Wood Worm Farms

Autumn is coming and my composting worms move to the basement.
I decided to release to the wild my Canadian Nightcrawlers until it's not too cold for them to hide. It would be hard to move their bin to the basement since it's heavy and has a lot of 'visitors' inside.

I found 52 large worms in the bin - almost all of the 'sick' worms I putted there in April. I also found some cocoons (on the picture they are shown near the cocoons of Eisenia Fedita).
The experiment confirmed that the 'wild' worms can live in a modified bin - actually simply in a wooden box - and even process dead leaves and precomposted grass clippings in a good rate.
The worms themselves look healthy.


Here is the disassembled bin.


It is simply a 3 trays bin with all the separating meshes removed and a base made from wooden pieces to let the rain water out. It was filled for 2.5 trays with a local clay soil mixed with dead leaves, old grass clippings and sand.
The remaining half tray was used to feed the worms with dead leaves and some vegetable scrap. The worms seemed to enjoy this diet.

I will probably continue this experiment next spring.

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It's a good idea to dry the trays before reusing them. This will extend the tray's life and - in some extent - reduce the number of unwanted 'guests' in the bin.

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I keep the 'wild' Canadian Nighcrawlers since April. They live in a slightly modified 3 trays bin: the bottom stand mesh is replaced by pieces of wood, the separating mesh is removed from each tray and the bin is filled with earth.
I tried to feed them with different kind of materials, I usually use for composting worms: food scrap, dead leaves, cardboard, pre-composted grass clippings, etc... But it looks like they mostly prefer dead leaves. Approximately 100 overage size nightcrawlers finish 1 lb of wet dead leaves (mostly maple) in 2 weeks.

I am not sure they will survive indoors, so I will probably release them before winter.

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I was surprised that paper coffee cups do not fully decompost in the bin.
They leave after them thin sheets of a plastic-like material (signed with red marks).
Those cups were not signed as fully compostable, but were advertised as
nature friendly.
Worms seem to enjoy to live inside those pieces of plastic as they usually like to lie under plastic bags left on the ground.

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J'ai déplacé tous mes lombricomposteurs sous la terrasse, pour l'été.
Les vers semblent d'aimer un tel changement: ils se reproduisent et digèrent le compost plus rapidement.

Ayant autant de vers, j'ai senti le manque de restants de nourriture. J'ai alors décidé d'utiliser du gazon déjà composté de l'année précédente, ainsi révélant ce délice aux vers. 'European Nightcrawlers' le préfère plus que d'autres vers.

Il me semble aussi que c'est possible d'utiliser des vers de terre - Lombricus Terrestis - et non juste des vers de compost, pour composter des feuilles mortes et du vieux gazon.

J'utilise un modèle un peu différent comme lombricomposteur pour ces vers. Depuis la
fin d'Avril Ils ont l'air d'être en santé et de bien se nourrir.
J'ajouterais plus d'information sur cette expérimentation bientôt.

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