Saturday morning means cleaning out the worm bins. The mealworms are reproducing like crazy.
Mealworms
There are enough of them in there that they go through food fast. I put about 8 cups of chick starter and a whole bag of celery in each bin every Saturday and by next Saturday, they’ve pretty much eaten everything that was in there.
Mealworms
My red wigglers have been terribly neglected. The mealworms live inside the well house and it’s so well insulated in there that it never gets real hot. The red wigglers were in a shady area but this is the second summer I’ve lost most of them due to the heat. Ideally, they should not get over 80º but heck, this is Texas! I’m going to try growing them in the well house but there isn’t room to put my current setup in there. I really need red wigglers to grow, reproduce and make compost, as well as worm “tea” for the garden so I began doing research last week and decided I would give the Worm Factory 360 a try.
Worm Bin
I re-arranged things in the well house and I think I can fit two of these in there so I ordered 2 pounds of worms. With 2 pounds of worms, I could get close to 20 pounds of compost/castings per month once they get going.
I just told Vince . . I’m pretty excited about my new worm setup and he said . . yes, me too . . I can’t stop thinking about it. He is not interested in my worm farm! 🙁
Dottie N. says
LOL, LOL. Y’all sure do give many of us lots of SMILES!!
mereth says
This is pretty sad, Judy, getting excited by compost worms! Keryn and I have setups like this, they’re really popular in Australia. (We call them Worm Farms.) I love seeing how they eat up the scraps and reproduce so quickly. I’ve accused Keryn of naming the babies, she gets so enthusiastic over them.
We get very hot summers too, so we put hessian or underlay over the bins and wet it down every day. Be careful if you have ants, because they can invade the bin and kill the worms- we stand the legs in pots of water.
They don’t like onions or citrus peels, but I just put that in my normal compost pile. Today I’m going to split my layers up and harvest the castings- it’s silly how much I’m looking forward to it…
Judy L. says
Have you tried food grade DE around the legs? We have lots of ants and that has worked with my current setup. Of course, every time it rains, I have to re-apply the DE, but it rarely rains here.
Norece says
We have a similar set up. Works great! We use some of our worms for fishing. Last time at the farmer’s market someone was selling worm tea for $15 a gallon!
Sherrill says
SO GROSS!! LOL I can think of SO many things to get excited about but worms isn’t one of them!! YUCK! But that is too funny Vince saying “I can’t stop thinking about it.” LOVE IT!!
Helen Baczynski says
We have one of those worm farms but had absolutely no luck. The worms didn’t eat anything. We tried with two different lots of worms but have given up. I think I’ll donate the farm to the elementary school. They might gave better luck.
Bev Gunn says
Was doing fine until I got to the 6th comment! I ordered one of these set ups because my compost tumbler is such a huge thing and it never really gets full, plus have to turn it every so often and carry the garbage out to it and just thought this might be an easier solution to my laziness! I have one of those sandbox turtles full of compost from the last 3 years and haven’t added anything all summer, so am hoping I have some “black gold” in there. Need to stir it up a bit, and then will empty my current planters’ dirt into it and mix together and leave it until next spring. Maybe by then the worms will have something to contribute-I plan to keep it in my basement as it stays around 65 down there. If they need a bit warmer temp, will put a heat lamp in the general area and enjoy a little extra warmth during the winter! (my sewing stuff lives in the basement so do I when the weather is unfriendly for going outside!)