Below post details out the first 3 weeks of the bin. Hopefully, I don’t kill off all the worms. I hear it happens. There is a bit of duplication between the set up page and this one, but it’s minimal. I promise.
So you can see this page for the that information. I have a vermiculture page that goes into the set up I did for this.
I received Urban worm bag on March 26th. It sat for about a day before the first worm shipment of 500 red wigglers showed up. I used the water spray bottle to spray them with a lot of water after I dumped them all on to the top of the materials in the worm bag. The next day I head off to a two day trials event in San Ysidro. I left the bag outside since it was nice and warm, but once I got back. It was forecasted to get rather cold and to snow. So I moved the bin inside the house into my spare room. They are going to stay there until the evening temps get over 50. Than I’ll move it outside to the yard. I have a corner in mind. I’ll have to see if it gets harassed by wildlife there. If so I’ll move it into the garage.
First feeding: April 1st.
When I got back home, I checked in on the bin. I could see a few worms down deep in the bedding. The weather then decided to take a downward turn. There was snow predicted in the next 5 days along with freezing temps. So I moved the bin into the spare bedroom. I also put two old bananas into the bag for the worms figuring they had had enough days to get used to the new surroundings. I also sprayed more water into the bag, it seemed really dry to me. At this point I still hadn’t been able to find an actual saturation number for how wet was enough or too much. I was off to do some more research.
I also ordered 2,000 worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm** I found their site when I was trying to find more information online. I found Urban Worm Farm’s blog to have the most information about vermicomposting especially their Urban Worm Farm’s Vermicomposting: The Ultimate Guide for the Beginner and Beyond. After that site the Uncle Jim’s site was the next most helpful one. Being me I figured if I was going to use their info I’d also like to support them by buying worms from them, like I bought the bag and other stuff from the Urban Worm Farm. Supposedly this bag can hold/support up to 6lbs of worms under optimal conditions. That’s about 1,000 worms per lb. if I remember correctly.
Feeding Info: Per the manual a good balance will is roughly 70/30 mix of bedding and food waste, by volume. 70% bedding or greater will help keep the food waste aerated and will help keep the pH neutral. If you start with 1/2 lb of worms, add no more than 1 lb of food waste and bedding every 3 days. If you start with 1 lb of worms, add no more than 2 lbs every 3 days. I’m pretty sure that I’m under feeding my bin, but since they eat the bedding, I’m not worried about it. With optimal conditions, worms can consume roughly 25-33% of their own weight each day. All the reading I’ve done says, it is essential that you don’t overfeed the worms. Food waste should be added in thin layers of no thicker than an inch or 2. Always observe how fast the worms are eating the waste and don’t add any more if there is still a top fresh layer of uneaten food.
2nd feeding: April 5th
My next batch of worms showed up on Sat. Apr 5th I used this as an excuse to molest the worm bin…. I used my hands to scoop up some of the bedding from deeper in the bin, I added a few more handfuls of leaf mulch and kind of fluffed up the bedding in the bag.
I added the new worms, after I kind of dug around to see if the original bunch of worms were the least bit interested in the bananas I had added. They sure did seem to like them!!! There was a mass of worms all over the bananas. I dumped the new worms into the bin. Sprayed them down with water, since the peat moss they were shipped in was really dry. They were a great deal more active and spread out quickly, they even seemed to be trying to make a break for it. (read later that it was the condensation they were likely going after since they were a bit dehydrated after their trip.)
I added worm chow to the top of the bin this time. I left the lid of the bag open, since the light is supposed to encourage the worms to borrow down into the bag after you add them. They seemed to settle into bag after an hour or so. I didn’t see any escape. I put the worm blanket on the top and closed up the lid. The next day when I checked on the bin there were a lot of worms in the blanket.
There were also a couple of balls of worms around the bananas I had added.
April 7th:
Next round of feeding, I dumped in a bag of lettuce mix that had gone bad. When I checked on them the next day they weren’t really interested in the lettuce mix. They weren’t really near the top of the bin, there also wasn’t any attached to the blanket like before. I dug around a bit to make sure there was still live worms in the bag. I found them balled up with the banana pieces that were still there.
I’ve gotten into the habit of checking the bag almost daily. It seems to dry out rather quickly. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. We only have a 5-15% humidity here in Santa Fe.
April 10th:
I added a handful of strawberries and tops to one corner of the bag. I didn’t add any bedding again either. It seems like there is plenty and it’s been on the dry side.
April 14th:
I added in some blended up some old asparagus to add to the bin today. Since there has still been some banana and lettuce left, I haven’t added any more food until now. The bedding was still on the dry side, so I used a cup of water with the food while blending, figuring more moisture would be good for the bin.
April 17th:
They must have liked that asparagus, there was a huge mass of worms on the top under the blanket and attached to the blanket. The moisture content seemed to be much better. I’ve been checking it daily. It really varies around the bag, it’s anywhere from 55% to 85% if I hit the food mass with the probe.
This is week 3 with the Urban Worm Bag. The worms seem to be doing great. I’m thinking about moving them outside once the evening temperature is staying above 45 degrees F. Once I get to 1 month I’ll stop posting about each feeding and go to weekly reports. I do plan to keep checking the moisture level in the bag until I know just how much it dries out. I just can’t seem to help myself when checking it. I really do enjoy digging around in it to find the worm balls and see how they are doing.