Aug 1

The question is: is it okay to add pureed food to the worm bin?

The answer is: yes, but…

Pureeing the food before adding it to the worm bin is a double-edged sword. The benefit of doing this is that it helps the food decompose more quickly, becoming worm-ready more quickly. Pureeing the food opens up many times more surface area for the microbes and the worms to begin munching on. The disadvantage to pureeing is that it introduces a lot of liquid moisture at once. It’s no more moisture than the food would contain if put in the bin in an un-pureed form, but that liquid would become freed up from that food at a much slower rate. People who puree the foods before adding them to the bin often do so in conjunction with adding something else that is dry at the same time, to help soak up some of that moisture. For example, adding rolled oats or even newspaper or cardboard shreds. The idea is to keep the liquid from collecting and pooling and turning the bin into a muck. Adding dry materials to suck up that moisture keeps the bin in balance.

There was a time when I did  the pureed food. That was a long time ago. It was a hassle to make it, for one thing, and it did make moisture control a challenge.  If you happen to have food that is already pureed (say, left over baby food or some such), by all means add it to your bin. If you are wondering if it’s worth the effort to puree your scraps before putting them into the bin, well, it may not be. Maybe you’d rather spend your time and energy on something else and let the worms do the work for you.

One other consideration: many people keep worms as part of their efforts to be good stewards of the environment. For these people, it doesn’t make sense to use electricity to puree the food when the worms will do the work on their own slightly slower schedule. They see this as incompatible with being “green.” That might be the case for you, too.

Jul 15

I get more questions about roaches than probably any other topic. People want to know if worm bins will attract roaches. On the surface, it seems like worm bins could be ideal environments for roaches. However,  I’ve not heard of anyone ever having a problem with them. The only time I had roaches in a single bin was when I introduced materials that, unbeknownst to me had some roaches already in them. I had some great leaf mold/decaying leaves that I thought the worms would love. Turns out, other critters were already enjoying them, but I didn’t know that until after I added the material to my bin. Oops. What happened? I was fortunate in that it was a small bin and small numbers of roaches. Whenever I took the lid off that bin, I made sure I had something that I could use to squish the roaches. In this case, it was only one or two roaches running around at a time. After doing this several times, the roaches were mostly gone. I would get one here and there as it hatched. But they never had a chance to keep the cycle going. Now, in an environment where roaches are common, it might be different. In an outdoor setting, roaches are going to be in the worm “bin” at least occasionally as will many other critters and that isn’t something that would worry me.

This website has information on some common roaches and pictures of the egg cases. If you do have roaches in your worm bin, you can start to fight the problem by keeping on the lookout for egg cases. If you see any, remove and destroy them immediately.

Jun 1

A reader wrote and asked for information for germinating liriope muscari.  A study was conducted at the University of Kentucky to determine the “optimal temperature requirements and stratification period required to break dormancy in Liriope muscari.” The write up of this study and its findings is a PDF found here. This is the information upon which I based my treatment of the liriope seeds I received in January.

I’ll have more to share about my experience with growing liriope from seed in a few weeks.  Believe it or not, I just potted up more of the seeds from my original batch in January. These were handled differently and I’m waiting to see the results before I write more on it.

A good general write-up of liriope can be found here.

May 31

A lot of people visit this blog, worried about mold and fungus in their bins, so I thought I’d address this. First of all, whether you see it or not, there is mold and fungus in your bins. Over the years I’ve had mushrooms sprout in the bins (only once or twice, but quite a surprise at the time) and once I even had a slime mold make an appearance. Yuck! Those are fascinating, but I’d just as soon not look at them. A commonplace mold in the bin is on breads.

Molds and fungi are just part of the decomposition process. But it’s the mold and fungus that people see which concern them, particularly the fluffy white stuff which can take over a bin.

I’ve had this more than once. It almost looks like cotton candy sometimes. I have only had it when I’ve used a shredded newspaper bedding.  The first time I opened the bin and saw a mass of white cotton-candy stuff, I was alarmed. I “stirred” the bedding around, to break up the mass. That didn’t eliminate the problem, though. So what I ended up doing after that was simply removing that bedding any time I found it.

I ended up setting up what I called my “fuzzy” worm bin. That was a bin containing nothing but the fuzzy bedding and whatever worms were in that at the time I removed it. My original reason for doing this was to see how the worms did in an environment where there was nothing but the newspaper and the fuzzy stuff for food. I wanted to know if it was harmful in the regular worm bin. As it turns out, the worms did just fine. Their population grew, although not nearly as fast as in a bin full of a variety of foods. (Newspaper by itself is a pretty lean diet for worms and I don’t know how much the fuzzies added). But the population did grow, so it clearly didn’t hurt them. Once I saw this, I just removed the bedding any time I found it getting fuzzy and tossed it into my fuzzy worm bin. I don’t believe there would have been a problem if I’d left that bedding in my bins; I don’t think it would have harmed things. I just didn’t like looking at it, so I put it in its own bin where I left it alone for long, long periods of time.

