I've done "lasagna gardening" in my first raised bed this year, and it worked really well for me. I don't think it is the right environment for red wigglers, as there wasn't enough moisture or organic material for them. I assume there were lots of earthworms in there, since I always rescue the ones from the sidewalk and toss them in there. I haven't heard of "worm cloth", and I'm not that patient. I set up my layers, put my plants in, and the garden is going. I'm getting ready to re-layer for my fall garden, since I lost about 2/3 of the volume of my bed. I loved this system. It was easy to set up, and the plants did really well.

I keep my red wigglers in a bin, and I'm quite happy with the set-up. The advantage to the bin is that I know my worms are in there, and I don't have to fool with the entire garden to dispose of my kitchen waste. Also, I can harvest my castings and put them where I want them.

For me these two projects aren't related. I keep worms, and I also use a lot of waste materials to set up my garden. I have heard of keeping redworms in a trench in the garden, but I'm not ready to give my fellas an option on where to live.

HTH

Okay, HTH... helpful answer. And I'd like to hear from others on this forum, about their experience & considerations.

But here's another - related - question: How long do worm castings remain valuable if they have not been worked into the garden soil? What I'm asking about, I guess, is not just the 'nutrient' content but the beneficial bacteria, enzymes, etc.

My composting system (bins with material that heats up, because I put my lawn clippings into the mix) develops a good population of red wigglers at a certain stage of development. But I can get so busy that I get behind sometimes on extracting the worm castings from the bins, so it sometimes sits around for months. How long does it remain good?

Hmmm... It takes a while to get response about oddball (non-bin) questions here, I think.

I haven't checked out all the old threads on this forum... But I do wonder if anyone here is deliberately cultivating red wigglers in some patch of garden soil?

There is a method (I saw it in Latin America, but did not have enough Spanish vocabulary & grammar to ask questions) where you feed the worms vegetable waste at the soil surface, and then cover the worm-breeding patch with a type of cloth (like burlap).

No one here is practicing or exprimenting with this?

Hi jole bc; I would say that you are located in British Columbia CA z6. With that in mind in order to sustain the sheet method(I am assuming similar to layering organic materials on the large garden to be area) vs the bin and harvest compost method.

1. The environment outside will kill most the worms you call to the surface due to them freezing even if fed during the winter. Thats what happens in the natural world. If you pile the material very high 6 feet or so and dampen it the micro bacterial action will creat some thermal activity and you will have to aireate it to keep the thermal thing going. It can be done but is a lot of work. Then probibly the dew worms will be the biggest survivor species. They thrive in just above freezing temps.

In a bin environment inside so environmental conditions can be better controled, space becomes the problem. Number of bins, feeding harvesting of compost and such. Still work! The good thing is that if you use both methods the bins can give the layering method a jump start in spring after the last hard frost. With huge amount of worms you could see lots of workable compost in a couple of weeks. Key word HUGE Hundreds of pounds. The entire wild bird population and moles and predators of all types will have a party on the free food(worms). So you will have to figure a way to protece your workers(worms) from harms way.

Its up to you to figure out how much time, money and effort is acceptable to you to start whatever you are going to do.

over at garden forums there's a thread by AD about over wintering a windrow full of worms. CB2 has raised beds full of worms. He harvests the worms out before winter, they also leave cocoons for the next spring.

Here is a link that might be useful: garden forums

lkittle, you wrote: "The environment outside will kill most the worms you call to the surface due to them freezing even if fed during the winter. Thats what happens in the natural world."

Yes, I see what you're saying. But what about the worm eggs? Will they go through the winter and be viable? I understand that in a good system the eggs are abundant and are an important 'link in the chain'.

In the natural world, as you term it, there must be some function that keeps worms a living part of the soil environment. Maybe it's the thermal toughness and survival capabilities of the eggs (??).

Hi joel bc, Yes the natural world treats worms very different than what we who try to cultivate them, in a environment, that may have more available food than they might find in the natural system they are in. When we give them large quantities of food with its microbacterial activity may not have a hard freez at all. Thats why I said a large high pile/windrow type of environment. The exposure to the temp extreams are often different. Left to fend for themselves they leave cocoons and they may even burrow down enough to aestivate through the most extream temps. Then return to the surface when the temps moderate. My thinking was to get a jump start on waiting for the temps to moderate. When planting time is on hand its too late to start working on getting enough compost for the garden. The latest you can start is in the fall the season before and have worms working through winter. In nature the worms that start early need some time to max out their numbers to be effective. My daughter has horses and she has a compost pile for the manure and chaf from hay and straw. In winter and early spring the worm count is very small and by June the worm population is up to good numbers. She has compost for her garden and always works the pile from opposing ends on consecutive years. Her pile is about 8' long and 4'wide and the compost is full of worms and when she spreads it on her veggie garden the worms disappear, why?

lkittle, okay.... so the point seems to be that zone 6 is too cold for a sheet composting approach. Have I got you right?

