Super composting Red Wigglers

[Marty McGee Bennett]

As a devoted Red Wiggler enthusiast and new worm mother. I am starting this thread. I have just put the most wonderful garden to bed and I have my worms to thank. I am so impressed with the way that the worms turn manure into beautiful and sale-able compost. Any of you that have questions or comments about getting started with worms or have experience post it here!

[evidixon]

Marty, this is great! Thank you for starting this thread! Here are my questions: I have a pacapoo pile similar to yours, I bought 500 red wiggler worms... but I can't find them anymore. How do you know where they are? When you showed your pile to us last summer you said: "the worms are probably right here" - and there they were!:p Do you stir the poop around a lot or do you just let the worms do their job? Do you water the pile? How high and how wide should the pile be or does it matter at all?

[Marty McGee Bennett]

Ok here goes...
500 worms are not very many but they will turn into thousands. I started my worms in a wooden worm box with the intent to use them for kitchen garbage and started with 500. They reproduced in my worm box and I had quite a few when I moved them to the manure pile this spring to really get going... it has taken all summer to really see the exponential growth occur so be patient. When you saw my worms they had been reproducing for over 8 months.
I don't stir the poop but as we add to the pile we do it so that the manure pile is in a long narrow one. I started the worms at one end and they are steadily moving down the pile. If you use this system you will be able to harvest compost more easily because the worms do tend to stay together and they are constantly moving into fresh manure as they process it.
This is part of why I know where they are-- of course the other reason is that I am an annelid savant.
In the dry months of June, July August and September I used a soaker hose laid on top of the pile in an s-shape so that the hose watered the pile evenly from side to side. I hooked about 4 of the hoses together and let them run for a few hours when the pile began to dry out but the worms know what to do and when the top would dry out they would just go deeper.
Now that winter is coming I am going to do two things. I am going to lure them down the pile so that I can harvest what has been processed and get as many worms out of what I am going to spread on the fields as I can (I don't want them to die in the cold as they surely will if they get put out on the field.) I will use pumpkin... their absolute favorite food to accomplish this. I will put pumpkins in the part of the pile I want the worms to move to and gradually move them down the pile. Handy that so many miscreants smash pumpkins after Halloween and my lovely husband picks them up as he drives around Bend appraising real estate!
I am also going to make the remaining pile a good bit deeper so that the worms will have plenty of insulation for the coming winter.
Everything slows down in the pile during cold weather so it may be until next year that you will see lots and lots of worms. But once they take off they really take off!
Enjoy your wormies!

[evidixon]

Marty, thank you! That helps a lot! I still have a few more questions. Are you still using your wooden box or is everything going onto the manure pile? Do you think I should start all over with my project during the winter, maybe buy more worms (unless I can find them in the pile, and if, should I bring them inside into a box in my kitchen?) Montana winters can get to 30 or 40 below on some days, do you believe they can survive that?
Eventually I will be an annelid savante too, I hope, but I am still far away. They might know me better now then I know them! :D

[Marty McGee Bennett]

I am not using my wooden box anymore but am burying the household garbage out in the manure pile. Less things to tend and my dogs are not interested in the manure pile so that is not a problem.
I think it was good to start with a box and kind of grow a bunch in there with the household stuff and the turn those loose in the pile in the spring. Since you are just starting that might be a good way to do it. Then you will start with more numbers in the spring. In term of what the worms can withstand... they can't freeze so you have to provide a deep enough pile that at least the center won't freeze. You might find a worm person that lives locally and ask them. I insulated my box with hay and we had a pretty cold winter and they made it through and this year with my big pile my plan is to make a section of it really high so that there will always be a place for my worms to get warm.

[evidixon]

Hi Marty, now my winter is finally over and I have worms in a worm box. I believe I started too late again. I purchased 500 worms and they are eating my kitchen garbage right now. My winter was too busy to think about those little critters. My questions now: Should I just keep them in the worm box for another month or so, should I buy 500 more, or even 1000 more? I have my alpaca poop piled up in a row like yours and it is just sitting there without any compost production since last year. I guess I am not a worm person (yet) like you. Please help with some suggestions! :o

[Marty McGee Bennett]

well if you begin with more the faster it will go so part of it depends on how quickly you want compost and how much money you want to spend on worms. They will reproduce and the more you begin with the faster it will go. It doesn't happen overnight that is for sure but once it gets going it really takes off. I piled my manure as high as I could last winter and I don't think I lost many worms. We had a pretty mild winter though.