Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Started my worm farm

I finally got them started. I'm using a molasses cattle feed tub that I cut some drain holes out of the bottom. I tossed in some soil, about 3 or 4 pounds of peat moss to hold moisture and then some more soil. Then I added some dead wet leaves and more dirt. I covered it with more wet dead leaves and started hunting earthworms. I found a bunch of what I call jumping worms. When you uncover them, they jump and twist like crazy. Some are small but a bunch are 6 to 7 inches long. I found about 25 and put in some corn meal and oatmeal. Single sheets of newspaper will come in a couple of days.

My 10 year old Pardner/Grandson is pretty excited. My Wife just rolled her eyes.

I did this once about 25 years ago and had more worms than you can believe. Now, I just have to hope that the ants don't get in there to nest.

Fire ants? They aren't nice...

No, I don't have any fire ants here at my home. However, little sugar ants will clean out a bunch of worms. Especially if they find the corn meal and other stuff.

Dave,dont forget the fruits and soft veggies,the worms really seem to love that stuff.

Yummm! Deep fry those babies, and dip them in a little horse radish and ketchup.

I've read about jumping worms. It will be interesting to see if they will reproduce like redworms.

Mine are just coming back after a vicous attack by my chickens. A couple of months ago they pretty much wiped out a couple of years worth of worm growth.

Ken

Jumping worms are fast. When you turn over a shovelful of dirt you need to grab them pretty quickly. I hadn't even considered them not reproducing like "run of bed" redworms.

I just started my worm bed as well. 4# of commercial worm bedding and a dozen nightcrawlers along with about a dozen leaf worms (like small nightcrawlers). I figure that might give me a good start while I generate kitchen waste.

How many coffee grounds are too much? I can throw in 1/2 cup of grounds every 2 days.

Essup,
you do realize that Canadian night crawlers (what I'm assuming you put in) don't reproduce in a normal worm bin.
You may be able to keep them alive (about 3 months is my best, but it got too hot and wet), but you won't get any more.
The leaf worms (I'm assuming something like red wigglers) should reproduce just fine.

I don't think you can over do coffee grounds. They seem like the perfect food to me, they don't get rancid, they can grow mold but it's unlikely and if you just shake them up and dry them out a little it goes away.
It's all the other foods you need to worry about. I never gave much thought to the amount of water in foods, but have killed worm bins with too many potatoes or apples, too high in moisture content for the potatoes (it took me a while to figure out how my bin became water logged while in a dry basement) and too much moisture and fumes from the decaying apples (they give off CO2? while decaying and some other gases).

I'd add as many wigglers/compost worms as possible. You can never have to many worms, just too much worm waste.
I would also recommend multiple bins, this way when you kill off one you still have other bins to work with.

Good luck and have fun.


Matt

Too much worm waste? I remember reading something that said to remove and use the castings. Somehow, they were bad for the worms.

Regarding potatoes, I tossed in the leftovers of a baked sweet potato the other day. That may have been a mistake because I use a butter substitute. I remember reading that flies won't even eat the stuff. When I experimented with it, they were right. Flies wouldn't come near "I can't believe it's not butter". I don't think I'll use that again for the worms. Wadded up moistened newspaper and lettuce sure don't last long.

I feed coffee grounds daily.

Use real butter, DD. For the worms' sake.

I tried that but the real stuff doesn't spread. And besides, I don't want to have to put the worms on some kind of cholesterol meds.

Well, that didn't work. I have 2 worm containers. One is an old ice chest and another a cattle feed molasses tub. Both have holes for drainage and air.

I've been finding worms crawling out of the one from the ice chest. I dug around in it this morning and found very few worms and pretty warm dirt. The soil smells like a hog farm. The cattle tub one with no top seems to be doing fine.

I surmise that a couple of things may have happened. First, the top holds the heat from the day. Second, I may have created a mini compost bin by having the top. I've been feeding coffee grounds, bread, newspaper and some cereal that had weevils. I don't believe I've overdone it on food.

I took the dirt and some worms that were left in the ice chest and put the whole works in another tub. Then I tossed a couple of shovelfuls of good topsoil on top.

I'll see how that goes.

Dave I gave up on trying to raise worms. What I found was best is Superworms. Easy to raise, clean and fish love them. Lots of places to order them such as
http://www.thewormshop.com

Yeah, it looks like my second bunch is also dying. I have no idea what is going wrong. I've had a worm farm before and it was simple.

I figure that I spend about $20 per year on worms for fishing. The next time I kill some, I figure it will be with a hook.

I agree. I raise meal worms, and they are so easy and practically carefree to raise. You have to keep them cool just like earthworms, so I raise them in my air conditioned shop. They don't make a mess, so I don't mind keeping them there. Not quite as good for bait as earthworms, but very close.

Superworms are different than mealworms(larve of a different bug), one thing is they can take cold and heat better.

I'm a fan of wax worms for panfish.

Hey Bill

Any advice on how to raise/keep them? I think the forum could use the info, or if I could trouble you to PM me some basic direction for info? I have thought about raising worms but this sounds simpler.

Thanks in advance

Try
http://www.progeckos.com
click caresheets then superworms

THANKS

OK, I tried another worm farm and, so far, they aren't dieing. I've had it for about 6 weeks and am only feeding coffee grounds. They look pretty good but I find no eggs or babies. Time will tell (I guess).

I'm thinking that I may have murdered the first bunch. When I started it, I put a head of lettuce and some wadded up newspaper in the bottom, then added soil and peat moss. I just may have started a compost pile and fried them.

I learned something last weekend when I took about a dozen or so of the earthworms to the country for fishing. I put some of the soil from the worm bed in about a one quart container with a cover. I poked some air holes in the top. When I arrived, I put them in the bottom of the refrigerator. The next day, I took them to use for bait. They were kinda lethargic but OK. After fishing for awhile, I went back to the house and returned them to the refrigerator. The next day, I took them out and headed back to the pond. They were all dead. Apparently earthworms, unlike nightcrawlers, cannot tolerate the kind of temps that keep beer cold enough to drink. Or maybe it was the small container and the cold.

Dave,

The babies should look like real thin pieces of dental floss. After the worm massacre by my chickens, it took at least six weeks for me to start seeing the babies. They are now just about the right size for fishing, and they are breeding like crazy.

If you are still using those Texas jumping worms, I could bring a can full of castings to the convention from my bin. It should have plenty of redworm eggs. With redworms, the eggs go dormant at temperature extremes, so they should survive the trip.

I doubt that a head of lettuce, newspaper, and peat moss should get hot enough to cook them, especially if it was less than 12-18 inches deep. But, redworms will start to get mushy much below about 40 degrees.

Ken

Well, since I dang sure keep my beer below 40 degrees, I won't be keeping the worms in the fridge. I've actually been looking for the eggs but haven't seen any.

A friend has some actual earthworms that he is going to trade me for. He has never seen jumping worms. Neither had I until I found these around the side of my house.

The boy and I tried raising the redworms according to the information in a PondBoss article and after a couple months I couldn't find any left in the bin. Don't know if they died or escaped, but they're gone. Don't know what I did wrong, but possibly, reading the posts above, might have fed them wrong. Too many apple cores possibly.

So far, on just coffee grounds, mine are doing OK.

You know, mine died during our 2 weeks of 103 to 108 degree heat. I don't know if that's a clue as to what went wrong.