In this part of the series I am going to discuss two different fallacies most websites and even manufacturers will state are the golden rules when raising worms.

1. Stir or not to stir your worm bin.

2. The correct way to judge how many worms to place in your worm bin.

Many websites state you should turn your worm bedding once or twice a week. Heck even the directions from Purina Worm Chow state twice a week. Before I go into the reasoning of why not to turn your worm bin when raising worms allow me to take you back to nature once again to a wooded area where worms are thriving.

In natural setting worms are left alone to go about their business. There are no giant hands reaching down from the heavens turning the material they are thriving in. As most learn early on when trying worm composting for the first time, unlike regular composting one does not need to turn the material as the worms burrow through it aerating it as the consume it.

Some will say it doesn’t really matter however it does. When you turn the bedding material in your worm bin, the worms will stop eating and reproducing for up to 24 to 48 hours. If they stop performing their everyday task something has upset them whether it be your pH is off, bedding is too dry or wet or you turned the bedding!

One can better see the results of turning the bedding material if they are top feeding. Notice there is much more food left behind the following day or so…

Another fallacy which I am guilty of too since it was the way I learned, was to figure how many worms to place in a worm bin based on cubic footage and worms by the pound.

First let me show you how a pound of worms can differ greatly. I can take a pound of African nightcrawlers when they are about one month old which will roughly run about 1,000 to 1,200 worms.

When we sell the eight month old African nightcrawlers they run about 200 per pound and I have even grown some out larger running about 175 per pound.

Now if I were to take a pound of the 1 month old African nightcrawlers (1,000 +) and place in as other websites (an myself until recently) in one cubic foot of bedding material, the worms will never grow out to their potential… not even close to it. Being the worms will be crowded, they will remain stunted until such a time they are thinned out to the required room each worm needs.

Just the other week I noticed that a bed outside of Alabama Jumpers was not performing well. None were dying however they were not growing. They were consuming all the food every few days however it was jammed packed with worms. I decided a week and a half ago to expand the size of the bed and began feeding the entire larger bedding area. A week and a half later I looked and all the small worms were gone… Not really however in that short period of time they had literally all spread out and were thinned but had tripled in size! Now keep in mind with my studies of the worms, I have setup which is probably a near perfect environment for them as well as some of the food I am using which is something I will not go into as it can and will kill off a good number if not all your worms if not done correctly.

Going back in time to the early 1900’s utilizing some books on my shelves and some records I was able to look up the other day, based on some of the richest known soils in the U.S. back then per square acre, I was able to perform some quick calculations and come to realize that is was approximately only 133 earthworms per cubic foot of soil. This is roughly the number of worms in an almost perfect environment for the earthworms in which they themselves setup as the allotted room they need in their natural surroundings. Now keep in mind the types of specific worms were not listed just the term earthworms which differ from composting worms such as red wigglers.

How many times have you dug a shovel load of soil from a rich garden bed and had 300 to 400 worms per shovel load?

Now to be honest with you I cannot take all the credit here as there is a person named George in Australia that hooked up with me some time ago as he was raising Alabama Jumpers and other worms in a controlled environment and seen I was doing the same. However George is way ahead of me and has given me some insight to raising the jumpers and other worms… one being the breaking down the number of worms per cubic foot. If you live in Australia and looking to order some worms, please do visit his site.

Now going back to the rough number I came up with of 133 worms per cubic foot is perhaps a little low for some worms and not too far off for some others.

Rather than thinking of one pound of any size worms per cubic foot think outside the box. A way to grow some larger worms faster would be to think of one pound of fully grown worms per cubic foot of bedding material. To give you a little insight, most red wigglers are sold bed run in counts of 800 to a 1,000. However when fully grown, there are right about 500 red wigglers to a pound, hence 500 to a cubic foot of bedding material or one pound of bed run red wigglers to 2 cubic feet of bedding material.

So whether looking for larger and faster growing worms for fishing or composting, keeping in mind the larger the worms, the more material each worm can consume per day, begin thinning your worms to benefit even more. Figure on how many fully grown worms to a pound per cubic foot of bedding material to benefit even more.

Now while many parts of the country are inundated with rains and flooding, here in the southeast we are dry and hot. The manure pile at times has dried out so much; the worms could not be found in the manure itself but rather moved into the ground under the pile which helps to retain a little moisture there.

Getting to my point here, if you look at worms in the ground, there are no holes in the bottom for air to pass through as many, including myself (which I still smack the back of my head from time to time for doing so) state you need air holes on the bottom of your worm bins when raising worms. Others will say it is for water to drain through or both.

Here is what I did. I setup two identical buckets without any holes on the bottom, however numerous air holes around the top as well as set them in a well ventilated area.

Raising Worms

I placed enough moisture and food mixture in both to sustain ½ pound of red wigglers in each. They both contained 2.5 gallons of bedding / food mixture.

