Matt Wehland's excellent suggestions on raising red wigglers are as follows......
Raising worms the quick and easy way.
I went fishing a while ago and the local gas station was out of crawlers, so I picked up some red wigglers and meal worms. It's the end of season and the quality was horrible. The wigglers were small, skinny things. I drowned a few, but had most of the original 50 left in the fridge.
I've raised worms before and decided I might as well try again. I'm in an apartment and wanted to keep this simple.
For a quick startup I just used a 3lb butter tub with a few days of coffee grounds and some torn up paper towels. Make sure everything is damp, but not wet (no water in bottom of tub or when you squeeze the bedding). Drilled a series of small holes in the lid (I had the drill out and just used the bit that was in there. Make more smaller holes rather than a few larger holes, remember you will be raising babies and they are small and crawl all over, you can just use a sharp knife to poke holes in the lid). Add the worms. Check every week or so to make sure it is not too dry or too wet and that's about it. My worms plumped up in a week or so and then started laying eggs. There are now white eggs every where, including the lid. When I start seeing babies I will remove the original stockers and place them in another tub to start over.
Things I have learned in the past-
-Don't over feed the worms, I have to stop myself from adding more food to my current tub. I'm only using coffee grounds right now since they smell good and don't attract insects like other foods do.
-Don't over water the worms, they will drown and rot, not a pretty picture.
-Do use a lid, if the worms dry out they will try to travel. I had dead worms all over my laundry worm years ago (I was single then, so no foul). I had left for a few weeks and hadn't checked on the worms before leaving. They got dry and tried to get away.
-If storing in a shed/garage/lean too, make sure that it doesn't leak. I lost a 5 gallon bucket of worms to a leak. The bucket was fine for months and then got moved, to a spot that ended up leaking. Rotted worms are not a pretty smell. I have also had this happen in a basement, a bucket that WASN'T over watered ended up swamped. I still don't know where the extra water came from on this one, unless it was just from humidity, there were no leaks. Another reason to use a lid.
-Use multiple containers. If one gets too wet/moldy/infested or just dies you have others to fall back on. Also easier to harvest if you haven't fed the worms for a week or two (no moldy food to sort through), but you can keep feeding the other bins. Plus they make great gifts
-If just raising just for bait keep it simple, feed just coffee grounds and paper/paper towels, they smell good and are cleaner than food scraps.
I like using wigglers for composting, but using food scraps can attract insects. If you have plenty of worms it works ok, just make sure the scraps get buried, not left on the top. If I start vermicomposting (worm composting) again I want to get a thrift store blender to chop up the food scraps (no meat, just fruits/veggies/grains). Keep the blender container in the fridge add scraps to it and then blend every few days and take out to the worm bins. I like the idea of keeping things in the fridge because even when the bins were in the basement I ended up with moldy containers of scraps in the kitchen if i didn't take them down every day or two (and I'm no longer single so this didn't go over too well, also I got blamed for every insect in the house whether it was from my bins/scraps or not). Blending them up makes it easier for the worms to consume them quicker leaving less stuff for ants/bugs.
This just goes to show that raising worms is really easy. In a couple of months I will have more worms than I can use next season, just from a couple of butter tubs full of coffee grounds and some left over bait. Also I know my 2yr old will have a blast harvesting the worms when the time comes (I can't keep her out of water or mud).
So go ahead and give it a try, it's real easy. Just remember to use wiggler or European crawlers, Canadian night crawlers won't reproduce.
Now I've got to remember to check on that container of meal worms in the car and see if they are still alive. I want to try raising them next.
Matt Wehland
Raising Red Wigglers, the easy way.
Matt Wehland
http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=101160#Post101160
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