Worm Food 🪱

Inflorescence

Inflorescence

Well-known member
I finally after all of these years have started a couple of worm bins due to the questionable state of manure these days. The goal is to have my own “manure” source for my trees and plants since it can be so expensive to buy worm castings and I want to know exactly what is going in to it.

Since this is primarily for my fig trees, I want to make it fungal dominant as that is what trees prefer. Worm castings are normally bacterially dominant, which is great for annuals and vegetables. But by not feeding vegetable and fruit scraps and feeding more browns, you can get it towards fungal dominance. A lot of people use leaves for this, which worms really love for food. But I do not have deciduous trees in my area to get a ready supply of leaves.

A lot of people also shred cardboard boxes for browns, which I have a lot of, but they aren’t very nutritious. So I saw this guy on YT inoculate his cardboard with mushroom spores, specifically wine cap mushrooms, to feed his worms with a better food quality and thought that was a great idea.

You can’t really see it in the pics, but the cardboard has tons of mycelium threads in it. Mushrooms won’t make it fungally dominant per se as the worms will eat it and poop out bacterially filled stuff, but it definitely will help and any that end up in the castings in my tree pots may help there as well.

Just curious if anyone here has done this as well?


Edited to add: The worms aren’t in this tote. This tote is just for inoculating the cardboard with mushroom spores.


IMG_2907.jpegIMG_2908.jpegIMG_2909.jpeg
 
Last edited:
I've done worm bins before. They are fun. I used them to make compost, and even had a few going to use for fishing bait ( Canadian night crawlers). My biggest issues was that they are temperature sensitive, so I had to keep them inside where it was heated and cooled, and eventually there was some amount of other bugs, mites, etc. If I had a good place to do it that wasn't inside I would still have it going.
 
ChesapeakeFigs said:
I've done worm bins before. They are fun. I used them to make compost, and even had a few going to use for fishing bait ( Canadian night crawlers). My biggest issues was that they are temperature sensitive, so I had to keep them inside where it was heated and cooled, and eventually there was some amount of other bugs, mites, etc. If I had a good place to do it that wasn't inside I would still have it going.
Click to expand...

Nice!

Yeah, I’ve avoided worm bins for the same reasons, both summer and winter here are too extreme in tempertaures to keep them outdoors. I’m preparing myself for the other bugs and am hoping fruit flies won’t be an issue since I am not using scraps. My one bin zips closed, so that should help.

Maybe one day you’ll get back into it. 🙂
 
We are getting worm castings this year from a local producer. The make their own bedding by composting a blend of 7 herds the grow themselves. Then the worms are fed organic grains. We look forward to seeing the results. The cost isn’t bad since they are close and we can buy wholesale.
Worms devour card board in my experience,
Anything fungal they love. Rotting wood or leaves. Here composting worms seem to be naturalized. Any compost pile I leave sitting long enough end up full of worms. ( little red wiggles looking compost devouring ones not night crawlers we have those all over too.)

Nicole masters is one to watch on fungal
Dominated work compost.
 
SpiritFarmVa said:
We are getting worm castings this year from a local producer. The make their own bedding by composting a blend of 7 herds the grow themselves. Then the worms are fed organic grains. We look forward to seeing the results. The cost isn’t bad since they are close and we can buy wholesale.
Worms devour card board in my experience,
Anything fungal they love. Rotting wood or leaves. Here composting worms seem to be naturalized. Any compost pile I leave sitting long enough end up full of worms. ( little red wiggles looking compost devouring ones not night crawlers we have those all over too.)

Nicole masters is one to watch on fungal
Dominated work compost.
Click to expand...

Nice! That’s good to have a local producer, very handy. Hopefully the results are good! Your compost piles must breakdown pretty nicely with the worms as well. I’ve heard of Nicole Masters, but haven’t watched anything with her yet. She’s on my list though. 🙂
 
Your figs are deciduous trees in your local area. Pluck one of each at peak size. Nutrient levels perfectly balanced for their needs.

Just saying
 
Maybe bonsai is in your future?

You can pop all sorts of trees if you wish, just for leaf production alone. I know it doesn't help right at the moment, but I like what you're doing here.
 
ZomVee said:
Your figs are deciduous trees in your local area. Pluck one of each at peak size. Nutrient levels perfectly balanced for their needs.

Just saying
Click to expand...

Yes, they are deciduous, so I guess I technically am surrounded by them. 😜 But I put a bunch of the end of season leaves into my JLF before I knew I was going to get worm bins and all the rest were blown away by the wind storms in January. But I will be saving them at the end of next season for sure.

The problem is I have too much use for them. I want to do FPJ with them as well, though at least that’s a smaller batch and while they’re still green.
 