Eventually, I no longer ended up with bedding that got fuzzy. I don’t know what was different about it. I did move more to leaves as bedding, and that must have had a role. That is something you might try. I think the shreds got compacted in places and that is what led to the fuzzies forming. So, fluffing newspaper shreds and making sure they don’t clump and compact will likely help, as well.  Mixing with leaves would help prevent the clumping and compacting.

May 18

I’m trying a new thing: I see questions people have by the searches that bring them to my site. Although the person who searched on this probably will never see my answer, someone else will probably wonder this and maybe my post will help that person.

So, someone was wanting to know: how do I keep monarch caterpillars off my roses?

Answer: They aren’t on your roses to begin with. While you may have some kind of caterpillar on your roses, it isn’t a monarch. Monarchs are very picky about where they lay their eggs. While they’ll dine from a wide array of flowers, they lay eggs only on plants in the milkweed family. The milkweed plants contain a toxin that the monarch caterpillars are immune to. Anything that tries to eat a monarch caterpillar, however, isn’t so lucky. Predators have learned to avoid eating the monarch caterpillars because of this.

Aug 19

After my post on critters found in a worm bin, Barbee asked about the black soldier fly (BSF).  I realized I had overlooked that one. As explained below, some people welcome it and others don’t when it comes to their worm bins.

I think the first reaction everyone has the first time they see the larvae is “eeew!” At least that was mine. And, honestly, it still is. I like what they do, I just don’t want to see them!

My first encounter with the BSF was a year ago when I received an order of worms from a gardening company who shall remain unnamed at this point. The order was awful and the person they used to fulfill it had no business selling worms. What I didn’t realize at that time was that there were BSF larvae mixed in with my worms. These worms went into an indoor worm bin. Imagine my surprise when I started seeing the odd looking larvae and when the adults started flying out of the bin when I’d open the lid.

There is one school of thought which says that BSF present in your worm bin (and this is almost always outside, of course) means you have too much food which is going sour (anaerobic). Some people believe that large numbers of BSF also bother the composting worms. When you do have too much food, you likely have a good population of BSF, as well. I don’t know that you can blame them for the worms’ unhappiness, however; worms don’t like it when their bin goes sour. Who would?! In either case, removing the souring, excess food is the best overall cure for both problems.

There is another school of thought, one which I share, which welcomes the BSF as just one more member of the worm bin ecosystem. Black soldier fly larvae are powerhouse eaters. They devour food in amazingly short periods of time— far, far faster than the worms can. However, the black soldier fly manure is itself an excellent food for the composting worms. With the BSF, your food wastes are composted in a fraction of the time while providing your worms with an excellent food as a byproduct. I think the key is not allowing a situation where there is a massive BSF population in your bins. This can be done, in part, by making sure your food wastes are very well covered up with bedding.

There is actually a commercial system for raising BSF. I don’t have one, but I’d like to. I just can’t see spending that kind of money and I’m too mechanically impaired to make my own. My dear sweet patient husband is already busy with requests of mine, so I haven’t bothered him with this one. He is cool with the worms, but I can only imagine asking him to build a black soldier fly unit for me!

BSF larvae make great food for poultry and fish, apparently, which is one additional benefit to raising them. There is a commercial market for the larvae as a food, as well.

FYI, the adult black soldier fly looks like a small wasp. It scared me the first time I came across one. However, they are truly harmless having no stinger and no mouth. As adults, they do not eat. They merely mate and die.

I would recommend reading this thread in the Vermicomposting Forum at The Garden Forums. If you have additional questions about the BSF, these are the people to ask!

http://thegardenforums.org/viewtopic.php?t=15963

Aug 17

Barbee has asked:

Have you ever had a problem with mites getting in the bins? I once tried collecting worms from the garden and using them in a bin, but before long there were mites all in the bin. I took everything out and dumped it on my compost pile (the one I wrote about).

I think many people are surprised (and unhappy) when they realize that the worms are not the only inhabitants of a worm bin. I suppose if a person took the time to rinse off each worm and then used only newspaper or cardboard bedding and never introduced any materials from outside that there might be a chance the worms would be the only visible living creatures in your worm bin. But even then, I wouldn’t be surprised if some neighbors showed up over time.

