Evict your composting worms.

Evict your composting worms, it’s time! What am I talking about here? Well, at some point either your worm farm will become over populated, or you have breeder bins. An over populated worm farm is the perfect opportunity to set up a second system. This opens up all sorts of possibilities. Do you replicate the system you have, or try a different method. You may want to select breeding adults to start your own breeder bins. Perhaps you already have the breeder bins. In which case you need to take out the cocoons and young worms. For the novice reading this, baby worms are called Wisps, or Wormlets. These will go in to a designated grow-out bin.

You may also have worm castings that you harvested, and stored. Despite our best efforts, there are always worms and cocoons we miss in these. In my case I have deliberately left them in. Living in a temperate zone 8 with high humidity means I can’t always sift my castings to get the worms and cocoons out, so it’s easier to let them grow on in long term storage. Our Winter is long, and relatively mild. This is perfect for the worms to tick over and grow large enough to be handled.

Why evict your composting worms?

If you run a tower system, composting worms can slightly alter their environment within it to suit their needs. Regardless of what instructions come with your tower, your worms can’t read. They will do as they please. Chances are they will happily breed within it. However, if you have a mixed population, you may find one species out competing another. Having designated breeder bins allows you to control their environment, the species, and their needs. Having too many worms can prevent your worms from breeding, so it’s a good thing to keep an eye on your population.

Once you have cocoons and juveniles, these prefer a less moist environment than their parents. They also can’t move as well through the heavier bedding, and food may not be as accessible to them. This is why having grow-out bins is better for them. Once your young worms have got to a decent weight though, it is better to move them into your main composting bins.

Give your worms a job.

Treat your evicted composting worms like teenagers, and give them a job to do. Worms can very quickly produce vermicompost, but we’re usually limited to how much we can feed. If we don’t have the numbers in the bin we can’t produce the volume of worm castings we need. If we over feed it will create issues. There is no point having young worms sat around in breeder, or grow out bins when they can be helping to add to the over all production in our garden.

You can watch a video on this here, along with the play list it is in-