The only difference was the bedding material by which one was sphagnum peat moss while the other contained coconut coir, one which has been aged for at least 18 months and rinsed completely.

Red Wigglers In Peat Moss

After 30 days I opened the two buckets screened the materials and found just about ¾ of a pound of worms in each. This was not due to additional worms but rather the increased size of the worms and their individual weights.

While both appeared at first to work the same, I found the coconut coir had a smell, started turning anaerobic in the bottom half of the bucket while the bucket containing the peat moss smelled like fresh earth throughout. The issue came down to the coconut coir not holding water as well and draining so that the bottom was much moister than the top.

The other difference in this setup was that there was right about a 10% higher cocoon rate in the peat moss bucket.

These were just a couple things we noticed, however onto the reason for this article again.

The worms not only fared well without any holes for aeration but grew in size, hence a happy environment for them.

I then proceeded to build a new stack unit; this permits me to hold a good number of worms for breeding, hatching and growing worms in less square footage of floor area. The bins, which are small, cement mixing tubs which when filled to an inch from the top, give me right about 1 cubic foot of bedding and food materials. None of the bins have any holes drilled on the bottom.

Worm Farm

Now we have used these for going on two months now with all four types of worms we raise here, red wigglers, African nightcrawlers, European nightcrawlers and Alabama Jumpers, hence why the different color tags on each.

From growing, breeding, hatching and using as holding bins, there have not been any issues.

It appears the worms, just as in the case of the manure pile when it is moist, thrive very well, theoretically perhaps due to the increased aeration over the open bedding surface. By placing a piece of burlap over the top of the bedding and keeping it damp helps to keep the top from drying as quickly while still allowing good breath ability for the worms.

In short, unless you are over watering or feeding a load of vegetable scraps such as melons releasing lots of moisture, worms do not need holes on the bottom of their worm bins and actually appear to grow faster when in a more natural environment, allowing the bottom to stay moist and only needing a little spray of water on top.

I will be writing about other facts we have found in our tests the past several months including a way to assist in preventing many pests from either inhabiting your worm bin or at least keeping the numbers under control so as they do not get out of control!

The first thing is to check a few things such as temperature, pH and moisture levels of your worm bin. If any or a combination of the previously listed are off, your worms maybe trying to get out of unfavorable conditions, in search of greener pastures. If this is true, you will want to rectify the problem so as not to end up killing off your worms.

Temperature plays a vital role not just in keeping your worms happy and the rate at which your food scraps will begin to breakdown permitting growth of beneficial microbes for your worms. An ideal temperature is 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit inside the bedding material of your worm bin.  If you add to many green products to your worm bin, raising the pH level, the temperature will also increase, heating the bin, potentially to high.

If your pH is off, usually the result of being too acidic, eliminate adding anymore green scraps to your worm bin for a while until you rectify to an acceptable pH level of 6 to 7. You could add some agricultural lime or crushed egg shells to assist in lowering and maintaining proper pH levels. Also add more brown products for a while such as shredded newspapers and cardboard.

Moisture levels are a common issue as the food scraps added to the worm bin release additional moisture as they decompose. This is especially true for certain fruits and vegetables such as cucumbers, melons… This is probably one of the most common reasons I hear from people having an issue with worms trying to escape. Moisture levels should be approximately 70% to 75%, no matter which type of worm you are raising, red wigglers, African nightcrawlers or European nightcrawlers.

To begin drying the worm bin and to assist in keeping your worms from escaping, add some shredded newspaper to the top few inches of your worm bin. Worms prefer not to crawl through dry newspaper; hence usually this will keep many of them below the dry paper.

Another trick is to leave the lid off in a room where you can leave the light on. This serves a dual purpose. The first permits more ventilation, hence allowing your worm bin to dry out faster. Secondly, the light helps to keep the worms from poking their heads out as light disturbs them, hence keeping them down inside the bedding.

The last trick I have been meaning to post, something I tried a while back with effectiveness, is to build a flap under the lid of your worm bin.

Basically you need strips of newspaper approximately 6 inches wide. Next crease the strips in lengthwise so as the 6 inch strips now or folded in half, 3 inches wide as in the photographs below.

Tear off a few smaller pieces to cover your four corners. Then use longer strips for the remaining four sides of your worm bin.

Carefully place your worm bin lid on top and snap down into place.

Be sure to check daily for worms stuck up on the underside of the newspaper that are trying to escape. Simply place them back on the top of the bedding in the center of the worm bin.

If your worm bin is to moist or in the event numerous worms get caught up on the underside of the newspaper, replace the flapped newspaper when it becomes to damp, as it will lay down on the side of your worm bin, allowing worms to crawl out again.

Good luck in your vermiculture adventures,

Bruce Galle