exciting: second bin time?

18 years ago

hi fellow wormers!

i recently returned from five weeks away. peeked into my bin and it was looking awesome. the gang - originally 1 LB in august - had consumed most of their bedding and feedstock! i dug around with worm fork and noticed some clumps under that have yet to be processed but all in all, looking good!

planning ahead to an eventual harvest, i pulled all of the largely processed stuff to one side. filled the other side with new bedding, new scraps. only trouble is, now i only have half of the space in the bin to toss scraps! i don't want to overload the squirm but already the food scraps are piling up...and i don't want to stock my freezer with them either...

so, i would like to start a worm bucket (found a bucket, why not recycle it), what Worms Eat My Garbage calls the "Worm Annex" for extra food.

my Q: would it be okay to just grab a giant hunk of my current bin, full-o-worms (both the older and new side are crawling) and dump it into the bucket with new bedding and stock? if so, should i take it from the newer or older section?

or should i be more mathematical about it and actually - eek - harvest the worms to see how many i am getting in there and start completely fresh? eventually i want the VC/castings but am not dying for it. my main goal is to recycle kitchen scraps.

also: this bucket seems to have some cement or some sort of dried out construction stuff on it: should i clean it out, or will this not harm the worms?

thanks for your thoughts!

worm on!

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Comments (5)

gardenfanatic2003
18 years ago
I wouldn't put my worms in a bucket with an unknown substance in it.

As far as starting a new bin, unless you REALLY want to know how many worms you have, I'd just grab some from the new section to start your new bin.

Deanna
newoahuwormer
18 years ago
Shesoldier:
How did your harvest work out? I tried to do a harvest but I had tooooo many babies in the BLACK GOLD so everything from 2 mini-tub starter kits went into a 10 gallon Rubbermaid container.
I DID try to only feed one side of the new home so I could harvest my BLACK GOLD (vermicompost) but every time I looked the worms were on that side of the bin so I'm just going to wait a few more months and do the stack method with another 10 gallon container on top!

Please let us/me know!
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wormlover1
18 years ago
To clean out the bucket, turn it upside down and hit it with a hammer several times until all the cement falls out.
For harvesting I mostly make tea. I put the black-gold into a mesh bag and dunk it in a five gallon bucket of water. At first the mesh bag will be squishy but as the water soluble stuff squishes through the mesh you will be left with a lot of crunchy stuff like eggshells, undigested matter and leftover worms. This I empty back into the bin. The worms don't seem bothered by their enforced dunking and quickly slither away. Other methods I have tried are too painstaking and labor-intensive. There will always be a few worms lost in the harvesting process.
shesoldier
Original Author
18 years ago
hi there! thanks for asking after the bin newoahuwormer.

it's actually been a bit of a fiasco, and i posted a little bit about it on wormdigest.org as wormgirlnyc.

upon my return i was so psyched to be worming again i kind of overfed the bin. the result was nasty, yucky, horrid sour crop/overfeeding. a lot of the worm population died off. it got really wet and mucky and it was all my mistake.

so, i ended up scooping out some of what looked like finished VC and goopy food muck, airing out the bin (difficult in cool autumn weather), putting loads more newspaper and getting a new pound of worms (which were giant and perhaps more than a pound from the lovely Lower East Side Ecology Center for $18).

the good news is the bin is doing AWESOMELY now. i am pretty sparing in my feeding, wanting them to work on the older VC in there and to not over feed. the moisture content of the bedding seems good. the only thing that annoys me a little, tho does not harm the bin, are some BSF who resulted from the wet/mucky times from back in the day.

the new herd is eating like mad and finally, the castings seem "fluffy" as described by the pros on here, as opposed to black and heavy and soppy and stinky (which i, uh, shamefully, made them by overfeeding).

so that's my update! today i'm going to pick through more of the older VC that i pulled out months ago (it has been sitting in tupperwares) for cocoons. i've been doing this sporadically, getting tons of cocoons. but it takes a long time to poke through it all with a little stick to get every last one!

note: do not completely cover semi-finished VC. it gets STINKY. i obviously did not have pure castings harvested.

so that's the update from new york city! how are your oahu worms???
newoahuwormer
18 years ago
She Soldier!
I had an overfeeding chapter a couple of weeks ago too! P.U. So I left the top off (I'm using a 10 gal Rubbermaid) for about a week AND I mixed in A LOT of shredded newsprint, did NOT feed them for a couple of weeks and things seem to have balanced out.
I'm not ready for a 2nd bin (I know I'm going to have some casualties when I start a new bin but they are my pets!) SO I am going to do the put the new bin on top method - but I haven't figured out what happens to the bottom? Because when I first started with mini-tubs - I put burlap on the bottom and my 10 gal tub has burlap on the bottom?
Got lots & lots of babies & teenagers. I can't go too big because I am in an apartment complex but I have my eye on the corner of the courtyard where no one goes! I have a small papaya orchard going and no complaints.
I'm going to check out your Worm Digest. . . Wow, you are in New York! Our star quarterback was there but I didn't think he would win the Heisman - I figured it would be the very young man from Florida!