I soaked 3 in water.

I’m almost finished building my continuous flow bin and am ready to start filling it with bedding. I have a large compost pile with some partially pre-composted materials in it, mostly leaves, coffee grounds, brewer’s grain and wood chips. I’d like to use this material as my bin bedding, but I know it’s crawling (no pun intended) with earwigs and other creepy crawlies that might eat my precious babies and cocoons, so I’m looking for ways to get rid of them from the pre-compost before laying it in as bedding.

My first thought is to fill buckets with the pre-compost, then fill the buckets to the top with water and leave them for a few days. I figure this’ll either encourage anything that can leave to leave, or drown them. I’m not sure if bug eggs can survive in water though, only to hatch once reintroduced to a more hospitable environment? This also has the benefit of thoroughly soaking the material, which I’d then mix with some dry shredded cardboard to make sure it isn’t too sopping.

Can anyone speak to whether my bucket and water idea will work in cleansing it of undesirable creatures, and/or suggest any alternative methods? Thanks!

Can I feed dried cranberries, prunes, pumpkin seeds, figs,raisins to my worm bin? Found an old stash of these and was going to toss but can the worms eat them? Thanks

I have a large trashcan as a dew worm bin and they've all been very healthy and happy as far as I can tell, getting fat and they look much better than when I originally put them in the bin (wild caught), but I just found this one laying under the cardboard and thought it was dead but it's actually still alive but looms rather cancerous.

Anyone know what this pink stuff is on the side of my bin? 😳 Is it harmful?

Basically it's a bath tub in my yard I'm trying to make into a worm bin.

That hole for the drain is plugged up well and I can't get it off or drill holes in it. Attempting to drill with cheap Walmart tools and bits results in the drill spinning forever and penetrating absolutely nothing.

It looks like a flathead screwdriver is in there but it will not come out either.

Thoughts? Thanks

Found my bosses paper shredder on a lonely Saturday morning, and cardboard, so guess what I'm doing 🤔🤭

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I live in an old city in the southern United States. Cockroaches outside are just a thing a here. Today I found one in one of my bins. My bins are outside, but I don’t love the idea of a roach colony that close to my house.

Is there something I can do to keep roaches away?

If I have to get rid of my bins, that’s way more acceptable to me than having cockroaches in my house.

To clarify, it was not a palmetto bug. I know those just happen and don’t infest your house. This looked like a German cockroach.

Any help is appreciated.

Is anybody willing to mail me some ANC cocoons? I can't buy them here (I'm in Europe), and I really reallyreally would love to have a bin with ANCs... I'll reimburse you for postage, of course!

Hi all, does anyone use the cardboard from toilet paper rolls as bedding? Just want to make sure this is OK for my worms?

I have a few spoons of comercial applesauce left: 96% apples, 3% sugar, acids: citric and ascorbic acid

Can I feed that?

I found mites hanging on the sides of one of my African Night Crawler worm bins. I have had major issues with mites in the past. I had to remove all of my worms and wash them in a strainer and add them to new bedding( took me about a week of daily work to get them all sorted out, and i lost most of my population of worms). After that experience i became a firm believer that mites are an undesired pest in any worm bin). I removed the mites that were on the side wall and will be paying close attention to my bins, but i cant help but wonder why they were repelled from the bin. I have started feeding my worms blended banana peels mixed with alfalfa meal. Could the banana peels be a repelent? Or is it the large number of worms in my bin causing the mites to keep their distance? Im confused but whatever the secret is i am really interested in figuring it out.

Anyone know what’s going on here?

The last time I fed my worms, they received two pounds of food waste. Their worm bin was also filled with paper / cardboard waste / dead leaves (with those leaves, I added a substantial amount of pill bugs inadvertently). Shortly after this, I became employed and began working on a new certification for my job, which was sucking up a lot of my time and willpower. Initially I told myself I would check on them, and then when the time came, I would reschedule it. Eventually I stopped rescheduling it and totally forgot up until the beginning of July.

I thought they would be dead, but they were still alive. They are scrawny, but alive. All the waste in the bin, including what I thought was a lot of cardboard, was gone entirely. Their pill bug friends were not alive, which came as a surprise; the worms must have outcompeted them for food and then ate their dead bodies (it’s also possible that the pill bugs couldn’t adjust to the pH conditions in the worm bin as well as the worms could). I’m also inclined to believe that many worms must have died in the bin to have sustained the worm population that is present.

I am not a particularly responsible worm owner it seems. I will be focused on their well-being going forward however.

Just wanted to get this out of my head / off my chest somewhere that people won’t say “they’re just worms”.

Just looking for some subscriptions! Slowly growing,teaching my son the basics of composting and creating his small business.

Basically the title. I have these mixed salad greens with some light fuzzy mold, is it okay to add to a bin?

My current set-up (been going for about 3 years now) is a stack of 4 large plastic storage bins, with 1/4" holes drilled in the bottoms so worms can pass between bins. Normally I keep the bottom-most bin on a flat surface to discourage escaping, but lately I've been having trouble with excess moisture collecting in the bottom this way; so I recently propped the bottom bin on a couple of bricks to allow for drainage and increase air circulation.

However, my worms have decided that this new gap beneath the bin is a good place for a jailbreak, and they've been dropping out through the bottom holes. I have a container underneath to catch them, but this could easily be a death sentence for the escapees.

What can I do to encourage them to stay in the bin?

I started off two years ago indoors, but I've been breeding and separating bins consistently, and took them outside this spring to my garage. I now have 9-10 different bins/boxes that I work regularly. The issue is: winter is coming. My wife will kill me if I try to bring them back inside for the winter. My garage is not heated. What are you all doing for your worms in the winter if you don't have heating to wherever your bins are?

Hi everyone,

My fiancee has a worm bin set up currently, and we have dubia roaches to feed our pet leopard gecko, and there is a bunch of excess molts inside of the box we keep them in, would the worms be able to compost the molested, or should I just look into throwing them out.

There's also the frass and the oats they use for bedding for when i do full cleans, she said those would probably be fine inside the bin, but just wasn't sure about the molts.

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