I've seen the sheet-composting approach used on the BC coast (Richmond, outside of Vancouver) on a commercial organic farm near the Fraser River estuary. Possibly zone 7 there. The farmer had been using sheet composting for many years.

So I take it that people who are encouraging and making use of red wigglers simply expect them to break down the compost, and generally in bins. No one is expecting them to live long in the garden soil per se. They may, in fact, soo disappear once the compost is put in the topsoil.

Bin culture is for the purpose of expediting the compost-material breakdown, and for boosting the enzyme & microbial content of the compost.

I plan on putting them (ef's) in raised beds next spring, and fully expect the cocoons to last through the winter and be fully established spring 2010.

rj_hythloday, you are in zone 8. So (according to my friend lkittle) my situation being considerably colder in winter than yours, your approach might not work here. Seems like your plan should work where you live & garden.

Hi Guys; the temp zones are the reason that compost species of worms will not survive. In order to burrow a worm can go around obsticals or litterly eat through them. A worm that is s compost dweller will not burrow very deep for the most part unless he can wiggle into the soil as it does in a worm bin If the worm gets cold and stiff not frozen around 40 deg F he can't wriggle enough to burrow.

Three types of earthworms by where they live are anecic.Permanent burrows deep into soil. Lumbricus terrestris (Canadian Nightcrawler).

The next is Endogeic within the earth shallow burrows that are not permanent. Aporrectodea calliginosa.(Angle worms)Found in gardens and farm fields.

The next is Epigeic. These Species live on top in organic decomposing matter. Eisenia foetida(Red wigglers).

Joel, I actually plan on moving to zone 5 soon (military) My plan is to pile the raised beds w/ tons of OM during the winter. Use the onion bag trick to harvest what worms I can out of them before freezing, and just let the cocoons stay in the raised beds where they will hatch on their own in the spring. I'll restock the beds as needed from bins.

AD had a windrow thread at gardenforums and his EF's and EH's survived a very cold winter. I figure composting on top of raised beds is as good if not better than a cover crop.

joel bc you could try the trench method.

I know it is being used in Canada.
You dig a trench beside the rows.
It could get the worms below the frost line and some will winter over. But if you are on the wet side of BC you may have to add a drain.

Here is a link, Bentley has a good blog going. Its worth a read.

Here is a link that might be useful: Vermicomposting trench at Red Worm Composting

Not sure if this is helpful, but I thought I'd share my accidental experience:

I set up a sort of lasagna bed late this spring where I removed about an 8 in. wide strip of sod down the middle of the long narrow bed (it runs along my walk). On either side of the removed strip, I layered newspapers or cardboard and then piled up material, including some composted horse manure and some four way mix that I built up along the center strip. The layers on either side were just made up of whatever I could find to build it up 7-8 inches above the newspaper the keep the grass from busting through and build the soil up for next year. The idea was to make sure the beans for this summer had something that was already good and ready to go in the middle so that they could grow well and root down sufficiently deep. I think that I incidentally also filled the bed full of e.f. eggs/small worms from the horse poo. I had sorted out most of the big clumps of worms from the manure for my worm bins. I didn't notice the wiggler presence in the bed til yesterday when I was pulling out my spent bush beans (Which actually did quite well in this setup-- The zucchini that I grew with the same lazy method went nuts!). As I pulled out the beans and disturbed the first couple inches of nearly composted lasagna layers, the numbers of worms shocked me! There was more than I've seen in any of my garden areas. It was a very pleasant surprise! I also have a small worm trench set up next to that bed, so there is a small chance that worms may have also come from that, but I kind of doubt it. I'm interested to see what happens over the winter.

Best wishes!

Thanks, kcannard. Nice story. Sounds like you feel you got some value out of the worm activity (castings, etc) for your beans in the same year that you made the lasagna bed.

This is the point I'm now wondering about, because as lkittle wrote: "In nature the worms that start early need some time to max out their numbers to be effective. My daughter has horses and she has a compost pile for the manure and chaf from hay and straw. In winter and early spring the worm count is very small and by June the worm population is up to good numbers."

In other words, lkittle thinks in a wintery place such as where I live, lasagna gardening or sheet composting might not be the best plan for encouraging a useful population of wigglers. And is basically questioning whether (in a region where worms tend to die back during winter) worms in my garden would have time to: a) grow very large in numbers; b) make very much worm castings.