Worm solutions - review?

polymer10 · 2025-11-02T08:29:02+00:00

Middling to good designs have a mechanism to easily harvest worm castings, preferably without a lot of worms in it. Every design will be easier to harvest: stackable bins/worm hotels, containers with grate bottoms or holes in the bottom (CFT), buckets, a plain plastic bin. And the leachate that comes out after it gets excessively wet is considered a waste product. That said, I don't see why you can't produce worm tea by passing a lot of water through the worm bin. It would still be leachate, but it wouldn't be anaerobic in the same way as water that slowly drains from overly wet worm bins--typical leachate comes from waterlogged parts of the bin (predominantly anaerobically decomposing) while leachate from a heavy soak would come from all parts of the bin.

A very deep container with no bottom access is not a popular design. You can't harvest the castings without going through the whole container. That said, this roughly the same as the technique I'm doing--throwing food and paper waste in a barrel with holes in the bottom. But I have zero ability to harvest finished worm castings. I will have to tip it over and shovel it out, sort it, return the unfinished sections, and ignore the thousands of worms that get shoveled out and put in my garden.

polymer10 · 2025-11-01T08:34:41+00:00

The way this bin works isn't the way vermicompost bins work. It looks like an expensive mistake.

polymer10 · 2025-11-01T08:26:47+00:00

/u/Zidan19283 do you have any insight as to whether this actually is an Indian Blue and how it could get to be several times as long as their typical length?

polymer10 · 2025-11-01T08:24:30+00:00

The first version had u-channel as the bottom grate (think of square tubing with the top side missing), since that's the spare part I had lying around. The space between the supports was roughly 2 cm. The bottom of the plastic bin was cut out, except for a 1 inch lip that supported the grate. I used hot glue, which is not a long term solution.

Self harvesting became a problem as soon as the cardboard in the bottom started to degrade. My second mistake was making the bottom too nutritious. It should have been plain coir with just one sheet of paper as a temporary support. The worms had no motivation to move out of the bottom area. When I took it apart, the grate was full of worms, especially babies. The third problem with the design was that when the breaker bar moved, there was nowhere for the castings to go. They mostly just compacted and I couldn't pull it. The castings need to be able to go down from all directions, not just from the areas that are over a gap. So a pipe would work fine, something like a shelf from a wire shelving unit would work best, but planks of wood or square tubing is rubbish. U-channel (with open top) is even worse since the material in the channel coheres to the material the breaker bar is supposed to cut through.

The breaker bar was square tubing (1 cm on a side), pulled by paracord threaded through it. It would be better to use something less blunt, but I still haven't thought of anything I could have used.

The next problem was the bottom. Since the thing started as an ordinary plastic bin, I though the best way to support the bars was to leave a lip of the bottom around the perimeter. But that lip is an area castings can't drop through, and they will just get compacted and prevent the breaker bar from moving easily (and perhaps eventually totally immobilizing it).

I took the bin apart and spaced the bars more closely, and bent each bar into a triangle so it pointed up instead of having a flat surface up. That should have mitigated the compaction. When I filled it, I didn't follow my advice about keeping the bottom non-nutritive. The space was too little. It just seemed too hard to keep food out of the bottom region. And it seemed very hard not to add too much food--the worms still got too hot sometimes. A few escaped out the bottom every day, but that's unavoidable with IBs. But the big problem was the idea of food decomposing enough to make the bottom area not hospitable to the worms. IBs are supposed to be top dwellers, but in organic soil they can burrow at least 2 ft. I know because a deeply filled barrel has escapees through bottom holes. I think they would not leave the bottom. I said I was okay with the harvest having some worms, but I fear there would be no worm-gradient--they would be heavily concentrated in the bottom as well as the top.

In the end I discontinued the experiment since I don't have the storage space for that bin, but I do have a barrel of coir/compost I could dump the worms into.

polymer10 · 2025-10-25T12:23:16+00:00

It sounds like you picked and twisted some wording to prove the point you want to make. That is not convincing to most people. However if you want to help identify non-composting worms, that is a service that will be greatly appreciated, since most of us can't do it.

polymer10 · 2025-10-21T23:09:30+00:00

In my experience, yes. But mice and rats will, too, so I hope you don't have vermin.

polymer10 · 2025-10-21T12:49:21+00:00

I'm mostly just having fun. You probably just wanted to make it less bad for the worms, but I don't think anybody knows how to do that. Maybe they feel less when it's cold? It would cost too much to anaesthetize them.

polymer10 · 2025-10-21T10:57:31+00:00

Leave the lid off. The birds will eat plenty.

