Barbararose that box will make a fine wormery. Here are a few thoughts to consider.

1. Bottom: You can leave it bottomless, or use some wire-mesh hardware cloth to keep out burrowing critters like gophers and moles.
2. Side wall: Consider a removable or hinged section on the bottom for easy harvest.
3. Topper: You should cover your wormbed to keep it dark, damp, and protected. This could be a scrap wood lid, burlap, carpet, an old blanket, or just a heavy mulch layer of straw, leaves, or other bedding.
4. Bed: Use some aged horse manure for your bed. Add at least 12", fill it up if you wish. and soak it down daily for a week or so. It should heat up and then slowly cool. At about 80F add a pound or two of worms Keep the bed damp, and they should make you a happy worm farmer!

Good luck!

Pete

IMO Pete sumed it up simple, effecient and effective,what else could I add? Well I suppose you could let the kids paint pictures on the sides.

Pete

How old is aged ?

Good question!
The reason to start a bed with aged horse manure because it is more stable. By that I mean that it SHOULD only heat up once. Fresh manure seems to produce more heat and for longer periods. Once the manure is a few months old, that should be aged enough. The more you add, the hotter it will get, and the longer it will hold the heat. It is key to wet it really good and then let it cool to worm temperatures. Once the bed is well established, you can topfeed with most anything you want, including fresh manue. If heating occurs, the herd will stay below the heat in the "perfect" zone.

The wormery is ready to work as harvester.
Boards beside the box are for lid.
The box will sit over a hole.
The hole will have bedding.
I'm fairly confident the worms will go down.
Not so confident they'll go up, even if the drawers are full.

Wormery box with light and VC.
The worms will drop to the lower drawer, eventually, as the top drawer, made for harvesting, won't get moistened. The drawer below has everything I had available and will eventually attract the worms. There is horse manure that had been brewed, washed; VC after tea, dry shavings from horse manure, two cantelope shells and will be kept damp enough with horse manure tea.

I'm using Pete's recipe for aerated VC tea on some VC that has sat waiting its turn for almost a month. It has sat so long some cocoons hatched and the tiny things are clinging to the air stone in the net. They are too small for me to rescue them.

Great stuff, Barbara!

You are getting 'serious'! I have nothing but confidence that you will be pleased with the results.

Paul

WOW! Very nice build. I just love homemade self-built worm systems. They are fun to custom- make to fit one's needs. Well done Barbara.
The baby worms clinging to the stone may be able to be recued at the end of the brewing cycle Set the stones on your top tray. Or wash them off...
Is this going to sit inside the other box in your first photo, or is this the same box customized?

Keep on having fun. Good luck and happy wormin'

I am thrilled to report that 3 salvaged glass windows which I hauled off the road on Vashon & then hauled down here, just happen to fit the boxes. Amazing how the sleeping brain puts things together that a waking brain would never get to. The raised beds can be almost a cold frame and the wormery can have a glass lid to keep out rain.

Reply to Pete re wormery box: same box, evolved.

Harvest almost complete: coaxed along with the dust brush and dustpan method.

Have you tried taking some of your dryer harvested material and putting it on a sheet of corrugated cardboard half covering a five gallon bucket? Then using a chop stick to move material off of the pile and it falls into the bucket. Move around which edge of the cardboard is harvested.

No. But the dust brush /dustpan is a little like that. VC & worms in a tray with a burlap bottom is mostly passive migration directly to the new bed. The brush/pan just lifts the dry, evacuated VC off the top.

One or two worms seemed caught in thread: I cut them loose, probably unnecessarily.

Temperature was 90ú at Wormery yesterday.
Bed moved to bottom drawer.
Hole filled with water.
Sun moved.
Temp dropped.

Not Neglectable Yet.

The hypothetically neglectable bin got neglected yesterday.
I was showing it and forgot to close it up.
It got drenched and more light than worms like before I noticed.

Only one worm went down to the drawer below to newspaper and horsemanure. Several climbed up -- I think to find dark places, rather than to avoid the wet.

Seeing what the Life in the Worm Inn did to one layer of burlap, I'll be more attentive to the burlap-lined drawers. I think there are 5 layers of burlap between the bedding/worms and the hardware cloth. I added a couple layers to absorb moisture.

This post was edited by barbararose21101 on Wed, Sep 24, 14 at 16:48

The wormiest drawer is now the 3rd from the top, 2nd from the bottom. The bottom drawer and the hole beneath it have horsemanure and shredded newspaper. Fed the worm drawer more than a cup of pureed aerated kitchen scraps. I filled up the drawers above the worms with more dry burlap -- thinking insulation. Reassembled the fort: there's a glass over the lid so that rain runs off. There's a bale of straw in front of the burlap bag of straw in the picture.

