Time - More food, less water

[Darryl]

Books often teach that as a worm bin ages or processes that you can feed your worms more. Yes, if your bin environment is correct then this will indeed be true. Books mention that this ability is caused from the population of the worms growing along with the biomass of the worms. While this is partially true it is not the whole story.... When a bin is stocked and bedding is fresh, then worms have a whole gambit of things to eat. They are eating bedding as well as food scraps. As the bedding decomposes and the bin ages, the the original bedding has been consumed and the worms no longer have much bedding to eat. At this point in time, their main food will come from what you supply them in food scraps. The amount of food scraps they will consume will increase as they have less bedding to eat. Yes, worms will ingest their own wastes but if they are given a choice between that and food that you feed them, they will eat the food that you feed them. So, it is not difficult to see that as the original bedding disappears that they will depend more on what you feed them as a food source. Also, the worms should be increasing in number and biomass, which will also cause them to eat more bulk food. Another issue with the processing of worm bins that is seldom addressed is that of moisture. Depending upon the bedding and location of the worm grower, when beddings are new and fresh they need to be watered at a certain rate to keep moisture in the bedding. However as the bin processes and the bedding ages, lots of the bedding becomes consumed and replaced by castings. Since castings are dense and hold moisture very well, then the bedding has to be watered less. In short, as your bins age, you will probably need to feed the worms more bulk food and water them with less amounts of water.

[Jay Blair]

Thats why when my shredded paper bedding drops below a bin volume of 25%, the worms get a new home , except for about 10% of the biomass to fully convert the original bin and be eradicated.

[theinfamousj]

Hmmm ... Jay ... you have intrigued me. Since I only have one bin (and only have space for one so :: shrug :: ) Could I put the contents of my bin at harvest time into another container along with 10% of the biomass and they'll fully process in that other container? Or does it have to be set up like a bin.

I thought the concept of "fully processed" was outside of my realm of possibility.

For example of a new home how about a gallon milk jug. After all, my bin is tiny and 1/4 of the bin is probably less than a liter soda bottle in volume.

[Darryl]

I think Jay means that once his bedding volume drops to 25% that it is time to harvest. He harvests most of his worms except for a small percentage of them that he leaves behind to continue working in the old bedding and consuming the "visible" bedding/food.

Yes, by theory, you cannot obtain "pure" castings but I don't imagine he was referring to absolute pure castings. He probably means not being able to visually see remnants of the old bedding and food. The longer worms process bedding/food, then the purer the castings become. Unfortunately, at the same time your worm numbers also become less due to toxicity issues. There will reach a point in time where you will have zero worms left.

You can operate worm systems to provide for maximun castings and casting quality, or you can operate systems to provide for maximum numbers and biomass of worms. Mid to large scale worm farms are concerned with worm biomass at first. After all, you cannot obtain large amounts of vermicompost without first having large numbers of worms.

Running systems in order to obtain maximum numbers of worms is much different than running systems in order to obtain quality castings.

I spent a very long time trying to multiply worms and was not very sucessful at it. It was not until I obtained a few methodologies from worm farmers that I was able to start multiplying worms in large quanities. When I first began worming, there were many times where I harvested bins that had processed for about 4 months only to discover than I had the same amount of worms that I started with! Yes, I had nice vermicompost, but my worm biomass was not any higher than when I started. The main culprit that was causing my problems was castings.

Darryl