Winter Prep Activities for the Worm Bin

Removing finished material to make room for fresh bedding is imperative when you are preparing your bins for winter.

If your bins are out doors, and there is a concern for your worms freezing then it is even more important to get fresh bedding in to the bin.

The idea is to time your addition of fresh bedding and food stock for the change in temperature. Once the weather changes and the temperature starts dropping then it is safe to start encouraging some composting in the bin. But be careful! It is so easy to get a spike in temperature, and if that is combined with a warming trend you could be in trouble.

This is something I have to be very careful of here in my part of the world. I worked one of the bins recently and added food waste and fresh bedding with a thin layer of grass clippings. The bin before I started working it was running about 68 degrees. The food waste when I put it in the bin was about 56 degrees. By the next day when I check the temperature the bin was reading 87 and by the time I got out there today to feed and water, the bin was reading 97 degrees.

Now it's important to remember that I always put the temperature probe in the center of the bin right where the food waste is, and if you remember from my videos I put the food waste down the center of the bin so that if the material does heat up the outsides of the bin remain cool for the worms. This is indeed the case as I put temperature probes along side of the bin and the temperatures reads 76 and 79. So you see that if the winter temperatures had continued to drop the composting action would be very beneficial.

Stay tuned and happy worming,

Christy
http://www.vermiculturenorthwest.com/

Winter Composting With Worms

<---This is pretty much how my world looks right now. The temps have been plunging into the single digits and sub-zero, and it's time for a wormn update.

The bins outside in the "worm shed" --->

have been without heat. Today when I went out to check on the temps of the bins and the compost therms. read 28 degrees.

I haven't touched the bins since before Thanksgiving.

Inside my bins are in a back room where there is no heat and those bins are cool as well and the worms are not eating much. Keeping the bedding moist for some reason has been a challenge.

I was just in turning them and I noticed that two of the three mini-bins were on the dry side and the third one was considerably more moist. The moist bin has the best population of worms, other than the bigger stacking worm bin.

So even in the cooler temps the worms prefer to be more on the moist side. I have been told that worms will die faster being hot and dry than being cold and too wet.

FYI, I am planning a series of worm composting videos that will show you how to set up a worm bin and maintain it from start to harvest. If you're interested there is a form available to sign up for notification of when those are released.

Until then,

Happy worming,

Christy

www.vermiculturenorthwest.com