Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Earthworm Beds

My new project is creating an earthworm bed. I have two small raised-bed gardens at the house that require soil supplementation and every fish known to mankind enjoys worms. I see it as a win/win.

Do you have one?

Grandpa Gallus had two worm beds in the backyard when I was a kid. They consisted of roughly 3'x3'x3" containers (made of some sort of resin reinforced paper, IIRC) buried with a couple of inches of lip above ground. He would water them when the weather had been really dry. He fed the worms various tables craps, and every Fall we'd go to a local cider mill and bring back a big load of squeezed apple pulp that we would put in the worm beds.

I don't know how many thousands of worms we took out of the beds with a spading fork to use for bait. But we also got them from the main yard by shocking them with 110 VAC with a pair of wooden handled brass worm sticks (not exactly OSHA approved) or pouring a concoction of walnut hulls soaked in water onto the ground.

(Does this sound as much like an old fart reminiscing as I think. I mean, it really was good clean fun, and we liked it!)

I started my red wiggler bins years ago in the common rubbermaid type rectangular tubs and have various number going at all times. The number may fall to a couple after harvesting the compost; it gradually rises over weeks and months as I add more and more kitchen scraps. Anything but meat goes in there; coffee grounds and paper coffee filters, paper towels, crushed egg shells, chunks of old cabbage, avocado pits. Most of it is unrecognizable quickly.
During our winters I bring them into our unused garage to keep them from freezing solid. In summer they're in partial shade and within range of the garden sprinklers. Our climate is way too dry for the worms to survive without some supplemental moisture.
I drilled multiple 1/8" holes in the tubs for drainage, tore up newspapers into 2" wide strips to line the tub bottoms and cover the food waste, added a handful of wigglers, and that's it. Rather simple setup; I always have tens of thousands of red wigglers and gallons of rich black compost.
No smell, no pests. One year black soldier flies moved in but did not persist long. Amazingly even visiting black bears and raccoons leave the tubs alone.
Harvest is easy enough. The worms congregate in the top several inches close to the freshest scraps additions. Just scoop them up for fishing or fish feeding. The bulk of the composted material is below the area of most activity and can be separated well enough.
Give vermiculture a try.

I've been doing the vermicomposting for a while now. I have two worm factories, one with African night crawlers and the other with red wrigglers. I would just do the red wrigglers since they are easier and I haven't been able to grow the African night crawlers all that large. I keep both worm bins in my office. If you do it correctly then they don't smell. I have been unsuccessful at keeping them outside through our summers in Texas. It is very nice being able to grab worms whenever I want to go fishing, and honestly I grab the smaller ones. They just fit on the hook better and have less of a chance of being nibbled off. I use the worm castings with my seedling starts and if there's excess then I just toss it in the garden. My two pieces of advice or to only add scraps of vegetation that are from your kitchen or have been examined in detail to make sure they don't contain anything else. I've gotten infestations of pill bugs and ear wigs. There's no predators to keep these guys in check so they will quickly take over a worm farm and you'll have to clean the whole thing out. Second is to let the worm bedding and initial food sit for a few weeks before adding your worms. I heard this from a more experienced worm farmer and it tracks with my experience. Every time I add worms to a new space they have tried to escape or I've noticed the population just crash before it stabilizes. This is apparently due to a lack of food. The worms need their food to apparently be slightly rotted for them to begin eating it. Keep in mind, this is advice if you are keeping your bins inside, might be different if you can have them outside. Other than that its pretty darn simple and doesn't require a lot of effort. I have not tried to grow the native earthworms here but have thought about it.

We made "Homemade Electric Worm Getters" out of metallic clothes hangers, a lamp cord/power cord off of some appliance that no longer worked , and black electrical tape. Worked fantastic , everyone involved lived through it. Thousands of various earth worms and lots of slugs and june bug grubs which caught lots of sunfish. Blew a few Buss screw in fuses . Great fun, better memories, not recommended to Grandchildren or compatible with GFCI receptacles .

I had one for quite a few years. I used an old 6 ft tall military metal clothes cabinet with a door. I bought 5 pounds from a worm farmer to start and wound up with untold thousands of all sizes.They are extremely prolific. When it rained I had worms everywhere on the concrete patio that got tossed onto the lawn and flower beds. Sold quite a few to other aspiring worm farmers, gardeners, etc. Neighborhood kids helped themselves to them for fishing.

Plain earthworms do better than the larger night crawlers. They aren’t as susceptible to hot weather. Need to keep the soil moist but not muddy. Keep the container, if metal, in the shade.

Finally sold the whole works to a couple of long bearded hippies from Dallas. Found out that they created about a dozen big containers and used the enriched soil to grow and sell marijuana. They got caught and did some jail time.

An old saying is “Let worms be your gardener”is right.

I've recently taken up fishing. And I felt bad about only using a couple of the worms I bought. Off and on I've thought about vermicomposting. And we had a double bin composting barrel that we've never used. So I did both. You need a carbon source for both, I mainly used shredded brown cardboard. I now have 3 worm bins. I'm using 5gal totes. Two hold red wigglers, your basic composting worm. They can go through an impressive amount of chow. I feed them very finely chopped fruit and veggie scraps. The 3rd bin holds the fishing worms. I usually feed them a commercial food that I buy at Cabelas. They are big, fat and active. Very unlike those poor, slowly starving things we buy at bait places. I feed them weekly. I put a wet, white wash cloth on top of the "soil' to keep it moist. After about a month they completely eat the cloth, so I add another. It's pretty easy and yields a much better product.

They would have a tough time outside. As does my barrel composter. Too cold in the winter, too warm in the summer. Luckily for the worms we have an unused bedroom where I stash them in the closet. They seem pretty happy with it.

If you are going to be doing it outside, AND the containers will be sitting on the soil with no bottom, I would put a screen under them first to keep the moles out. I have had moles get into the raised garden beds and made a mess of them looking for worms to eat.