Mine sits in my office with a piece of cardboard under it "just in case".

Dennis, I think if you shade and shelter it enough some of the worms will survive the heat spells.  For example, if you put it in the woods or on the north side of a large tree/trees.  Or on the north side if your house.  The more sheltered the better.  Full shade is recommended.  Some might die but as long as some/most survive, there will be enough eggs to keep the population up and then in the cooler weather they will be fine.

I would not want one to be indoors due to the smell and large quantity of water that will need to drain out on an ongoing basis.  Most of the items you will be putting in are probably 85% water by weight, which will come out as the stuff decomposes.  A garage would be OK as long as you had a way to drain the water without making a mess.  But it soon becomes a hassle if it's a manual process. 

I wouldn't want to use worm castings for cuttings due to the chance of fungus gnat infestation.

I don't know how you take care of your worm farm Rob but mine doesn't smell and very very rarely leaks.

I recently bought a bag of worm castings. Some places recommend to add it to water and Aerate it some places don't.. I guess I could buy a cheap fish tank pump and air stone. Or should I even bother?

If you want to keep a bucket of it ready to go that would be good. I just mix mine and let it sit overnight and use it right away and it seems to work fine.

I agree with Tami.  I keep mine indoors near the kitchen.  It doesn't smell and has never leaked.   It is handy to feed it by having it indoors.  I have the Worm Factory 360. 

Temps here go too low in the winter and too high in the summer and I definitely didn't want to leave it out spring and fall and bring it in during the summer and winter as it would bring other things in.

Finally a topic I can weigh in on. (Note – I’m new to growing figs and have been lurking for a little while to learn as much as I can..)

To keep odor and excess moisture down in any worm bin you need to remember two things:

1. Feed the worms in moderation. Too much food at anyone time can lead to the bin heating up too fast and anaerobic conditions.

2. Provide both vegetable matter (greens) AND carbon rich bedding (browns). There are a lot of discussion/opinions on what the best ratio is for a healthy, productive worm bin. I can only go by my experience. If you want the worms indoors, provide at least 3 parts brown material for every 1 part green.

I purchased some castings and mix them in with my potting soil.   Since we have bait shops near us    Maybe I will just buy some cups of wigglers and make my own bin.   definte shade project because it is 90 and sweltery here in Tampa every day.   I think I would have to be careful because of afternoon rains also.   Don't forget to get your coir at pet supermarket.  3 bricks for 8 dollars.   working fine for me.   Joyce

Sobelri


Welcome to the forum:)

Where do you guys buy the equipment needed to setup a worm compost bin ? Also is there a place that sells all the equip needed including the worms.

Ive seen setups with spigots on the containers I can only assume this was used to collect and use the leachete? Or just to be able to remove it? After reading this I didn't know the leachete is dangerous. .. Im glad I read this because I would have never known.

I tried making a worm bed, probably 10 yrs. ago. Had a dead chest type freezer, so I drilled a hole in one corner, put some screen over it and set it up with cardboard bedding. I had chickens at that time so I dug some worms from the chicken run and put them in. They disappeared. I figured I needed to buy some but never got around to it. I dumped all my used coffee grounds in there figuring they'd hold till I got worms. When I moved I just loaded it on the trailer as is, put it off to the side here, and kept putting coffee grounds in it. One day I was dumping some grounds in and just for grins I dug down into it. under a couple of inches of grounds I hit worms, zillions of them. I hadn't checked in 6-7 years and they had been multiplying like crazy.

The bedding had settled and the whole thing was too big and awkward to work with so I left it... planning to take them out into more manageable beds when I got time. Then we had a period of heavy rain, the door gasket developed a leak, and I went out to put grounds in one day and found standing water and all the worms drowned. RATS!

I drained it, and covered it so more water couldn't get in, and sure enough, there had been eggs that survived, so the worms came back. Still not as many as there was, but I do have a working population, waiting for me to get around to it.

The moral of the story is. Go for manageable sized worm beds.

Here's what I'm probably going to do. There are a lot of good ideas on the Larry Hall site.

I took another look at what I have, and it's a mess. Lots of worms but they're in a thick almost tar like substance that you can't just screen them out of. I'll need to put clumps of it on better bedding and let them work their own way out.