Last edited:
Inflorescence said:
Nice! That’s good to have a local producer, very handy. Hopefully the results are good! Your compost piles must breakdown pretty nicely with the worms as well. I’ve heard of Nicole Masters, but haven’t watched anything with her yet. She’s on my list though. 🙂
Click to expand...

With our humid climate things do breakdown here fast.
We have tossed around doing worms ourselves for awhile but decided ultimately we have too many chores already. They are very amazing creatures.
 
Inflorescence said:
I finally after all of these years have started a couple of worm bins due to the questionable state of manure these days. The goal is to have my own “manure” source for my trees and plants since it can be so expensive to buy worm castings and I want to know exactly what is going in to it.

Since this is primarily for my fig trees, I want to make it fungal dominant as that is what trees prefer. Worm castings are normally bacterially dominant, which is great for annuals and vegetables. But by not feeding vegetable and fruit scraps and feeding more browns, you can get it towards fungal dominance. A lot of people use leaves for this, which worms really love for food. But I do not have deciduous trees in my area to get a ready supply of leaves.

A lot of people also shred cardboard boxes for browns, which I have a lot of, but they aren’t very nutritious. So I saw this guy on YT inoculate his cardboard with mushroom spores, specifically wine cap mushrooms, to feed his worms with a better food quality and thought that was a great idea.

You can’t really see it in the pics, but the cardboard has tons of mycelium threads in it. Mushrooms won’t make it fungally dominant per se as the worms will eat it and poop out bacterially filled stuff, but it definitely will help and any that end up in the castings in my tree pots may help there as well.

Just curious if anyone here has done this as well?


Edited to add: The worms aren’t in this tote. This tote is just for inoculating the cardboard with mushroom spores.


View attachment 4609View attachment 4610View attachment 4611
Click to expand...
This is ingenious. Just a thought would grinding up a bunch of mushrooms in a blender/food processor and then mixing it in with the shredded cardboard have the same results?
 
Tried them for a year in my garden, had the Vego Garden Worm Bins. They did pretty good and I noticed the bed with the worm bin gave me lots of nice green growth on my veggies and pretty hefty Toms 🍅. They eventually died off in the winter though so I figured I would have to keep buying worms every spring which I couldn’t possibly maintain atm lolIMG_2037.jpeg
 
BNaula1 said:
Tried them for a year in my garden, had the Vego Garden Worm Bins. They did pretty good and I noticed the bed with the worm bin gave me lots of nice green growth on my veggies and pretty hefty Toms 🍅. They eventually died off in the winter though so I figured I would have to keep buying worms every spring which I couldn’t possibly maintain atm lolView attachment 4626
Click to expand...

It is trickier when you have them outside and it’s much cheaper if you can get the worms locally. I can get worms locally, but I still ordered my first batch just because it was more convenient. But I’m hopeful that’s the only time I’ll need to get them. Hopefully they start reproducing well since mine are indoors.
 
Does it really matter what type of worms they are? Red Wigglers? Night Crawlers? Do you have a preference for a worm that provides the most primo poop? :rolleyes:
 
TorontoJoe said:
Does it really matter what type of worms they are? Red Wigglers? Night Crawlers? Do you have a preference for a worm that provides the most primo poop? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

You do need composting worms as opposed to regular garden worms. Both red wigglers and nightcrawlers are the two most common and preferred ones. It may depend on your setup to a degree. Nightcrawlers like to burrow and go deeper and they don’t do as well in densely populated situations. So if you are using shallow trays, they are not as ideal because they can’t form their burrow and you have to limit your number of worms. Whereas red wigglers are surface dwellers so they are perfect for trays and shallow bins. Because they are small, you can have a larger population of them and they tolerate each other in confined conditions.

Nightcrawlers are also more sensitive to temperatures, red wigglers can handle a wider range of temps and are more tolerant of a variety of conditions.

Edited to clarify: European nightcrawlers prefer it cooler, african nightcrawlers can tolerate more heat.

Temperature ranges:

Red wigglers: Ideal 65-85°F, can tolerate down to 40° and up to 90°.

European nightcrawlers: Ideal 60-80°F, keep it well above 40° and well under 90°.

African nightcrawlers: Ideal 70-85°F, max is about 95°, lowest is about 50°, but really want to maintain it above 60°.
 
Last edited:
Inflorescence said:
You do need composting worms as opposed to regular garden worms. Both red wigglers and nightcrawlers are the two most common and preferred ones. It may depend on your setup to a degree. Nightcrawlers like to burrow and go deeper and they don’t do as well in densely populated situations. So if you are using shallow trays, they are not as ideal because they can’t form their burrow and you have to limit your number of worms. Whereas red wigglers are surface dwellers so they are perfect for trays and shallow bins. Because they are small, you can have a larger population of them.

Nightcrawlers are also more sensitive to heat, red wigglers can handle a wider range of temps.
Click to expand...

Wow! You know your worms!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top