with a live composting system, and as such as you add material and mix the ingredients up you will get active composting which will begin to heat up. You must be very careful when you add material to your system that you don’t generate too much heat and kill your worms.
That being said, my personal preference is to provide as varied a diet as possible. Each type of food stock has its own set of bacteria/fungi that feed on it and help the decomposition process. This variety makes for a high quality, very desirable end product.
When I speak of different types of food stock I include the bedding material. The worms eat anything organic and therefore consider everything – bedding and “food stock” – food stock. It all gets broken down my bacteria, fungi and other unseen microbes that the worms then feed on and subsequently poop.
And there you have it! Vermicompost and CASTINGS!!
My vermicompost is about 50/50 castings to compost.
The longer you let your worms work in the material provided the more concentrated your finished product will be with castings.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s all good. But the castings are the best. The castings to me are more important than what most people call the tea, which is just leachate. It is more important to me to keep the worm bin healthy so the castings are of a high quality than it is to try and get “tea” (leachate) from the bin. In order to get a quantity of “tea” (leachate) from the bin the moisture level has to be high.
Better to keep the moisture/oxygen level optimum for the worms than to get extra moisture from the bin for “tea” (leachate).
I often see posts in various forums and groups that indicate that what the worm composter is trying to do is get more “worm tea” from the composting system.
For many years at my local farmers’ market, I would process and sell gallon jugs of my own “worm tea”. I sold this tea for $1.50/gallon and many of my customers swore by it. I even had an organic farmer who would buy all my excess that I didn’t sell each market.
I worked hard to produce a quality “tea”, putting it through no less than three filters before I filled recycled milk jugs for market. My “tea” had no smell and was often mistaken for cider or apple juice at market.
At some point my bins quit producing so much tea as I figured out the proper balance of moisture for my bins and worms. The effort taken to produce the “tea” soon had me making the decision to not process the “tea” anymore.
My bins were healthier.
The tea off a worm bin is nothing more than leachate. This is just excess moisture that has perculated through the bedding, admittedly picking up a certain amount of nutrients, depending on how long the bin has been working.
In my opinion “worm tea” is not the primary by-product a worm bin composter should be trying to produce. Excess moisture in the worm bin can adversely affect the quality of any castings (worm poop) the bin will produce. Too much moisture can create an anaerobic condition in the bin building up toxic conditions that essentially poison the castings and eventually the worms if the condition goes unchecked.
It is more important to keep a healthy balance of moisture and air in the bin to produce the highest quality castings possible.
If someone wants a true “worm tea”, “compost tea”, “vermicompost tea”, then you need to brew it using a high quality compost/vermicompost/castings. The experts call this kind of tea AACT – Actively Aerated Compost Tea.
You make AACT using a brewer like this one:
High quality tea is an incredible product.
When you are brewing compost tea you are growing a huge colony of beneficial bactera, fungi, and/or protozoa. These are soil microbes that help build a healthy soil that help support healthy plant growth.
These soil microbes need food and air to reproduce. As soon as the food and air are depleted the population starts to die off.
Do some homework on your own and learn more about AACT or “worm tea”. I will have more information on this subject in future posts.
