Worm Man's Worm Farm

Archive for the ‘Garden and Worm Farming Pests’ Category

It is getting warm outside and it is breeding season for flies. It is always breeding season for flies but it is super-breeding season for flies right now. Every type of nasty fly and gnat is attracted to your compost pile.

This is one of the worst parts of composting with worms. The flies lay eggs in the food you placed in the compost bin or bed and more flies are born.

A very simple remedy is to bury the food. Place the scraps a couple of inches beneath the bedding and use a new location each time you add more scraps. The flies can’t burrow and need to touch the food to lay eggs in it. This will mean more food for your worms and many fewer flies.

Over the past several weeks we’ve experienced a deep freeze like we have not experienced in 20 years.  It has been very cold and this is threatening our worm beds.  We’ve taken some emergency measures that have brought us through the deep freeze so far. I just wanted to share it with all of you because you may be experiencing the same thing.

We have many outdoor worm beds that are approximately 100 feet long each.  We dig the beds so that we have a portion of the bed beneath the freeze line her in New Jersey.  We do this so that the worms can retreat during a deep freeze, ball up together and stay warm until the beds thaw.  We usually spray the beds with water prior to the first freeze. We do that to allow the top layer to freeze forming a hard cover of ice which allows the bed beneath the ice to remain protected.  It will take very cold weather to freeze the layer beneath the ice shield.  We’ll we received that very cold weather and I began to fear for the worm cocoon, baby worms and breeders.

I decided to heat the beds naturally. We did this by doing something we would never do during warm weather. We allowed our green manures to mix and heat in the worm beds. I took bales of straw and soaked them until they were mushy. It took two days.  I also gathered up all of the horse and rabbit manure we could get. We ued the fresh stuff.

We usually mix the manure and straw together, wet it down and heat and then only use the mixture after it is through the heating process. We do this to protect the worms.  For our warming project we dug trenches down the center of the worm beds and put a layer of straw down (don’t use hay or you may have hay growing in your worm beds when the weather warms), we put a layer of manure down and then a layer of shredded newspaper and mealworm frass from our mealworm beds.  This is a powder from the bran we use to fed our mealworms. It is rich in nitrogen and heats when wet quickly.  We created three levels by alternating the ingredients listed.  Then we watered the beds with water brought to the beds in buckets because the hoses froze.

We covered the beds with landscaping fabric and secured it.  Two days later we had temps of 80 degrees in the center of our beds and the worms were swarming like they do in spring.  We’ve added manure and straw weekly to extend the heating.  a month has gone by now and the center of the bed is still reading 60 degrees. The outer edges are cold and frozen in spots but the center remains warm and healthy.  The weather is supposed to warm into the 30′s and 40′s this week which is normal for this time of the year so we will scale back on the heating measures and we will watch the weather closely.

The good news is that the worms look great and untouched by the killer cold snap here.  The bad news is that we have to keep a close eye now. We had eggs hatch and we have a swarm of babies that we usually only get during spring and in our indoor beds.  If a freeze catches us unaware the baby worms may be killed.  We will have to continue warming the beds through spring now.  I had thought to use soil warming cables but decided to try a natural method instead.

I’ll let you know how this effects our spring harvest which is a majorly important part of our business. 

How do you keep your beds warm?  Any ideas?

Moles can be a huge problem in worm beds and gardens. The burrow into worm beds and eat worms. They will make a home in the worm bed in colder climates and ride out the winter with a smörgåsbord of worms.

Prevention is the way to go and I have a post(Mole Prevention Post) about preventing moles in your worm beds. This post focuses only on getting rid of them.

How do you know you have moles in your worm bed? You may have seen them. That could be why you are here. They will scare you half to death if you are digging through your worm bed and all of a sudden a rodent springs out. If you don’t drop over from fright you must take action.

1. Disturb the bedding. Turn the entire bed.
2. If you see a mole try to catch it. If you can catch it and it escapes then turn the entire bed and make sure there aren’t other moles.
3. If you catch a mole. (Don’t use your hands. Yuck!) Move him far away or kill him/her.
4. If you have a recurring problem you may want to use a mole trap or poison. Be very careful that you do not poison your worm bedding with chemical poisons. You will poison your worms and yourself if you are using the bedding around food plants.
5. Seal around the beds with hardware cloth and be sure to use something under the bed to stop the moles from coming up.

I recommend catch and release of moles using traps. I also think that building beds on top of industrial landscaping fabric is a cost effect and mole proof way of protecting your beds and worms from pesky moles.

There are some products that you can check out that can help. Please remember that poison should be a last resort and you should check with local officials to see if poison is even lawful to use in your are.

Protect New Worm Beds From Moles.

Moles are a problem with outdoor worm beds.

Image via Wikipedia

A worm bed that is not protected will eventually fall prey to moles who tunnel around the worm bed eating worms.  Mole proofing your worm bed prior to filling it with bedding and worms will be much easier than trying to deal with moles after they are feasting on your worms.  This is a list of things that you can do to mole proof your worm bed prior to filling it with bedding and worms.  A future post will deal with eradicating moles from worm beds after the fact.

• Moles go under and not over worm bed walls. They will burrow beneath the walls of the worm bed and enter where they will tunnel and eat.
• You will know that you have moles if you see tunnels and paths.  If you cover the bed the moles will tunnel between the cover and then bedding leaving a path.

Here are some inexpensive proactive things that will save headaches later.

1. Use professional landscaping fabric on the bottoms of the bed.  Bring it up around the walls and nail or tack it on the outside of the bed so the moles can’t tunnel in. They will not get through professional landscaping fabric.
2. Place a bed of gravel on the ground where your bed will be and then place landscaping fabric or hardware cloth over the stones.  You will never have a mole problem if you use stones and then a second barrier of landscaping fabric or hardware cloth.
3. Place the bed wall on a solid floor of concrete.  The moles cannot penetrate a solid surface like concrete.  Plywood and tar can also be used.  Concrete is best and it’s easy to clean. If you are serious about worm farming then this is your best bet.