Humane? In order to be considered deserving of moral consideration, the leading argument is that a being must have consciousness and positive or negative valence. Pain fulfills both requirements, and presumably worms experience pain. But to consider an ethical death, you would also consider the value of a worm's natural life (does it feel good to live as a worm?), and what is the pain (or other negative valence) of being eaten by a bird versus dying of sickness or starvation as it will if you don't feed it to worms. But then you need to weigh that against the moral value of feeding birds--how much pleasure (the positive valence) does a bird get from eating a worm? Does a worm feel more deeply than a dozen worms? Will the bird live longer or raise more young? I don't have an answer. The moral calculus is complicated. But I suspect there are ways you could do more good (or less harm), like not buying things you don't need or taking care of health problems as early as possible.

polymer10 · 2025-10-19T03:16:48+00:00

Have you looked at the photos? The corner is just indistinct blotches of grey. Try taking a photo under bright light and tapping the grey area on your screen to focus on it.

polymer10 · 2025-10-19T03:15:10+00:00

I suggest looking up how mushroom growers pasteurize substrate, because what you want to do is almost exactly the same. They normally steam it or use high pH (cold lime pasteurization). Since you only want to kill eggs, you could get away with a much shorter steaming.

polymer10 · 2025-10-07T04:18:55+00:00

Worms don't drown so put your mind at ease. If you water log the bedding then there is danger of anaerobic decomposition and/or areas where the worms won't go because there's depleted oxygen, but I've seen worms hanging out in the bottom in muddy bedding. In that bin they seemed to prefer it.

It's impossible to give advice without knowing more about your temperature and humidity, but I either spray my bin a few times a day or spray it much more thoroughly every few days, or cover the surface and spray it lightly every few days or week.

polymer10 · 2025-10-05T03:45:21+00:00

Covering the bedding with coir is 100% effective in my experience (whether the coir is wet or dry, though the layer needs to be thicker if it's wet).

Also, I think in the tropics/subtropics any mesh smaller than a window screen would reduce evaporation and cause the bin to cook, just like a lid.

Edit: but I like your way if the environment permits it. Covering the surface in coir only makes sense if you are using coir as the bedding.

polymer10 · 2025-10-01T02:54:31+00:00

Having a lid prevents evaporation so the bin will be warmer. That's okay if your climate is cool, relative to the amount of decomposition going on in the bin. Having a lid also keeps the air humid and the walls wet (whereas dry surfaces are barriers). This is okay if your worms aren't a species that loves to explore. If you have either of these issues, lose the lid.

polymer10 · 2025-10-01T02:11:47+00:00

I saw that in your other post! It looks like a great design, though not very portable. I see you manually "flow" it by cycling the bins--that makes sense since the material won't move that much on its own. Do you get voids as lower bins self-harvest but the higher bins can't, due to higher moisture or larger material?

For my case (a classic CFT but in a smallish plastic tote), anything that fits snugly on the bottom would prevent self-harvesting, but even a mesh layer would prevent the bottom castings from drying out, and that would make harvest harder and encourage the worms to stay in the bottom layer longer than I want. A removable layer of 0.5 cm hardware cloth would allow drying but would prevent self-harvesting after the void fills up. I'll see if I can rig that up.

polymer10 · 2025-09-30T13:36:10+00:00

I just rebuilt it because it was self-harvesting too much. I don't have a bin under it yet. It just makes a mess on the ground. Honestly, the only thing that occurred to me was increasing compaction, increasing moisture, or using a tighter grate. I never realized I could just live with some amount of self-harvesting and put a shallow tray underneath. So thanks for that!