I have tried cutting up paper and cardboard, (a table saw works best for cutting cardboard) and, it's too time consuming. Peat moss looks like the way to go.

Leachate shouldn't be a problem, if you control moisture going in. Run the food through a blender and strain off excess moisture. Yeah, I know, that's time consuming too, but it gives fast, top quality, fine grain castings.

I think it's important to define what you're after... up front. If you are raising worms to be a garbage disposal, that's one thing. If you're in it for the castings then you might want to go about it differently. I have a big compost pile. I clean the neighbors barn for the manure and turn it with the loader on my tractor. It's nothing to just toss food scraps in with that. I use the compost as top dressing in the garden and around the orchard trees, so it doesn't need to be top quality. The worm castings I want as a top grade amendment for potting soil.

If I'm going set it up as a production thing I want to have a set feeding schedule, with a consistent feed recipe.

I have a number of ideas about how to go about it... but I'd rather test them out on bucket size lots before I go to larger size setups.

Which brings up a pet peeve. I watch these how to videos and they are billed as the best thing yet... but then, you watch it and the guy is saying,"This should work". He hasn't tried it!!! There is one there called "Hybrid Worm Bin (The best DIY worm farm). It's a super elaborate thing. And he does an update after he's used it a couple of weeks, and, he shows how the lid warped, so, he had to screw it on to stop the worms from escaping. Hellooo? If the worms are trying to escape it's because they don't like it in there. The worms are putting their energy into crawling up the walls rather than into producing castings. The problem might be in the bedding, or the feed, but, you don't know. And, he billed it as "the best" before trying it. Don't tell me something works before you've tried it.

I use my paper shredder to shred my newspaper and add it to the worm bin.  It works great and you can process a lot of paper in a short time into tiny bits with really minimal effort.  It is essentially free as the newspaper would have just gone into the recycling trash otherwise.  My worms basically get newspaper, food scraps, and the remains of cut flowers after they have started wilting. 

I've learned quite a bit in the two years since I first commented on this thread and thought I'd share some of my current thinking. 

First, there is clearly debate over whether or not the leachate is good or bad for the plants.  In my opinion, this depends on what you're composting.  If you're only composting vegetable/plant matter, I do not believe there are any issues with using the leachate.  However, if you're composting animal waste (especially from carnivores!), I would not use the leachate or compost until fully composted.  That being said, the next thing I learned was that, if the worm bin is managed correctly, there should be very little, if any, leachate at all.

My worm factory, which was left outdoors, got infested with fire ants that literally attacked and killed all the worms in the bin.  Since then, I've made my own bin using three inexpensive Sterilite 15 gallon totes I store in the garage.  The bottom one has two bricks in the bottom to support the top one (or two) and provide airflow.  The two that go on top have lots of holes drilled in the bottoms and around the top-sides for aeration.  The lid that goes on the top tote also has lots of aeration holes drilled in.

I did not put any drain in the bottom tote and have very little, if any, leachate accumulating in the bottom.

Because the totes are larger than the worm factory bins, it does take longer to generate a batch of castings, but the system supports much more worms, so can process much more waste and, I anticipate, once it gets more populated with worms, will process the larger bin just about as quickly as the smaller bins.

Two more things I've started doing just this year (speaking of the addictive nature of maintaining worms!)...

I've been making my own dry worm food to help provide the grit they need for their gizzards and also manage the moisture.  I grind up eggshells with things like dry pinto/kidney/black/red/garbanzo beans and add some cornmeal.  I'll store this in a jar and "sprinkle" some in the bin and/or mix in with their other food. 

Also, when I pulled out my HUGE collard greens plant a couple of months ago, I took all the leaves and blended/pureed them down with water, then added some of the dry food to get a "pasty" consistency, then I froze the mixture in some containers and chopped (literally with a hatchet!) into some chunks that I use as "popsicles" for the worms on the hot days here in the South Florida summers to help cool the bin and add to the food.  When I add one of these, I make sure to place it on some dry shredded paper/cardboard to help soak up any excess moisture.

I hope those additional tips help! ;)