Raising Worms?

[ConcinusMan]

No, don't buy it. Collect it from very old composted (fully or nearly fully decomposed) leaf piles, create it, or purchase food/bedding especially intended for earthworms/night crawlers. Purchased compost has been sterilized. That's not what earthworms need. They need the live organisms in the dirt/compost. And this reminds me, all this talk of feeding worms oatmeal, organic fruit/veggy pieces, coffee, etc. is all wrong. If we were talking about red wigglers or other composting worms, that would be fine but earthworms do not create compost from these scraps. Putting things like that in with them only invites bacteria and mold, and will likely do nothing but kill earthworms and that's probably why Chantel is having problems with dead worms.

They eat material that is already composted and fully broken down by compost worms, bacteria, mold, etc.. They eat rich earth and that is why they call them earthworms. They don't actually do any composting, and don't tolerate rotting things in their food/containers. If you want to create compost for feeding it to earthworms, then go ahead a create a compost pile and put all those things in there along with plenty of leaf litter, but let compost worms and bacteria do all the work. The rich, dark, musty smelling dirt that this stuff becomes after it has been fully broken down by time and other organisms, is what earthworms/night crawlers eat.

[RedSidedSPR]

OK... good to know. lol cause i sure as hell wouldn't have known that from the freakin websites.

So (this'll sound dumb) how do i make the compost?

[d_virginiana]

OK... good to know. lol cause i sure as hell wouldn't have known that from the freakin websites.

So (this'll sound dumb) how do i make the compost?

We used peat for our worm beds, and it worked pretty good. Though I remember it took us forever to find a brand that was organic and oriented toward vermicomposting... But we also gave them worm food, so idk if that type of soil would be enough without it?

[ConcinusMan]

It doesn't happen overnight, I can tell you that. A nice rich compost that can support earthworms can take several seasons to create.

http://www.howtocompost.org/info/info_composting.asp

[RedSidedSPR]

oh... thanks

[RedSidedSPR]

idk either...

[snakehill]

I don't know. have been feeding my earthworms coffee grounds for the past few months. That was what was recommended by the worm sites.I did stop feeding the oatmeal because of a mold problem though. They seem to be thriving and I haven't lost one yet. I did notice that they buzz around the container alot though,lol.

[RedSidedSPR]

thats what i'm afraid of

Not really, i don't want to feed coffee because that would do nothing for the snakes

[snakehill]

I'll have to google "the effects of caffeine on earthworms" lol.

[kibakiba]

I actually found that my floppy worms got really buff when I fed them coffee. It was like a wormy steroid. They seemed very healthy after that. I didn't like having floppy worms, but I do keep them for at least a week in my own mixture of stuff before I feed them. If they die, I'm happy because they weren't fit to eat in the first place, if they remain floppy and mostly lifeless, I keep them for at least a week longer, and if they're strong (and I mean all of them, not just one) I feed them to my snakes.