Most of those bugs are in worm beds not vermicomposting bins. Wormbeds are mostly outside and have been there for a long time. Most are stocked with animal manures of some kind so bugs are the norm. Unless you bring the bugs inside you should not have much trouble with bugs.

I couldn't find the 'bugs page', but I'm guessing that bugs are the reason most indoor vermi-owners don't use bedding that came from outdoors. When you bring in leaves, wood chips, soil, from outdoors you're probably bringing in all sorts of tiny creatures along with their eggs (that will hatch eventually).

The bugs don't bother me so much (I have outdoor worm bins), but the pics I've seen of the orange, yellow, or green slime/fungi that grows in some indoor bins, squicks me out.

I'd much rather have my worms outside where I can pick out the occasional centipede, snail, or slug, than see that slimy fungus indoors.

Most all of the creatures found in a worm bin are necessary. No one creature can do it all. The worms need all those other good guys to break down the OM so they too can eat. They eat the fungus and microorganisms and small particles of food. Familiarity will help you get over your aversions.:)

Thank you for your feedback. =)

I'm not adverse to the bugs, just adverse to them being in my home and near my pets (who are far too curious when it comes to bugs lol).

So if I feed my bin food from inside I shouldn't get the majority of those. Is that right?

recluse - the "bug" page on that link is the Invertebrates one. There are a lot listed on there, that's what got me. lol

Here is a link that might be useful: Bug Page

not to worry birdz, the indoor bin, fed mostly kitchen waste and shredded paper for instance, will not be a problem for anything other than compost gnats, fruitflys and houseflys, and proper management can deal with that - most of the other things you find listed aren't usual even in well run outdoor worm bins, they're more actual compost bin inhabitants, and neglected cold bins at that - I've been composting and using a large worm bin to "mature" the compost for years and haven't seen a lot of those things, just various flies, springtails, sowbugs, ocassionally earwigs and worms, lots and lots of worms :)

Bill

Birdz: Thanks for the link. Out of all those 'bugs' on that page, I've only had gnats/fruit flies and sow bugs (roly polys) when I had an indoor bin. And, I did use soil as a bedding.

I got rid of the fruit flies by covering the food well, and I kept the roly polys because they break down the fibrous parts of the kitchen waste. I used to play with sow bugs when I was a kid, so including them in my bin is not a problem for me.

In my outdoor bins, I've found slugs, centipedes, fruit flies, spiders, and sow bugs (not all of these at once, and only one or two of each). But, I do use a lot of leaves in my bins. I just pick the bugs out when I see them (except the sow bugs, I leave them in there).

With an indoor bin, using clean bedding (nothing from outside), I don't think you have to worry about the vast majority of the bugs on that page.

I have read on this forum that many people get pot worms, some mold, and some fungus in their indoor bins, but they seem to want those in there. Do a search on the 'bugs' that you are most concerned about and see what the posters have to say about them.

Really tho, I don't think any of those 'bugs' are dangerous to your kids or your pets, just maybe a nuisance.

Okie dokie. Thank you all. =)

I just wanted to check and be sure. I have several regular compost piles/bins outside and I don't mind any of the bugs in there. lol Sowbugs I don't mind in the least and flies I can handle (thanks to some excellent tips in this forum). I had planned on bringing in some of my leaves from my piles outside, but I think I will just stick to inside stuff, since I have more than enough.

Oh! Since I started this thread, I might as well toss out my other question. =)

Instead of soil to start the beds, can I use dried coffee grounds? It would still be used as their "teeth" if I am correct in my way of thinking, but not sure. I dry some of my coffee grounds so that I can mix them better instead of clumpy damp. I plan on adding damp ones once the wormies are at work though.

Any thoughts?

I know that coffee grounds (and tea leaves/grounds) ferment when they stay wet, and create anaerobic(sp?) conditions, so I don't think it would be a good idea.

Also, I'm thinking cg are a 'green' which means they are full of nitrogen and using that much (as a bedding) might cause sour crop and/or heat up.

Well, I dry them out. But for some reason I didn't even think of the green factor (hits self in head). I know this stuff, I just somehow feel that vermicomposting will be somehow very different from the huge compost piles I have outside. LOL Greens are still greens and browns are still browns though. Oy!

Is any dirt preferred over another for starting the bedding?

actually a good starter bedding is pure shredded paper, quite wet because it'll dry out quick - or compost past the heating stage ... the problem with coffee grounds is they don't hold moisture, but allow it to drain to the bottom, leaving a hard crusted cap - best to mix them in the bedding spareingly, and they too need to start being worked on by bacteria, which is what the worms are mainly after, which is why partially done compost is good - available food right away

Bill

Bill: I added water to my cg and tea leaves when I read that they repel water once they dry out. When I added a small clump of that wet, moldy, stuff to the worm bins, I figured they would like the fungus, but they wouldn't touch the stuff. It sat there in a moldy clump till it dried out.

I was under the impression that the worms eat coffee grounds/tea leaves whole. I know that worms do take mouthfuls of OM, not just bacteria and fungi (nightcrawlers take pretty big 'bites', comparatively speaking). I figured that's why they have a gizzard - to grind up the food.

