Bunch of different worms in my bin but I noticed these ones look different.

Where do they come from? They have invaded my compost pile. I thought they were good earth worms until I uncovered one and it had a green sheen and flat band that looked odd. Pulled out slithered like snake and jumped when touched them.

Hi! Recently acquired a new worm farm a handful of days ago so still figuring this out.

My current set up I have is a tumbler compost bin and a 3 tier worm farm/cafe. We’re dumping kitchen scraps into the compost bin with the aim to feed the worms from the composting bin weekly or whatever schedule works out best. Compost is roughly 70-80% browns to greens (lots of shredded cardboard/paper tissues).
Was planning on this setup since Ive read worms tend to prefer slightly decomposed bacteria laden scraps over fresh food.

My concern is I’ve noticed some flies and gants hanging around the compost bin. I suppose its to be expected and its nothing insane and its definitely not infestation levels but it got me wondering if Im setting myself up for failure here. By feeding from the composting bin do I introduce the risk of introducing a bunch of fly larvae into my bin and is there ways to mitigate this?
Or do i just do away with the precompost step and go straight to feeding the worms?

...of what the heck I'm doing wrong? I have a worm factory 360, and I got the worms (half red wigglers, half European) from Uncle Jim's worm farm. They are kept inside the house (in the kitchen), and out of direct sunlight. I mince everything I put in, and the moisture is about damp spongeish. I will put a spritz of mist on the cardboard I'm adding, but nothing else other than food, usually about 1/2lb a week of scraps, or when I open the bin and nothing is visible.

However, for rhe last week, the worms have been dying. I come down every morning to 3-4 escapees dead outside the bin, and the castings tray is starting to be full of dead worms.

Help! What is going on??

Heading down to the coast this weekend and toying with the idea of bringing back a few buckets of seaweed to add to the worms food supply.

Apart from giving it a good rinse to remove the salt, are there any other things I should watch out for?

Keen to hear if anyone else is using seaweed in their setup and how they’ve found it.

Much of the same. Babies are fine. Just fed some pre compost.

After a few previous posts about having way too much food for my worms, I thought I’d give bokashi a go to help break it all down and spread out the feeding a bit.

The worms were happy and healthy before I added the first batch of fermented food, but now I’m wondering if I’ve made a mistake!

Has anyone else tried feeding bokashi to their worms? Keen to hear how others have gone with it and whether I’ve stuffed up here?

I've set up a garden compost bin and plan to put vegetable and fruit scraps, as well as cardboard and leaves, in it. I hope it works out.

It did not have the normal collar like all the nightcrawlers I have in my garden. It also had a lot more energy than those fat night crawlers I also have. Located in Carson City, Nevada

Hi,

I am conducting my Master's research on decentralized biowaste conversion techniques (BSF, vermicomposting, and Bokashi) in Europe and Philippines.

Before launching the full survey across European institutions, we are running a short 8-minute pilot test to evaluate question flow, clarity, and technical terminology. Given your background, your feedback would be exceptionally valuable.

If you are interested in, please let me know and I will gladly send you the link.

Thank you very much for your time and support!

Best regards,

Leila Rahnama

Just starting out with a double stacked(for drainage) 5 gallon buckets, added some uncle jims red worms and bonus european night crawlers but im already annoyed with the dang fungus gnats, i set a cardboard "lid" on top to try and deter them but they still get under it. I just stuck some bolts thru the bucket lid to add some offset sticky pads inside the bucket for them to land on but the worms shouldn't be able to reach them - I dunno worth a shot. 🤷‍♂️

Hello! I am a new axolotl mom who would rather not have to buy worms all the time due to inconvenience, price, and disease risk, so I thought I could grow my own. I plan to start with pet store night crawlers and make a bin in my back yard.

My concern is winter. I live in the valley in Southern Oregon (Medford-ish) so our winters are mild, but they do frequently dip just below freezing in the night. Our average low temp in January is 31.6. Will that kill them?

I've thought of two ways to keep them warm. I'm curious if these are necessary and if they're plausible, and which would work best, or it there's something I'm missing.

1. Put the worm bin inside a larger bin filled with straw. I'm worried about this because it sounds like I need to drill holes in the bin to let moisture drain, so I think my straw would just rot right away.
2. just have a really really large bin so the worms can seek shelter closer to the center when it's cold. (How big would this have to be?)
3. Let the adults die and hope there's eggs that'll make it, or repopulate over the spring.

I don't want to ask anyone to house them in a garage or move them into my house because of the smell and, again, drainage holes. Ew.

Thoughts?

Edit: turns out what I have are Canadian night crawlers. I'm not going to try to breed those. I'm working on getting my hands on some European ones.

Tried to start composting but it's harder to do on an apartment. Somebody suggested to try vermicomposting instead and showed me this sub. Can I use my failed composting with this white mold to start my vermicomposting bin?

I have a hypothesis, and I would like a second, and perhaps a third opinion on it. I was planning on adding sugar to a bedding mix for the worms. I got this idea from youtube where ive seen people add a bit of molasses to their bedding. Now I dont have molasses but ive got plenty of sugar, so during the soaking process of the new bedding why not add sugar to it as to influence a faster decomposition process, and have a more readily available bedding environment for the worms?

I'm munching on edamame and planning on tossing the shells in with my worms. I'm eating most of them plain, as I love their flavor and dipping every like 5th one with salt. When you eat edamame you literally put your mouth on the pod and in the process lick off the salt.

Now obviously, salt is bad for worms. But *realistically* there is very little salt. In 12oz I'm using MAYBE a quarter of a teaspoon of salt, and the pods are left with no visible salt left. But is this realistically tiny amount when it's 1/4ish feedings a month? What's a sensible "close enough to nothing" amount that you feel comfortable with?

Hallo og god kveld!

I'm curious what the worm farming industry is like in Norway. I have searched directories, Reddit, and even asked DuckDuckAI about it, and I cannot seem to find any medium- to large-sized distributors of composting worms or vermicompost in the country. (I'm also not a social media user, like at all, so I haven't bothered with Facebook or the like. I'm sure that's hindering things) With that said: What's the market like for this industry?

Takk og ha det bra.

I'd like to start with a small worm bin. With cardboard scraps, some newspaper, and, of course, the food. Now, my question is: has anyone ever tried this with worms they collected from nature? I'm going to buy worms for another bin, but I'd like to give it a try with worms from nature.

I have a small potted jade plant in my room. I decorated the dirt base with a small patch of moss from outside and discovered after awhile that I had brought in an earthworm (I think it was a baby in the moss as I certainly would have noticed it if it was the size it is now).

It’s been about 5 months and I’ll leave an apple core or some coffee grounds in the pot every couple weeks, and it’s fun to see them slowly get dragged under the moss and disappear. I don’t have a pet so I’ve grown quite attached to this worm 😅

My main question is how damp should I keep the soil? I know jade plants don’t need a lot of water, but I want to give this worm the best life it can. Also, do I need to worry about the worm eating the roots…?

Thanks for any advice!

It takes me forever to rip up cardboard into tiny pieces even though I soak it first to make it tear easily. Could I get away with using larger pieces so I don't have to do as much work? My idea would be to create pieces as large as a hand. Would that work? Or would it mat together or take too long to break down? I would also add a lot more bedding in the beginning and less later on to account for the longer breakdown time of the larger pieces.