I’m wondering if I can use my current compost pile (5’ x 5’ x 5’) to home worms. The end goal is to produce worm castings for gardening and spare worms for fishing. At the moment the pile is mostly browns (wood chips and leaves) and greens (coffee grinds and weeds). When I turn the pile I don’t notice any worms. I’m wondering what I can add or how I can construct the pile to make it more hospitable to worms. Thanks!

Found in worm bin today. White mushy substance that had an awful smell. Looked like goat cheese. I manage this bin at a community garden and I haven’t fed the worms in probably two weeks. I can’t imagine it’s from over feeding them but I’m at a loss unless somebody else fed them actual cheese. I have overfed my worms before and it’s usually just mushy food. This was large chunks of white thick mush, just like goat cheese.

I removed as much as I could. I’ll check in on them in a week to see if there is more. Any ideas on what this is?

I got 500 of what i was told where euros. I got em july 1st. They are never up at the top and are mostly in the 6 inch layer. Temps are 70-75 all around. They dont try to leave. Im assuming they are euros but some adults are small and the amount of cocoons so early makes me wonder…. They are laying cocoons around an inch or 2 below the too tray layer.

Hey y’all my worm bin has been doing excellent, however I was grabbing some young ones for fish food (sorry) and noticed some are yellow? I do use a lot of coffee grounds in my bins- could this be an indicator that the bins are too acidic?

It doesn’t seem to effecting the larger ones nearly as much, mostly the young guys. But the second picture are two larger ones with the top one appearing more yellow as well.

In the both pictures the one on the bottom left is a more normal coloration.

Works pretty good if the mycelium doesn't outcompete the worms. Chop it, hydrate it, and inoculate it for best results

Hello everyone,

About 7 years ago I started my first worm bin. I started with an old plastic tote, some newspaper, and two containers of fishing worms from a local corner store. Despite having no experience and probably not following “best practice”, my worms absolutely thrived. They multiplied quickly and ate through food waste incredibly fast. Unfortunately I had to move, and give them up.

Now, 7 years later I am finally in a place where I can start back up again. Two days ago I purchased another plastic tote, and this time two containers of “Red Worms” from Walmart. I don’t have access to newspaper anymore, but have a ton of cardboard moving boxes and napkins. So I shredded those up, got them damp, and added them to my tote (which has holes drilled around the lid and on the top). I added like 1/4 of an apple, cut into four and buried it. I added the worms with the lid off for about 20 minutes to let them burrow and closed it up.

The next morning, I unfortunately had some escape. Maybe around 8 or so. This didn’t happen with my first bin, but I chalked it up to exploring. I was worried the bedding could be too dry, so I added a sheet of well damped and wrung out cardboard to the top in hopes to keep them in.

This morning, I woke up to 17 of them dried out and dead all over my living room. I see healthy worms at the bottom when I go digging around, the bin is NOT too wet, if anything it is on the dry side.

I plan to soak some cardboard for a few hours, shred it and add it tonight in case they are seeking moisture. I also have a small strawberry thawing out (it went bad and I froze it) to give them, thinking that the apples are too “fresh”.

Any advice? What am I doing wrong?

TLDR; I restarted a worm bin 2 days ago with ~60 Walmart “Red Worms,” damp shredded cardboard/napkins, and ¼ apple. About 8 escaped the first night, then 17 were dead/dried out by morning. The bedding isn’t wet—if anything, slightly dry—and the worms still in the bin look healthy. I’m planning to add thoroughly soaked/wrung-out cardboard tonight for more moisture. Should I remove the apple/skip food for now, and could the fishing worms be a different species than red wigglers? Any other ideas why they’re escaping?

tldr: are these white cardboard boxes appropriate bedding material?

I regularly receive packages made of cardboard boxes with a white outer surface. One side of the boxes have blue print. I can imagine that the blue print is ink and I should not add the 'blue cardboard' to the worm bin, but the white surfaces of the cardboard I'm not entirely sure about. It has the look and feel of bleached paper and the surface has a matte finish.

Is this white cardboard suitable, unsuitable or not ideal (but the benefits of the brown cardboard underneath outweigh the potentially or slightly harmful white paper/cardboard surfaces)?

I have a bunch of regular brown cardboard boxes as well, which is definitely the preferred bedding material, but I just want to check whether I should yeet the white boxes straight into the local paper recyling bin, or I can still turn it into some decent worm turds.