The visible worms (after lifting 3 or 4 layers of deteriorating burlap ) were alive: no obvious deaths. They were feeding at both previous feeding spots: one of which was dry, ordinary rolled oats at the edges, offered to absorb moisture following inadvertent drench.

I didn't look below the wormiest drawer, tho I know there are at least a few worms in the bottom drawer, and probably a few below ground level. There is a sort of tower of burlap in the lowest drawer so that, hypothetically, they can move up or down.

Unfortunately, a rat has discovered this experiment.
Fortunately, it isn't doing any obvious damage;
it might even be warming the worms.

In reply to Pete on the warming/worming thread: The Neglectable Bin is heavily bulwarked. To be sacrilegious about it, I feel like I'm rolling back the stone when I move the wet straw bale away.

The feeding of the 13th isn't gone on the 19th but I did as Pete suggested and added more food: they got a taco. I put the puree of the kitchen counter composter between two warmed up tortillas. The tortillas may attract the rat. But not more so than the oats that were still there, probably.

Most worms are where the food is. There are some worms in a lower drawer. There is horse manure throughout, all the way to 15" below ground.

I can offer the rat an alternate diet, I can poison it, I can let Nature decide. . . There are other rodents under the house,
I met a mouse yesterday trying to get into the garage. If he succeeds, he'll find poison. My house has inadequately insulated hot water pipes under it (hot water heat). Rodent paradise. I know what I should do. . .

The problem with poison is the rodent may die where you do not want it's body to decompose. Well, there may be other issues but let's just say there aren't. You might be in a war only the mice know about. I'm not advocating killing one rat or mouse. I'm advocating not killing 15,000 rats in a year. "Spock says, âÂÂLogic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.â Captain Kirk answers, âÂÂOr the one.âÂÂ" It is not fun to catch one mouse in a trap. It is even more than not twice as much fun to catch two mice in two traps. I almost think every worm bin should arrive with three mouse traps of three styles to give the mice some choice in the matter. My sticky traps have been successful with fruit flies. Some mice are smarter than me because they ate peanut butter and I have an empty trap. So if you get 16 mouse traps get 16 different types.

But mostly I am massively confused as to why you warmed up the tortillas. Do tell.

As an armchair archaeologist I may have discovered evidence of the first time ever of humans cooking food for worms. :-)

because, baby, it's cold ! outside !
(and they were out of the freezer . . .)

The mouse/rat poison that come in blocks will dehydrate the cadaver so it will not smell. However, just like eq2 peanut butter, they (mice&/or rats) got smarter. Left the bait alone, but I can see from the new droppings that they're still there but where?? I guess it's back to live and let live.

A good cat or two will help. They need to be mousers!

Quite by accident I discovered how effective drown traps are and what smells good to rats will gag maggots. I sat a burlap bag containing dog bones atop a large crock jar. A week later I discovered rats had tore into the bag so I disposed of bag,bones and all. Let's just say by the time I got rid of the bag,the aroma discouraged returning to the shed where the crock was right then. Fearing the lady who owned the crock might discover it then put 2 and 2 togeather,I went to dispose of the crock. I couldn't believe how many rats and mice were traped inside the crock. It about made me ill but I placed the crock beneath an Eastern Red Cedar in the most remote spot I kenw of. Often wondered what someone thought about finding a primitive Blue Crown Butter Churn out in the woods. I have since bought and built a few drown traps and baited with some raunchy stuff. They work great but unfortunatly unlike otis' bars THEY DO NOT dehydrate the cadavers. Is that your Hulk Halloween party mask or did you just turn green?

OMG there are posts here I hadnt seen.
I think a drowning bucket is called for.
The neighbors are too close, but not very alert.
Waste of worm food ?
Won't do outdoor cats in the city: birds.

I wonder if a city bin should go close to the cedar tiers
with the ordinarily forbidden foodstuffs in it.
Could evn have the killer stuff mixed in ? Opinions ? Risks ?
Drowning bucket inside a city bin ? (Pictured)
Next thread will be a request for strategies.

Anyway. That food that was supposed to keep the worms warm?
A mole or a rat got it.
If there was a Squirm in it, the rodent got the worms, too.
Big hole right in the middle.
I'm OK with it.
I don't have Pete's excessive population but
I have enough to persevere.

Damned rats! Security breach. Sorry about your loss.