Worm questions: Do I need a separate worm bin?

Hey all,

I have been throwing fruit peels, leaves, coffee grinds, etc. directly into my soil bin to sit and rot for a few months before using the soil. I put the usual mix of guano, EWC, etc recommended in Sub's Supersoil recipe as well.

My question here is what are the benefits of having a separate worm bin? Why don't people just put some worms in with the soil they will be using?

If I were to create a separate worm bin for my food scraps, I assume they would produce EWC for me to use with my soil. So is the sole benefit of the worms that they will process the food to make it easier for the plant to process? Are my plants not able to access the food scraps that have rotted?

Any tips much appreciated, I really like the idea of keeping scraps to use for the garden, but want to make sure I am doing this correctly.

ballaboyee21 said:

Hey all,

I have been throwing fruit peels, leaves, coffee grinds, etc. directly into my soil bin to sit and rot for a few months before using the soil. I put the usual mix of guano, EWC, etc recommended in Sub's Supersoil recipe as well.

My question here is what are the benefits of having a separate worm bin? Why don't people just put some worms in with the soil they will be using?

If I were to create a separate worm bin for my food scraps, I assume they would produce EWC for me to use with my soil. So is the sole benefit of the worms that they will process the food to make it easier for the plant to process? Are my plants not able to access the food scraps that have rotted?

Any tips much appreciated, I really like the idea of keeping scraps to use for the garden, but want to make sure I am doing this correctly.

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The worm bin, and the food scraps that you throw in there are less about nutrients, and more about beneficial microbes that are multiplying in the bin. The way you are doing it is fine I suppose, but a worm bin would offer the following benefits:

- The castings can be harvested from the bin and the worms can be used over and over to make more castings

- You can measure exactly how much castings you're using when putting together a soil

- You can scoop out whatever you need if you want to brew a compost tea

- If something goes wrong you can discard a small amount of castings and start over as opposed to getting rid of a large amount of soil

- Worm bins and their bedding needs to stay considerably more moist than your soil would need to be, so you would either have soil that is too dry for the worms to flourish, or soil that is too wet and could turn anaerobic.

They dont eat acidic fruit or there peels or chilli peppers, I was wondering myself would they eat a bell pepper with the seeds and stalk cut out?.

cannibaERB said:

They dont eat acidic fruit or there peels or chilli peppers, I was wondering myself would they eat a bell pepper with the seeds and stalk cut out?.

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I am pretty sure that they only eat microbes. If you don't over do it you can feed them just about anything organic. You just need to make sure that the fresh organic (carbon based, not necessarily certified organic) material has time to decompose without going anaerobic or heating up your bin too much.

I've fed my worms all kinds of citrus, onions, garlic and peppers, just not all at once. In fact, if you let that stuff compost first then feed it to the worms even better.

if ones soil goes anaerobic can you still use it? if not what would you have to do to it?

I asked this very question to the gentlemen whom I bought my worms from. He explained that nightcrawlers would be fairly happy in soil, as they are tunnelers. But red wrigglers are decomposers that consume the microbes that rot organic material. Since organic material is at the top of the soil, the red wrigglers live just below the surface of the soil in the loamy, spacious, fluffy part of the soil. This is why red wrigglers prefer bedding material, and not soil. The worms we're after (red wrigglers) prefer spongey beddings as opposed to denser soil.

Hope that helps, I'm just starting off my first worm bin here too... It's been about a week and they're still alive! Lol

I just started up a new tote with two pounds back in November I think it was and now have half a 30 gallon tote of what looks like mainly coffee grounds. Super stoked about dividing these worms between two 30 gallon totes soon and then doubling that in 3 more months or so, etc, as nauseam, ad infinitium, hahahahaha!

It sounds like it takes about as long to flower as it takes to finish a nice worm bin. Coincidence? I think not!

Smidge34 said:

I just started up a new tote with two pounds back in November I think it was and now have half a 30 gallon tote of what looks like mainly coffee grounds. Super stoked about dividing these worms between two 30 gallon totes soon and then doubling that in 3 more months or so, etc, as nauseam, ad infinitium, hahahahaha!

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Awesome smidge!

Thank you all! Have successfully started a worm bin and am looking forward to reaping the black gold straight from the worms' anuses! Will be using castings in the garden as a top dressing and to make worm casting tea (will probably add some liquid fish too to feed the microbes and whatnot). Hope you all are well.

Smidge34 said:

I just started up a new tote with two pounds back in November I think it was and now have half a 30 gallon tote of what looks like mainly coffee grounds. Super stoked about dividing these worms between two 30 gallon totes soon and then doubling that in 3 more months or so, etc, as nauseam, ad infinitium, hahahahaha!

Click to expand...

I now have 3 'stock' or 'nursery' totes (18 gal), that perhaps get harvested every 6 months or so and 4 more working (?) totes that are done on a seasonal basis (10 gal, same dimensions as the 18's, but not as tall). I'll bait or 'trap' 500 -> 1,000 worms from the stock bins to get these going for the growing season, mainly outdoors.

The stock bins are so dense with worms even removing up to 2K doesn't seem to make a dent in the population. The working bins VC is used 'as is' with no attempt to harvest the worms. Baiting is done with a hand sized piece of melon rind on top of the stock bin bedding. A good ball of worms under the rinds is ~500 or so and works well for the 5gal +/- of bedding in the working bins. THOSE, I give 3 months or so and will be starting shortly for use in May/June.

For bedding, *I* use a pretty basic peatmoss, perlite, lime mix that has worked well for over 6 years. It's easy to make ahead and either left plain, like for the stock bins, or, amended some (coffee grounds, seed meals, etc., for the working bins (let it cook), that aren't fed so everything gets worked over.

When the base stays constant, it's easy to see what works and what doesn't when you experiment.

Enough of my BS.

Wet