Most of these other inhabitants are actually a good thing, even if you didn’t plan on them being there. First, here are the exceptions to this idea:

1) Fruit flies – they don’t actually hurt or bother the worms but they sure do annoy the humans! Many people either freeze or microwave their fruits before adding them to the worm bin. This serves two purposes. It speeds decomposition so the worms can get to work more quickly and, more importantly, it kills any fruit fly eggs hidden on the fruit. (Isn’t that gross? To think that they are there when we’re eating them, ugh!) Another important aspect of fruit fly prevention is to keep the surface of the worm bin covered in several inches of dry shredded newspaper. The fruit flies won’t be able to penetrate that to get to the tempting fruit. The fruit may not even be tempting them when covered like that.

2) Fungus gnats – again, fungus gnats don’t hurt the worms but they are an annoyance to us. The worm bin is full of fungus, even if it isn’t visible, just as it’s full of bacteria. These are also things you never planned on having, but they are important parts of the worm bin. The fungus gnat’s larvae grow in the upper part of the vermicompost, feasting on (surprise!) the fungus.

There are ways of dealing with both fungus gnats and fruit flies, but I’ll write about that another time. I’ve had both at different times.

3) Centipedes – centipedes are not social creatures, so they are usually present in very low numbers when they are present at all. You may never encounter them in your worm bin. If you do, it’s probably from introducing chopped leaves from your yard or other yard waste. I have done this and later encountered centipedes. I kill them (with a spoon or whatever I have in my hand, so they don’t bite me). I have never seen one just casually looking into the bin. I’ve found them when I’m harvesting the bin and disturbing things. Centipedes will eat worms, but they are not likely to cause significant harm to a population of worms, especially since they are present only in small numbers. So if you see a centipede it’s a good idea to kill it, but don’t panic that your herd is in imminent danger.

As a side note, millipedes are found in the same leaf litter that centipedes can be found in. Millipedes are vegetative detrivores not carnivores and pose no threat to your worms. I’ve never had one in my worm bins but if I did, I’d let it stay and I’d be happy to see it. Detrivores are an important part of the worm bin.

4) Roaches – in an outdoor bin, roaches may be a part of the community. They are likely in an outdoor bin, and you may be unaware of it. They, too, are members of the decomposing community. In an indoor bin… yuck. Some people live in places or geographical areas where roaches are just endemic, like apartment buildings humid places like Florida. They can get into your worm bin and if they do, they’ll like it.

I unintentionally introduced some roaches into my indoor worm bins this past winter. I added some leaf mulch from a pile I had. My thinking was good: the worms will love these decomposing leaves. They did! Unfortunately, there were other critters in those leaves, as well: centipedes and roaches. Neither was in large quantities, but I did have to make an effort to remove them. The good news is that roaches will like your bin so much, if they get into them, that they won’t want to leave and wander elsewhere. The bad news is you’ll have to hunt them down and remove them by hand. (In my case, by spoon: I smashed ‘em). You can avoid this by learning from my mistake: freeze or thoroughly dry any leaf material before adding it to your worm bin. I would fill a garbage bag 1/3 full or so, tie it up, and then put it into my upright freezer for 3 or 4 days. When I do that, I don’t have any unwelcome visitors to my worm bins. Others have said they only add crispy dry leaves and they’ve never had problems, either. (Another alternative is to boil them, as one person I know does. I tried it once with very very hot water and I will say, it makes a lovely woodsy pot-pourri!). So, in this case, a few preventive measures can avoid the whole issue. Like usual, I learned by mistake and doing it the wrong way. It’s certainly a lesson I won’t forget! And, in case you are wondering, my bins are all free of those unwanted pests now. The roaches were, like the centipedes, small and only a few in number, as well, and not too many to eliminate.

5) Earwigs. There are many kinds of earwigs. Since adding the leaf mulch without taking precautions, I have found some of these in my worm bins. Again, only in very small numbers. The type I’ve found in my bins is very small, not even a cm in length. I don’t believe they could harm any but the baby and smallest juvenile worms. That said, when I come across one and can use my trusty spoon on it, I do. But I don’t worry about the ones I don’t find. Again, use very dry or frozen leaf material (if you are using it) and you shouldn’t have that problem.

This leads me to the welcome co-inhabitants in the worm bin. Admittedly, some are more welcome than others.

