Why vermicomposting? IV
For adequate drainage, be sure to drill holes in the individual tray bottoms and/or sides of the bins or construct the bin of chicken wire which is full of holes. Lastly, if you are using a plastic container, leaving the lid ajar would also promote air circulation. The red worms may not need a fan, but they do need their oxygen too.
After 4-6 months for larger bins and 2-3 months for smaller bins, you need to change the bedding. Although the plants love the worm casting and actually thrive in this, these castings are supposedly toxic to the worms themselves. So either you constantly harvest the worm castings or you move them into new “clean” bedding as described above. How to do this? There are various methods used to accomplish this. One is the dump method. Here you get a large clean cloth or paper and dump the bin contents onto it. Wait 10 minutes and start removing the top decomposed layers until you start to see worms. Stop and wait another 10 minutes and repeat until you have separated the worms from the old bedding. You don’t have to be perfect here. Store the old bedding however you like to use as natural fertilizer in your garden. Lastly divide up and place the newly harvested worms in their new bedding and the process starts all over again.
Some things to watch for are the formation of swollen bands or clitellum around the worms in the upper part of their body. This means the worm is mature enough to mate. Hence, after a couple of weeks you should look for round pineapple like balls that are cocoons containing the eggs of the red worms. Actually these cocoons start out white, turning yellow and then brown and lastly red just before hatching. Typically out of the 20 eggs, 2-3 become red wormlings. If you see this, you can rest assured that you have provided an environment that the worms are content with.
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