Where are my composting red worms hiding?

[BonzaiDuck]

I bought a pound of red worms around March this year, and gave them a starter bed of steer manure. Until a few weeks ago, I could find them near the surface, or clinging to the interior vinyl wall of the bin.

Here's an interesting first chapter in the last published work of a great 19th century biologist known far and wide in a matter of substantial controversy:

Go to Page 8 -- The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms -- with observations on their Habits

This is very illuminating, for any literate composting enthusiast.

I discover that the average lifespan of a worm like the American red worm can be between 1.5 and 2 years. That is, in a worm-friendly environment, they don't just die in a matter of months. Maybe, as CD tells us, the larvae of flies eat the babies. Keep down your fly infestations, and you will increase your worm population at a greater rate.

It's like that John Carpenter movie -- "THEY LIVE!"

I can find some young-uns -- maybe an inch long -- writhing about in the top of the compost bin. I'm saving my citrus-peel rot for a time when it will be worm-friendly, but I'm putting old bananas, left-over vegetable matter from dinner, and sprinklings of steer-manure into that bin on a regular basis.

So where did the first generation go? I had stopped vermi-composting about three or four years ago. I remember turning my compost -- pulling the bin off the accumulated worm poop and rot -- and I found them in great numbers at all levels of the bin -- including the bottom.

I'm wondering -- should I turn the compost tomorrow? Or should I wait a few more weeks? This had never been such a big deal for me over some ten or fifteen years of managing my worm poop with the legions and armies that create it. And my "management" was a bit more primitive than what I'm attempting to do now.

They would not have "crawled" -- gone elsewhere. That corner of my patio is in perpetual shade, and the cement of the patio surface is always moist, sometimes wet. I would've seen them. Maybe it's the So-Cal heat -- they burrowed deep to find a cooler place . . .

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I did some more web-searches, without expectations of more stunning works as that by Darwin, linked above.

The advisory at Uncle Jim's Worm Farm was good, even for it's ending:

"If too many of your worms are killed by the summer heat, you can always purchase more worms at Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm. "

So it's possible I have quite a pile of red spaghetti -- my worms -- at the bottom of the bin.

But I'll take Uncle Jim's advice. The refrigerator needs to be relieved of some ice in the freezer section, or it could malfunction. Tomorrow, I'll bury some ice in the compost. Running my garden with at least some business sense, I might think that a $70 pound of red worms for one year is enough. But I had these bins in full operation continuously over several years with a purchase smaller than that, and if I need to amp up the annelid population in my main worm bin, I'll pay for it. Willingly.

Who or what else is going to eat my rotten bananas and rotted orange-peel mush?

 

[deadlyapp]

So here's my experience with experimenting with worms over the last couple of years. I usually buy 1000 at a time (which based on the price you mentioned is probably the same amount you did). They are very tolerant to temperature, as I keep them outdoors/shaded in 100 degree Texas heat. They multiply rapidly and control their population well - if you don't feed them much, they'll die off to a sustaining population and then repopulate when you add food. You may find you get other critters too, like soldier flies, which do great things for composting but can become a big nuisance due to their size. Put a drain or allow the bin to drain, worms hate when it gets soupy and will try to escape or go to the top of the bin. Make sure you add lots of shredded newspaper or other paper, because they like the bed and helps encourage breeding.

I don't turn my bin much - generally leave it to sit on its own and it generally does pretty well.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

So here's my experience with experimenting with worms over the last couple of years. I usually buy 1000 at a time (which based on the price you mentioned is probably the same amount you did). They are very tolerant to temperature, as I keep them outdoors/shaded in 100 degree Texas heat. They multiply rapidly and control their population well - if you don't feed them much, they'll die off to a sustaining population and then repopulate when you add food. You may find you get other critters too, like soldier flies, which do great things for composting but can become a big nuisance due to their size. Put a drain or allow the bin to drain, worms hate when it gets soupy and will try to escape or go to the top of the bin. Make sure you add lots of shredded newspaper or other paper, because they like the bed and helps encourage breeding.

I don't turn my bin much - generally leave it to sit on its own and it generally does pretty well.

They're not going to starve with the short-term vegetable waste I put in there weekly. They must have burrowed deep because of the heat, or at least according to "Uncle Jim".

I had soldier flies a few years back when I was still composting with worm descendants of those I'd bought many years before. If they get in the house, you worry about getting stung until you make the identification. Another time, we had an active beehive under the lid of my bin, which had gone too long without my attention. It didn't seem to phase the worms, but I had to call someone to dispose of it.

My best proven worm food is composted orange-peel mush, after all the citrus oils have broken down. repelled by fresh orange peel, the worms go crazy in the rot of it. So we've started buying 25-lb bags of navels on a regular basis for my elderly Moms' juice. We all love the juice anyway, but squeezing it, even with a juicing machine, is a chore. Truth is, you can make any chore less of a burden by finding more efficient ways to do it.

The problem with the orange-peel rot is the flies it can draw. I'm letting it compost slowly in a closed bag inside a closed trash-can. Then -- I have to turn the worm compost, so I can get it into the bin and drop enough of the previous contents on it to cover it up. The red worms should find it quickly . . .

I was looking at web-blogs or examples of home-made bin design. One of them does the same thing as I do, cutting off the bottom of a trash can. They drilled holes in the sides of it -- to allow worms to enter and exit, but not for ventilation, because they bury it in the ground. This of course moderates the temperature. I'm looking at a composting bin "system" and I might try it for about $100. But I can wait for a while. I'm just guessing that most of my worms are in the bottom of my bin right now. I'll probably give them some rotten bananas tonight, and some waste from my big tomato sauce canning project currently underway. They're always getting something, and the something always seems to disappear.

Also I notice that the worm poop I've harvested this far -- about two cubic feet with the worms separated from it -- had the worm eggs which I didn't or couldn't separate , and I found some new worms in the bag already where I store it. That's certainly a good thing -- too.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

LONG LIVE MY RED WORMS! THE WORMS ARE DEAD.

I finally decided to turn the compost and bought another half-pound of worms for the worst case scenario -- that the worms had died. The didn't crawl, as I already touched on that observation. I had probably added some hot vegetable rot that increased the temperature, and the CA summer has taken an absolute toll.

The worms I received in March were sluggish in their behavior. They were shipped in damp peat moss, which is standard practice. Even as they propagated and lived, they seemed sluggish.

This most recent batch of 600 worms (just over a half-pound) were really lively little buggers, and so those I've seen after two days in the bin continue to be. But I might have made the same mistake. I counted on brown-mush rotted citrus peel to be the right stage of preparation to introduce it to worms. This was based on several years of continual citrus-peel compost production with a persistent healthy population of worms -- ancestors and offspring.

If I was able to do this for as much as a decade with a single purchase of 500 worms, I want to do it again. But I've now spent about $100+ on worms this year. So I'll say this: If I can get this process started successfully again, I won't ever terminate my compost starter and worm population ever ever ever again.