One Week after purchase

by Bob

Hi Liz,

Well after one week of having my worms, I have learned quite a bit.



I can attest to the fact that the book learning prior to getting the worms was good, but not as good as the learning experience once the worms got here. Ha!



I’ve made some mistakes I shouldn’t have made, but hopefully I am moving forward. I expect to have quite a bit more learning experiences as I go along. LOLOL



One mistake I made was being too conservative with my spraying water. I think I went 2-3 days with way to dry bedding. I haven’t disturbed the worms, so I don’t know if I did any damage to them.



I purchased a moisture meter and have the bedding at between 7 and 8 on the scale of 1 to 10. That appears to represent percentage based on 100%.



Another mistake I think I made was when I recognized I wasn’t watering enough, I watered a bit too much. I think the indication of this was when 4-6 worms crawled around the edge of the bin or up the side of the bin a ways. Is this correct? After a day the worms were back in the bedding and the bedding looked a bit less moist.



I guess I’ll find out if I did any harm by having too the bedding too dry next Thursday when at the 2 week point I turn the bedding.



The worms don’t seem to be eating my garbage I put in the corner. It consisted of several banana peeling and a bit of lettuce. I do have quite a bit of horse manure in the bedding, about 50%. So I’m thinking they are eating that instead of the garbage I put in.



Thanks for your assistance and education.

Note from BigTex Worms:
Worms are very resilient, I would not worry too much about the moisture, it will balance out with time.

Did you chop up the food? If not, it will take them a long time to start working on it. They dont actually eat the food they eat the microbes, fungi and such as the food decomposes. If it is chopped, it decomposes much faster. And yes, it takes them a few weeks to chill out a bit and if you used manure they are likely munching on that. Before you know it they will take off eating like gangbusters.

My challenge for you: do not open the bin for 4-5 days. The more you "observe" the bin (take the lid off and mess with them in any way) they get stressed and tend to go into a hibernation type state. Your goal is to only work the bin once every 1-2 weeks.