There is no reason to grow worms, IMO. The point of vermicomposting is to turn garbage into compost. The emphasis should be on the compost, not the vermi. Worms are not pets.

Nice system, BTW.

Personally I think expanding the herd is part of the fun, and it will be nice to have enough worms someday to share with other folks who want to get into vermicomposting. Patrick your "boys" look great! Looks like the bucket system is working well.

The bucket of worms never really caught on at KFC, did it?

LOL
I started out with a 5 gal bucket just to make sure I could pull it off (and because I had a couple lying around).
Patrick, it looks like you have a great supply of them!

Mine are in a stackable bucket system and are thriving. I never knew you weren't supposed to be able to grow them in buckets! Good thing nobody told me before I started!

Mine are a stackable system as well. I have read posts on here when people ask about using buckets to raise worms/make VC. Usually it's the limited amount of space and limited surface area that are the main drawbacks. I basically have them set up as I wrote about here except I added another "spacer" to make it two "spacers" apart instead of one.

I would love to get them to the point where all of my kitchen waste goes into them, but I'm not there and have to keep "growing" worms.

I bet KFC never even thought about the boneless worm bucket.

And the supply of buckets is from Burger King. They get something like five per week, full of those sliced pickles.

So the air holes in the lid are sufficient to supply oxygen to the squirmers? No escapees?

steamyb, they certainly seem to be enough. I don't have any dead worms or escapees this way. I also peek in every day to every other day or so, not necessarily digging around. I usually see a few worms when I look in. I place a few sheets of paper - in this case old IRS Package X pages - over the top of whatever's working and that seems to keep the moisture up enough. I don't have to spray very often unless I put a lot of dry paper/bedding into the buckets. I even set up one of these bucket systems for my mom and two are taken care of by our coop gardening friends.

In a cool basement a bucket of worm will keep all winter, throw in some UCG and some old fruit and put the bucket on the cool floor. You don't need holes or a lid of any sort the worms will be happy, they slow down in the cool you know. Maybe in Febuary you can feed some but you don't have to, you don't need to add water just leave them alone they don't need you. I have a friend doing two buckets this winter he says they are doing great he just checked them last week. I have done this for years to keep worms for outside bins and did not know any other way until I read this forum. I still think it is the best and easiest way, but I am new to using worms for garbage in the winter and like the idea so I will try to learn the new way. What fun! a squirm in the kitchen. The only place with room and warmth in my little house on the prairie.

Curt~~~ :-) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`ARMY WORMS

The only thing about this system is that it might be very easy to overfeed. I jealously read about the flow through bins, 18g totes and how much food is processed by other peoples' worms. I do have to feed kind of slowly, watching to see how fast things decompose. I'm looking forward to using VC in starting seeds this year if at all possible and top fertilizing further along in the growing season. And maybe, just maybe, eliminating the haul to the traditional compost pile.

How many stacks of buckets do you have now? Should be at least 4, by my calculations. I don't understand your low squirm count.

I have one "curing" stack and two active stacks. The count may actually be as high as it will get with this setup. I guess I could be underfeeding, but I do watch to see when things look processed. Four stacks would be great but might create some marital strife, there's a reason they are in the hallway instead of inside where it's somewhat warmer.

Cooler temps will slow down the action and too many worms may stop the action completely. I get what you're talking about. Well good luck with that. I think we all 'walk the line' one way or another.