Are you saying that they don't eat the coffee grounds whole?

they don't eat them whole that I've ever heard - in Master Composter courses here with soil scientists and entomolgy types, the story I got is the OM needs to be decomposing and 'sloppy', and the worms "slurp" the mushy, bacteria laden surface [microbes are actually the primary food] - take a good look at a worm, even a big one, and at the very tip of it's pointy head see if you can find a mouth that looks big enough to encompass a coffee ground!!

I wouldn't be suprised if night crawlers eat quite differently than red worms, as they're a whole different thing, a "soil worm" that can burrow quite fast and deep, and lives in soils with much lower organic content, coming to the surface to feed when so inclined, and they will even drag soft dead leaves into the tunnels, but they don't survive in a bin

worms do use grit, similar to a chicken, but in small amounts of very tiny particles, and like with chickens, it's mineral material like sand or powdered eggshell - see " The Biology of Eisenia" half way down here and see a diagram of the worm's biology at the bottom here

in my experience coffee grounds are way over rated for any use - they repel water [they are after all, processed to do that, and are quite oily], dry into clumps readily, will lay on the surface unchanged for months when spread thickly as a mulch [make a good weed barrier!], and when I was adding large quantities to my giant rotating composter, most of them just sifted to the outside and ended up on the ground

fill a 5 gal pail w/ them and let it sit as long as you like - the top part will become quite dry as the water percs to the bottom, and the only activity I've seen after extended periods is some mold in wet areas - don't appear to me to have much N at all, or support any bacterial action on their own

Bill

Bill: Thank you for that info.

You're right that you can't see the mouth on the worm, but that's because it is covered by the prostomium. I get your point tho, their mouths are small.

In all the books I've read on earthworms (encompassing all earthworms, not just the surface feeders), they've mentioned that the worm takes in larger particles than is probably realized. One of the examples given is usually a grain of sand. So I'm thinking, a grain of sand is about the size of a coffee ground. Maybe they are talking about a much smaller grain of sand that I am thinking. :-)

Nightcrawlers do drag leaves into their burrows to eat. They also use soft, decaying leaves to plug the entrance to their holes (if you want to find nightcrawler holes in your yard, look for clumps made up of a mixture of soft leaves, casts, and small yard debris. Theses will appear to be a small mounds on the ground till you lift them and find that they are plugged into holes). And, they will live in a bin, Bill. I have nightcrawlers in both my outside bin and in my raised beds. I put them there last April to see if they would survive and prosper on the food I supply them.

Coffee Grounds: I've added cg to many areas where I wanted worm activity to break up the soil. My soil is either rock-like dried clay or wet, tightly packed clay, so when I transplant something I have a difficult time digging down and loosening the soil. A few days after I add coffee grounds to the transplant, it does much better. It begins to grow and perks back up again. I always assumed this was as a result of the worms coming for the coffee grounds, thereby loosening the soil and making water and nutrients available for the plant. These coffee grounds certainly don't have time to decompose before I notice an improvement.

If you believe that cg have little nutrient value as a 'green' and you don't think worms can eat them whole, why do you think they improve the areas where they are used?

well they do have some nutrient value, just not as much of a 'green' as folks usually claim, and they have the same value in the soil that any organic material does, the encouragement of bacterial populations, which is what really counts for making a healthy soil - I'd think that if your plants perked up within days, it's because of nutrients leaching from the grounds or other beneficial change like slowing evaporation, not worm activity, which won't be that fast unless you have hordes of worms in that immediate area, in which case I wouldn't think the soil would be hard clay or lacking in organics

the microbes are what converts added organic nutrients to the mineral nutrients that the plants take up - worms are another part of that decomposer population, and while their activity in terms of burrowing around is valuable, their greater value is in processing the organics and microbes further along on the road to being the humus a healthy soil contains - the 'storage locker' of nutrients that preserve the nutrients and to a large degree, prevent leaching

I think the value of CG's is about the same as any organics in that it's more bacterial food, but I don't think they're a "special class" that have particular benefits - my worm bins haven't processed large additions of CG any faster than [or even as fast as] they do large additions of anything else, and I've found that mixing them with something like carrot pulp works lots better - in fact worms go absolutely crazy for carrot pulp, which is at least as high in N, and probably higher in other nutrients, especially considering CG have been thoroughly leached with boiling water, and of course the carrot is likely smaller particles containing a better nutrient balance to get bacterial action happening faster, and it hasn't been 'sterilized' by boiling water

for the nightcrawlers, any non-eisenia looking natives I've added to my bottomless bin have migrated [or at least not multiplied that I've detected], while the redworms thrive on the rich soil-less organc environment and breed like crazy - I'd expect that nightcrawlers serve a better function with their deep burrowing habits, and they probably don't really benefit from the richness of the bin as they're not "heavy feeders" like the reds - it's all very fascinating at any rate, and for me worms make a super maturing step for the food waste compost I make with my hot process bins

Bill