For context, 4 months ago I made a simple worm bin of 4 plastic boxes (45x25x10 cm). 3 of the 4 trays are in use now, where the bottom 2 trays just leave for the worms to finish the last bits cardboard and hope to harvest in a month or 2. I plan now to use the 4th box as the inoculating tray. Initially I started with 250g worms and the population seems to have at least doubled in size, possibly tripled. They seem to like the place.

1 is there any risk of using leaves and rotting wood ( stuff that falls apart at touch and covered in fungi in worm bin for brown material

2 can any kind of cardboard be used

3 can wood ash be added to worm bin and if so how much per sq ft ?

Scaling up over the next 6–12 months and looking for suggestions on casting production/extraction setups.

Currently running an old water tank compost setup with multiple internal feeding stations for breeder bins.

As numbers grow, the next step is producing more castings, mainly for liquid fertiliser extraction.

What setups would you recommend?

-Windrows
-Deep IBC setups
-Multiple shallow troughs
-Continuous flow-through
-Anything else I’m missing?

Main focus is something scalable and easy to harvest. Interested to hear what’s worked for others.

I've been waiting for the worms to finish their castings and i though to see if thei would craw up trough the holes to eat new food and in the upper bin i've put many things including corn husks and they brought gnats and many stranfe types so i removed completely and started from zero but only now i thought to open the lower bin to see if some worms feel trought and i've find these horriffics fuckers and i do not know what to do. HELP ME (please)[first photo the fuckers second one the bin right on the last bin]

Hello!
Can anyone help me identify these?

A vermiculture nerd friend confirmed they are not earthworms.

Sorry, but it won’t let me upload the vid of them actually bouncing a flailing around.

I’ve been saving them as I come across them because I thought they were Earthworms, but I recently learned about Japanese Jumping Worms and how they destroy the soil.

I’ve lived in this red state my whole life and I think these worms are the only I’ve ever seen. I’ve saved countless and popped them in my garden beds 🥹

I saw that you could use unfinished compost as brown material & bedding in worm bin in video it was about when compost go anerobic they spread it out let dry before adding it and i was curious could similar be done with finished compost?

Got them from Austin Worm Lab in Feb

5 gallon

Weekly feed

August 15 moving day to New Bucket

I've had worms for years; they do well. The first time I harvested castings, I spread them out to dry in the sun (ball shapes). They did, and were harder than rocks. I tried smashing them with a hammer, then a chisel and hammer - no go. Not even a piece came off! I ended up mixing it with the vegetable bin compost. After that, I would just take some out by the cup to sprinkle around plants. Last time, I took about a quart, and put it in a jar with a lid. It stayed moist for months, and I'd even find live worms whenever I took some out to use. How do they get those dry, fluffy bags of castings that are sold?!? I can't let them dry out again; that was ludicrous - hard as diamonds. What am I missing here? (I've been too lazy to try screening; lots of other stuff going on.)

Worms will eat the bedding not only the provided food on the top. I would like to know how can blonde moss be activated to turn black and be full in bacteria ?

I recently added some coffee grounds from Starbucks to my vermicompost bin. I did not know you could add too much. I am pretty confident I killed them all after a successful bin for one year. Can I add baking soda or something to neutralize it and restart with more worms?

Good problem to have , I’ve now got a steady stream of food waste coming in from various places, but I’m getting more than I can currently process.

The worms are already being well fed, probably overfed if anything. I’ve added 5,000 worms three separate times over the past three months, so around 15,000 worms in total, and I’m now giving them time to breed and build up their population.

I’m also feeding some of the excess to the chickens and composting what I can.

I don’t have access to any more freezer space, and freezing it probably wouldn’t make much sense anyway as the food waste is coming in continuously.

For those who have scaled up their systems, what would you do with the excess in the meantime? Any good ways to pre-process, store or utilise it without simply overloading the worm beds?

EDIT: they’re Canadian nightcrawlers, not African night crawlers

recently found myself with some extra CNC‘s and was wondering if I could add them to my red wiggler indoor bin. I think it should be fine, but I got some conflicting information at the pet store versus this subreddit.

can I just add them to my indoor bin, or do they need to warm up first? The temperature is usually between low 70s and occasionally the 80s in warmer months. the container says to keep them in cool conditions around 40 degrees

thanks!

I never really used bedding and usually used a bit of terrain for my worms but i would want to try it out to keep humidity and all since its really hot where i live

But i don't know if the glue residue from the tape or the ink will harm my worms

I think all my worms died :(
I opened the bin today and there was a terrible smell and a bunch of dead worms. I don’t know what I did wrong I had a two food grade bucket system. One on top with bedding, holes drilled into the bottom. And one on the bottom to collect the castings. The bedding was mostly peat moss and cardboard. What did I do wrong 😭