1) Mites. I’ve never heard of a worm bin without them. You may not think you have any– until conditions become favorable for a mite “bloom.” Then, suddenly, they are everywhere in the bin and you wonder where they came from. They were always present in small numbers. Their numbers become large amazingly quickly when it’s to their liking. Mites are also detrivores, working on breaking down the food materials in the worm bin. As such, they are helpful. However, in large numbers they do appear to disturb the worms. (Would you want mice, say, crawling all over you as you were trying to eat?) Worms will tend to avoid the food which is literally crawling with mites.

What conditions are favorable to mites? Wet conditions. Soggy wet. A worm bin is, by necessity, a moist place but there is a point where it becomes more moist than the worms need and that point is where mites get really happy. Seeing a good number of mites is an indicator that perhaps you could dry out your worm bin a bit. Some foods are also very appealing to mites. Cantaloupe is one of those. I think it’s because of the high water content of these foods. Cantaloupe is something worms love, but that’s a food mites also love. In a worm bin with a small mite population, the worms will probably get most of the melon but in a worm bin with higher numbers of mites, the mites may win out. There may be enough of them to discourage the worms.

Too much food also encourages mite blooms. I have found that there is a distinctive odor in my bins when there is a mite bloom. It could be the smell of food going anaerobic, I suppose. I’m not sure. But when I smell that smell, I know I have a mite problem that needs to be corrected. (A worm bin in good shape doesn’t have any odor other than a nice earthy post-rain kind of smell). The obvious fix at these times is to remove the excess food.

As with the fungus gnats and fruit flies, there are some ways of dealing with the mites.

I should note that there are many types of mites and there are 3 that can be found in your worm bin: white, red and brown. Aren’t those scientific names? Apparently the white mites are the most common type found. All the worm books and articles seem to refer to these. I’ve never noticed any in my own worm bins. Instead, I have brown mites. Mine look red to me but they must be brown mites. Why? Red mites, which are the rare in the worm bin, are carnivorous and will kill worms. My worms are just fine, so my red-looking mites must be “brown” mites. If the mites in your bin are not devouring a worm, you are fine. You won’t ever be totally rid of them, so your best bet is to keep your bin at a moisture level which minimizes the mite population and then forget about them.

2) Springtails. These guys are tiny. They look like white dots to me. But when you get close enough, you can see these dots springing across the worm bin. They have a specialized piece that acts like a spring and propels them into the air and some distance. Hence the name “springtail.” They, too, are detrivores. They will not harm your worms. Like the mites, springtails are assisting in the decomposition process. And, like the mites, their population seems to bloom when conditions get too wet.

3) “Pot worms” or enchytraeids are members of the worm family. They make even the Eisenia fetida, a small composting worm, look absolutely huge. In your bin, the pot worm looks like a white thread about 1 cm long. It wiggles and moves slowly. Like mites, these are an indication of more moisture in your bin than is optimal. Pot worms are found in the dense, mud-like, very wet vermicompost and usually this is the material at the bottom of your bin, where excess water collects. The pot worms will not bother your composting worms at all. They are also helping the decomposition process along. That said, I don’t try to cultivate them in my worm bins. To me, when I see them it’s a warning that I am not keeping the vermicompost in the bin as dry as I like it.

4) Rolly pollies, pill bugs, armadillo bugs, sow bugs, woodlouse. While there are two different species (one which can curl itself into a tiny ball, and one that cannot), I’m lumping them all together into one category. They are detrivores. They are especially good at breaking down lignins and other very hard, very slow to digest or break down materials such as woody fibers. (Several times I’ve said to myself that I should set up a rolly pollie bin and fill it with paperboard and see what happens. I’ve never done it, but I might some day!). You won’t have these in your worm bin unless you introduce leaf litter or other materials from outside. In several of my worm bins, I have rolly pollies. I like ‘em! I think they are kind of cute, moving across the vermicompost like little bulldozers, especially the teeny tiny babies. And I like knowing that they are busily breaking down materials that the worms can’t.

5) Mold. If you see fluffy molds growing in your bin, or the non-fluffy kind like you’d find on bread, don’t panic. I don’t like to see a large amount of mold in my bins, but even if you don’t see it, it’s there. In small amounts visible to the eye, it’s fine. It, too, is breaking down food. And fungal hyphae are something that worms themselves feed on. So fungus/mold is just a part of the great worm bin food chain. (That said, if you have mold allergies, you definitely don’t want to allow mold to develop at visible levels. You may not want to get real involved in your worm bin if your allergies or asthma are triggered by them. I have mold allergies, fairly severe, but I haven’t noticed any problems from getting my hands into the vermicompost, harvesting, etc.)

