very nice material

Wow, those are fantastic looking castings but what is the white plastic container in the middle? Thirty gallons is a lot of castings, how many (and how big) are the bins you're using? Are they flow-thru style, WB360, indoor or outdoor etc.? Have those been sifted through a 1/4" or 1/2" mesh......they look nice and fluffy?

You obviously know what you're doing - keep it up! Please share some of your secrets so I can try to produce castings like that........the suspense is killing me!

Harry

Nice VC there you are are doing well. Getting some good manure to add is not an easy thing for me but I need to try harder. I too am getting ready to split some bins and see how it goes.

charity, other than the aged grass clippings and horse manure my worms enjoy pretty much the same fine dining as yours. I have to make more of an effort to get some horse manure 'cause I added some to one of my first bins and I think the worms did really well. Haven't added any since though. Tried some composted leaves to one of my bins about 6 months ago and now I have lots of white mites. Wondered if they were introduced via the leaf compost? Did anything like that happen to you? How long has it taken you to build up you population? And what, if any problems have you had to overcome with your bins along the way?

Sorry to ask so many questions but when I see castings like that it makes me curious as to the hows and whys.

Harry

Harry, I started with 1000 worms and one 10-gallon plastic bin. After about 20 months I split four bins into the eight I have now. I don't have any mites in my bins. One thing I do is microwave the composted leaves for 4 minutes in an effort to kill any unwanted pests. I spent many hours studying the best practices of experienced growers and put them into practice with my bins. I started small and gained my own experience as my herd increased.

The biggest problem I faced was in the last few months when I began chemotherapy for cancer. There was about a two month period when I didn't feel well enough to do ANYTHING with my worm bins. As a result my four bins completely dried out. When I finally felt good enough to give them some attention I went through each bin spraying water to get the material moist again throughout. What worms were left were sickly and very lethargic. I also fed them again in a 1/4 section of the bin. Then about weekly I fed them in a different 1/4 section and worked to get the overall moisture right. I know I lost much of my worm herd because of the dryness due to my neglect. On the bright side it seems the worms laid a bunch of cocoons in a last ditch effort to survive. Those cocoons will hatch in my finished vermicompost storage bins and I'll get them as they mature and transfer them to my working bins.

Charity, really sorry to hear about your chemo. treatments. I wish you well and hope you make a speedy and full recovery. My mother had to have chemo. treatment 40 yrs. ago, so I can imagine what you might be going through. Stay positive and immerse yourself in your gardening interests - which I'm sure you are already doing.

Re splitting your beds.........was there anything unusual happening that gave you an indication that splitting the beds was necessary (ie. worms escaping, smaller worm size etc.)? Even though my bins seem to be fine I don't seem to see any cocoons. Do you think a high density of worms might be cramping their sex life?

One more thing, do you do any bokashi composting? I've been doing it for about a year now and find it quite interesting. You might want to check it out .

Thanks for all your quick responses to my endless borage(sp?) of questions. I usually check the site nightly so it's great to see such quick replies. Best of luck to you and get well soon.........your worms need you!

Harry

P.S. Capitalized Charity because I'm assuming that's your real name. Just feels rude to me to write someones name in lower case.

Nothing unusual to indicate I needed to split my bins. I've never had much escaping because I try to keep the bins' environment pleasing to the worms. I use red wigglers which are smaller than some of the other varieties of composting worms but I don't think they are smaller than usual. I didn't split my bin the first harvest because I wasn't sure the density was high enough. After that I have split the bins every time. My intent is to have many more bins to process a great deal more waste to generate more vermicompost for sale. Splitting the bins each time is the best way to grow the herd because if the population is too dense they will stop multiplying. This form of self regulation is a primary way they adjust to their bin size/population density and food supply, but it's a balancing act. They need to have enough population density to easily run into one another but not too much to cause them to shut down their reproduction. In my experience that is more art than science. Not sure I do it optimally but I've had good luck expanding my herd. I'm sure I could do better though. I don't see cocoons in my bins either like some other people seem to have. That may have more to do with my eyesight than anything because I always have juvenile worms in my bins so I know my worms are reproducing.

I don't do Bokashi composting. I cut up and freeze the vegitable/fruit scraps before feeding them to my worms. I've read about Bokassa and watched videos on it but don't want to add another production cycle I need to keep up with.

Charity, I think your method of splitting the bins more often is keeping your overall population booming. The only time I've ever really noticed a rapid increase in worms is when I have divided my bins.

I hear what your saying about bokashi composting - it's not for everyone. One of the things I like about it is the fact that you can compost just about anything. That compost can also then be used to feed your worms. It's kind of analogous to the pre-processing you do with your freezer but doesn't tie up space in your freezer - not to mention using less energy (electrical at least).