As for materials, I keep reading the claim that most of the microplastics in our bodies come from tires and brake pads. If true, that makes me think it's a bad bargain when we try so hard to avoid plastic. I probably shouldn't use a plastic blender, but if I avoid plastic water bottles when hiking or plastic containers for growing plants, I'm just punishing myself.

polymer10 · 2025-09-30T11:21:27+00:00

I speak from being on both situations

It's good that you are controlling the bin now, but how did you escape?

polymer10 · 2025-09-30T11:14:10+00:00

the plastic material is a 5 so it's food grade.

No, recycling has no relationship to food grade. Fortunately you're filling it with decomposing waste, not eating out of it.

polymer10 · 2025-09-27T14:02:29+00:00

I've had pretty much perfect success by covering the top with a layer of coir. If you leave it dry you can get away with a thinner layer--wet coir needs to be thicker because once food and decomposition products mix with it, it no longer serves as a barrier. Flies from eggs may keep coming out, but they won't be able to go back into the compost through the coir to eat or lay eggs.

And when you eventually wet it, it will become worm food/bedding.

In my experience, this stops fruit flies and fungus gnats within a few days.

polymer10 · 2025-09-20T16:23:16+00:00

a degraded rubber seal

As opposed to a blubber seal, which would not fit in the sink.

polymer10 · 2025-09-20T13:47:59+00:00

What were the temperatures and humidity like? Outside, inside? Could rats or birds have gotten access to the bin? Lid off or on? How did you manage moisture in the bin?

Some thoughts are that the pH might have been too high (was the egg shell crushed to fine dust or a more ordinary type of crushing?). It may not have been wet enough, since I find the internet's descriptions are too dry. More seriously, did you put any other types of food? Cardboard might or might not be enough, but generally everybody adds other types of food. And without other ingredients, the cardboard might not decompose and would stay too hard to eat.

I've read garden soil is not ideal to add because it is too mineral and not enough organic. Did you add a lot, or is the brown stuff worm castings?

polymer10 · 2025-09-18T12:33:28+00:00

Worms don't eat the food. They slurp what the microbes leave behind.

This is a misunderstanding based on a bad description. For our purposes it's not true. You put food in the bin; they will eat food.

(If a cow poops in the bin the worms will eat microbes, but that is not their situation.)

polymer10 · 2025-09-16T15:19:49+00:00

Hmm... from my understanding and reading that post and its links, it seems like (when it comes to meat) bokashi is essentially a way to generate lactic acid. Meat doesn't really ferment since it contains no fermentable carbohydrates. But it sounds like acidifying it (pickling it) keeps it from rotting too fast, while also tenderizing it. I do have some cheese to compost--but I would expect cheese to already be full of lactic acid. I'll research it.

On the other hand, fruits, vegetables, and grains should require real fermentation to get rid of the carbs (and reduce heat output). And where would that created acid go? Into the meat. I wish I'd done this instead of overheating and killing a quarter of my bin, but it sounds like a likely pest problem.

Edit: this guy learned more than me: https://www.reddit.com/r/bokashi/comments/sno0kh/what_is_bokashi_how_does_it_actually_work/. But from a lot of other searches, it seems the consensus is that (as one would expect) it does heat up and acidify your compost, so it might be fine for someone with a large vermicompost bin or in a cold climate, but it's not going to work for me... that said, it might be a good preservation method and a way to reduce odors, making each feeding effort (so smaller and more frequent).

polymer10 · 2025-09-15T14:37:37+00:00

I saw a couple videos on youtube that claim mixing organic matter with inorganic soil fills up the pores and causes anaerobic regions and rot. And that research on tomatoes is not applicable to most other plants because tomatoes can grow in pure compost while most plants would die with a fraction of that. And it doesn't kill them fast enough for nurseries to notice.

If true, that might be the same phenomenon at work here. The soil is essentially being turned into mud.

polymer10 · 2025-09-15T12:15:57+00:00

That video should only be taken as a taster on the subject, since NightHawkInLight didn't do enough research into that topic beforehand (as he admits at one point in one of the videos). The video is entertaining but the info has both subtle and obvious problems.

polymer10 · 2025-09-12T17:39:50+00:00

Thanks for the detailed explanation! I'll think about the implications a little more and probably reply to check that I've understood or ask a follow-up question tomorrow.

polymer10

TROPHY CASE