Worm Farmers in Training

I got a nice note from Mr. Riddle’s class telling me of their worm composting experience. Below is a picture of their set-up:

As you can see, these students have been getting hands on experience vermicomposting at Polk County Middle School under the careful guidance of Mr. Riddle. Here is what Mr. Riddle’s class had to say about their set-up:

Things are going well so far.  We're recycling about 10 pounds of
cafeteria waste each week, and our 7 pounds of worms seem to be handling
it OK.  I'm using straw (mostly) and some shredded newspaper for bedding.
The bin is 4 ft x 8 ft x 1 ft deep.

Thank you for updating us. We wish you all continued success in your vermicomposting efforts! It is always great to hear of students getting involved with recycling and composting. Keep up the good work Mr. Riddle and his students.

Where to Buy Red Worms

Currently, we don’t sell any worms on this site – sorry. Our mission is to provide accurate and useful information to help people interested in vermicomposting. Inline with providing useful information I can provide a recommendation to a very reputable website that supplies worms whom I have dealt with on several occasions. Not only does www.Earthworms4Sale.com provide great worms, they are also very knowledgeable and helpful.

Here are a breakdown of the different compost worms available on their site:

• Red Worms – (the smallest compost worm) -the best for the people interested in composting
• European Nightcrawlers – (a mid-size worm) great for composting and fishing
• African Nightcrawlers – (the largest compost worm) makes a good fishing worm, but can also be used to compost

Be sure to checkout their full line of worm composting products. As always, I’d love to hear what you think about them or any other worm suppliers. Knowledge is power.

Composting with worms

Adding red worms to your compost pile is probably the easiest way to get started composting with worms. There are no bins to make no special bedding required. All you have to do is add a bunch of composting worms to your compost pile and you are done.

To the left is a picture of my ‘compost pile’. I’m not sure it really qualifies as a compost pile since all it really is is a pile of dead grass I pulled up when I was tilling my garden. It also has some leaves and a small amount of kitchen scraps. It has been very neglected.

Today I decided to check on things and see how it was doing. The pile has been sitting there for a few months. I have not turned it or added much to it. I did add some worms to it a while back also.

Let me preface this by saying it is winter here and we just had a big snowstorm (well big by southern standards). When I went to check on the pile, I kind of expected not to see much. It has been getting  down into the teens some nights and I was very afraid that all of the worms would be dead.

To my surprise this is what I found:

There was actually a good number of worms in there, still alive! They were moving a little slow, probably due to the fact that it was about 25F outside! This just goes to show you that red worms are very tough. They have been out there all winter and I haven’t done a thing for them. Once it starts to warm up around here, I plan to start adding more organic waste to the pile and see how quickly the worms multiply.

After taking the pictures, I put all the worms back in the pile and went it, since it was terribly cold outside! Most of winter is already over, and i can’t wait until spring to start my garden again!

Feel free to contact me with any worm questions. I like to blog, I just have trouble thinking of post topics. If you email me, I’ll answer your question on a post so everyone can benefit.