Anyway, keep up the good work with the worms.

Harry

Charity - 6,000 head in your worm herd! I guess that there are positives and negatives for such a large herd. The positives are obvious in your pictures. Beautiful VC! The negative that I see is the potential need to hire additional worm wranglers? Good worm wranglers are hard to find. Also, I have never seen a worm herder like those dogs I have seen herd the cattle in Texas. Maybe we could train a cockroach? Love your VC; hope mine is as good when I harvest it.

Charity I hope you are feeling better. Your castings are beautiful. I'm very new to VC and wonder about the aged manure. Any tips on that? How aged should it be? Is it pretty dry at that point or rather gooey still? Do you mix it at all levels of your bins etc? I am going to split my bins when I harvest next. I have had one harvest and it was pretty wet and muddy. It was still pretty big yield after only 8 weeks though and it's been drying out pretty well. I have tons and tons of cocoons so I know the worms are happy. Do you do oatmeal or cornmeal? Thank you so much ;)

TRichards - Recovering from what I hope will be my last round of chemo. Still feeling pretty bad. Will be glad to get back to feeling normal. Thank you for asking.

Since I've just moved up from four to eight 10-gallon bins I don't have to deal with horse manure in bulk yet. I currently keep two 5-gallon buckets going with manure at all times (going to add two more to stay ahead of my growing need). The buckets have holes drilled in the bottom for drainage and use garden fabric held in place by a bungi cord as the lid. I keep these buckets outside so they are exposed to the weather. If I'm not getting much rain then I'll run water through them periodically to help with the breakdown of the manure. The aged manure is almost like dirt when I use it after a couple of months of aging. It's definately not dry - moist would be how I describe it but not real wet. When one bucket is almost empty I'll fill it with fresh manure and put it in the back of my aging rotation. This spring I may build a 4'x4' outside bin to hot compost maure in greater volume. The hot composting will also help kill seeds and pathogens in the manure.

I don't remember what I've written above but but I feed my worms a variety of food ingredients using a lasagna method. They get a mix of aged horse manure, spent coffee grounds, leaf mould, pumpkins/melons, veggie scraps, peaches, bananas, shredded cardboard/newspaper (= to the amount of other food), and powdered egg shells for grit and ph control. My lasagna method is to remove most of the bedding from 1/4 of my bin at a time, leaving a layer of bedding on the bottom. I then add a layer of the food/cardboard mix above, cover with 1/3 of the bedding that was removed earlier. Then I repeat two more times. Next week when I feed the worms I move to the next 1/4 section. Over the course of a month the entire bin gets fed. Feeding in sections like this gives the worms ample space to run if the feeding area gets too hot. Over the entire surface of the bin I finish by covering with 3-4" of shredded cardboard/newspaper.

From what I've read it takes 3-4 months for worms to fully process material (being fed weekly). I would keep working with your bins longer than 8 weeks. At about 3 1/2 months I will stop feeding a bin for a couple of weeks in preparation for vermicompost harvesting and worm bin splitting. This lets the worms finish up most of the remaining food and gets them hungry so the will more easily migrate to their new bin. As for cornmeal/oatmeal, if I had some that went bad I'd use it. I just don't buy foodstuffs for my worms since there is plenty free stuff available for them to eat.

I had access to about two cups of raw oats normally used for growing oat-grass for cats. I was going to try using it for a bit of a spring cover crop in my garden. It occurred to me that if worms like oatmeal that they would like the raw oats. So, I ground up some in my small coffee grinder and fed that to the worms.(gave it a bit of a spray with water to moisten) and they love it! In fact I just gave them more this morning and they are already starting to move onto it. Purchasing from any agri. feed store would be very inexpensive I would think.

Harry

Really Really nice looking VC. You should be proud. Get ready for a bumper harvest this summer. Nice job! Be sure to store it in a container that breathes and keep moist. We want all those good bacteria to survive. A breathable bag, plastic bucket with a cover ( holes drilled at top for air), or your totes there with some wet newspaper or burlap/carpet on top without the cover. Again...nice job.

Hi Charity, Just read some more of the comments and didn't realize the challenges you are facing. Double nice job. Get better...that's an order. Wishing you the best.

amazing compost!! mine is usually very wet, your looks so beautiful!!

how are you feeling now? i'll pray for you.

sorry for the lowercase - my arm is broken.

carol

I'm doing pretty well. The cancer is in remission, though not cured. Average remission is 5-10 years. Thank you for your prayers. Now I just need to recover from the treatment itself.

pretty gruelling. best wishes and prayers for you.

praying for you also