Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain worm bed article

A friend of my parents orders Omaha Steaks and they have a few of the larger sized styrofoam coolers that the steaks are shipped in. Do you think those coolers would work for a worm bin?

Just about any kind of container will work and an old ice chest is about perfect.

An old chest freezer will also work but sounds like a lot of dirt hauling. I wouldn't worry about trying to keep them warm. They should do just fine.

Select worms that are native to your area. For example, night crawlers don't live in my area. So redworms are the worm of choice. They're fairly bullet proof. Keep the dirt moist but not soaking wet. I mix the topsoil with about 20% peat moss for it's water retaining qualities. I looked at buying a couple of bags of topsoil for one that my daughter wants to do. However, they all seem to be loaded with weed killers, insecticides and/or fertilizer.

Actually worm raising is fairly stupid proof unless you overload with food, let ants get into it and build a nest or let chickens eat all the worms(Ken). Get the food, something like corn meal, deep enough that flies don't lay eggs in it. A worm bed full of maggots is a start over deal for me. Yeah, I've done that.

My son started his own worm bin after reading this article and we have redworms going in a bin very similar to the one in the article. We've been adding whatever kitchen scraps we come up with. We soaked the soil and newspaper bedding initially and haven't had to do it again as it stays pretty moist on its own. The bin is starting to attract small flies and some of the scraps are molding. There doesn't seem to be a lot of worms when I pitchfork some soil up. Only one here and there. We just started this a couple weeks ago though so it might just need to get going.

Omaha,

Not to worry. Each adult worm will lay about one cocoon a week, and each cocoon will hatch into several tiny worms in about three weeks. The cocoons look like tiny grapes, they are the color of a mustard seed, the size of a peppercorn. The newborn worms look like tiny white threads. It take these tiny worms about 10 weeks to become sexually mature -- but they still won't be real big.

I've started new bins as late as May, and by August I've got an adequate supply of worms. By October I'm loaded with worms. If you don't let the chickens into the bin, they will keep going for years.

Turning the material in the bin should help with the undesired critters.

Good luck,
Ken