The worm bin is an entire ecosystem. As such, it has things that we like and things we’d just as soon forget about. The “good guys” are all working toward the same end result: turning your waste products into black gold for your garden. If you don’t have a worm bin but were thinking about it, I hope you don’t let this turn you off. These creatures are generally not that noticeable and the worms definitely dominate a healthy worm bin by a large margin. My point in writing this wasn’t to scare anyone or gross them out so much that they give up the idea of a worm farm. My thinking was that it’s best to know about these creatures before encountering them. Otherwise, you might get quite a surprise. And, too, I can help you avoid the mistakes I’ve made which can introduce those creatures you don’t want in your worm bin. The best preventative, I believe, for having too many of any of these, is to keep your bins no more moist than the worms require and to make sure you don’t feed in excess. If you find your bin is too wet, dry it out or add additional dry bedding to absorb the moisture. If you find you’ve put more food in the bin than the worms can process, remove some of it. And if you add leaves for bedding, make sure they are crispy dry first or freeze or boil them before adding them to your worm bin.
Aug 7

In my last post, Eric Bronson asked:

So you use these worms to compost your kitchen waste? or all yard waste?

Eric, I do a bit of both. I keep a compost pile near the garden. I am compost-impaired, so it’s rarely a thermal compost. Since that pile is primarily cold composting, it is loaded with worms.

In a part of my yard off by itself, away from my garden, I have a sunken garbage can. The 8 inches or so below ground have holes drilled here and there. That can is my dog waste receptacle. The native worms do a good job transforming that into vermicompost. Many who compost their dog waste in this fashion report phenomenal growth in plants that get that compost. I can vouch for this myself. I don’t actually apply the composted materials. (If you do, make sure you only use it on ornamental plants, away from any food crops). Before I installed my waste can this spring, I piled it all just a few feet away, at the corner of the fence and fenced off from the kids and dogs. That corner is now bursting with the most vigorous, largest plants around. If only they were plants I wanted there! Anyone who has that pesky Japanese honeysuckle growing can tell you how invasive it can be. Imagine it on steroids. That’s what it is like growing from my old pet waste composting area.

In my worm bins which are all indoors, I feed kitchen waste. A local grocery store is kind enough to give me produce discards and I share these with a fellow wormer nearby. Any organic waste can go into the bin, although there are certain obvious cautions against using dairy and meat. (I don’t use those). They can be used, but it’s not recommended because it can attract rodents and, if not properly covered, it will create a stench. I’ve been known to chuck in old cotton underwear, though. Some people even add their dryer lint! At its simplest, a worm bin can contain nothing aside from the bedding, which can be shredded or torn cardboard or newspapers, a mix of both, shredded leaves, or a combination of all of these items. As the bacteria and fungi break down those materials, the worms eat those organisms.

You can use your worm bin to process your yard waste, with a couple of caveats. First of all, never put anything into your worm bin which has been treated with pesticides. Secondly, you must take care that you don’t put enough plants in that there is a thermal reaction with the carbon bedding. That’s how I lost my EH herd. The heat cooked the poor worms into a goo. To be safe, only place plant materials in one part of your bin, making sure you leave a good area which will be unaffected by an thermal reaction and to which the worms can flee. It will save your herd.

Finally, those plant materials take a long time to fully disappear in a worm bin. I don’t do it often, but once in a while I’ll toss in a weed I’ve pulled from the garden. (Plants take so long to break down that I’d be buried under them if I waited only for my indoor worms to process them, hence the outdoor compost pile). I do it for the roots. Among the network of roots are all manner of bacteria and fungal hyphae. These are worms’ primary food source. They are quite happy there. It appears to work within the bin as well. True to the name of this blog, I once made the mistake of tossing in some cattle feed because it had alfalfa and I wanted the alfalfa pellets for the worm bin. That was great, except that some other grain that was in the mix sprouted. Oh did it sprout! I had something growing like mad in all my worm bins. I was pretty unhappy about that—until I realized the worms were greatly enjoying themselves among the roots. (Incidentally, any seeds that end up in your bin and sprout will not grow too big since bins are dark. They eventually peter out with no light source for supplying energy. Then the plant material itself begins to decay and provide more food for the worms).

If it’s organic— that is, from something that was once living— it is a food source for the worms. Some sources take longer than others to break down and the smaller the pieces of the organic material are, the quicker they break down and turn into castings. One caution: be aware of how much salt content you are adding to your bin. Worms are sensitive to salts (one reason chemically fertilized areas have fewer earthworms) and it doesn’t take too much to kill them. This doesn’t mean you can’t add your leftover veggies that were salted, for example, but it does mean that when I use my layer mash feed, I am careful about how much and how often due to the salt content in it.