Surely someone on this forum has experience with vermicomposting in hot temps in the summer....help please!

Hi houston

I live in South Africa and our sun is probably as hot as yours. I found a reasonably shady area near (not quite under) a tree and a wall and then I just hung 80% shade cloth over the bin. That seemed to work. And even though one side of the bin got a little bit warm the worms still had the other side to move to.

Hope that helps.
Alex

Hi Houston, I live in Fort Worth and haven't had any trouble keeping my worms happy during the long hot summers. I keep the bin in the back of my garage and there is zero air circulation back there, but temps are relatively constant year round. The worms seem happy and they consume a huge grunch of kitchen waste every week, even though my bins are fairly small. Just keep your bedding moist and your bin covered loosely so it's dark inside. Cheryl

I live in the tropics, the US Virgin Islands, and have been Vermicomposting for 20 years. It is very important to have your bin in a shady location if it is outdoors. The most important part during the hottest months is a well ventilated top and a moist environment. The combination of the shade, moisture and ventilation will cause the bed to be cooled by evaporation. As we have tradewinds, the breeze blowing over the ventilated top contributes to the cooling. In a high humidity and high temperature environment, cooling by evaporation is less efficient. A very small solar panel driving a 12 volt dc fan is a good option

I'm in central Florida. I now have two big worm bins and they seem to survive both summer and winter.

Make sure absolutely no sun hits your bin directly!!!!!! That would heat it up far more than you might think and in turn dry it out much faster.

My bins are built from plywood and 2 x 4s. The tops are simply screen or hardware cloth to allow air. I think having legs on the bin is important so you can place the feet in containers of mineral oil to keep ants from climbing up into the bin. My bins are in an old dog kennel that we have wrapped in shade cloth and tarps to keep the sun out and the bins shaded. During the Hottest part of summer you need to check the moisture content of the bin more often but you still don't want to make it so wet that the bottom of the bin gets anaerobic and smelly. I find that the top couple inches of bedding in my bins is usually quite dry but most of the bin is still moist enough. Last summer we went away for a few weeks and when we got back the bins were a bit too dry but our worm population has bounced back even so and I've already harvested about 5 bucket fulls of castings and probably have another 5 to go.

Our first summer with the worm bin I would take frozen jugs of water and place them in the worm bin to help cool things but now I don't think that is really needed unless the bin were getting some direct sun light or if we were having another summer like 1998 when it was 104 in the shade during May and the state burned.

Where ever you place the bin, keep in mind that harvesting worm castings can be a messy procedure (I would avoid placing the bin where there is carpet.) And what type of bin you use, if there are ants around, you want the bin on a stand or to have legs you can place in containers of liquid to keep the ants from climbing in. Also make sure there are no other paths into the bin (don't let it touch the wall or leave anything leaning against it or let plants touch it.) It really sucks to stick your hand into the worm castings only to be bitten up by fire ants!!!! And materials, I like wood bins cause they breath a bit better than plastic so moisture and temperature are a bit easier to control.

Only major change I'm planning for my bins is the replace the screen covers with some cage wire or hardware cloth as some critter has chewed through the screen.

In summer my bins get lots of Black Soldier fly larva in them which I actually like since my fish and chickens love eating those far more than eating the worms.

Here is a link that might be useful: TCLynx