Very interesting post. You have lots of patience to do that sorting job. I am sure you learned a great deal.
The link provided is a great read. Paley has some interesting theories and techniques. I have never heard or read about raising mini-worms. Also his theory about bed depth is new to me.
Much of what he wrote about validates my own observations and beliefs with regards to stressing the bin to increase reproduction, and reproduction rates in general.

I have been purposely overheating my bins/beds with an overload of horse manure. My worm population in large outdoor beds got starved-out and dried-out last summer. I believe that by overfeeding and stressing larger bins with heat, reproduction GREATLY increases. I also believe my worms left MANY cocoons before "checking-out". I think the presence of abundant food and heat causes "dormant" cocoons to hatch.
If I had followed the "Paley method" and kept the beds moist, I may currently have had a large army working. I do have a small army of large wigglers, and lots of young ones are beginning to get busy.

Good luck to you and keep on posting about your progress.

Pete

Pete, yeah I thought it was very interesting as well. Above I wrote Bryan Paley, but I think it may be D. Bryan Paley? Regardless, when I read that back in Feb it seemed like a great thing to try, and easy enough. Just seeing the old web page style brings back memories. I referred to it as paley method because that is how someone referred to it on my original thread in Feb.

I turned over my bin#1 last night, parent bin of the test bucket#1. What a difference between a dirt bucket and a bin! My bins 1, 2, and 3 are the 18 gallon sterlites, and my large bin A is about a 45 gallon. Until last night they have all been relatively undisturbed. All have been fed approximately the same and were originally horse manure over some cardboard. I have added horse manure and chopped food scrap somewhat sparingly, for as many worms as I started with.

The bins got up to 80F a month back because I forgot to move them away from the oil burner and still had them elevated off the concrete. Moving them and putting them on the floor dropped temps to 72, but the tops of the bins have dried out some and I haven't seen the same number of large worms up top when I feed. My bins are open with cardboard laid over top the surface, and a small compact fluorescent bulb keeping them from committing suicide by curiosity...much. I haven't fed a lot for the last month because I planned to turn them and harvest some VC for the first time, and generally check them out.

So...

When I dumped the 18 gallon bin#1, it broke apart into a few large chunks. There were many worms deep so some relief that they were still fine, and the bottom was not as wet as I expected. Most of the bin was damp, but not wet. Very few of the worms were as large as the 30 seed worms that survived bucket#1. There are a lot of worms ranging from normal to hatchling. I couldn't hazard a guess on numbers, but there were plenty.

Strangely, I did not see a single egg. I didn't scour through it, but the eggs were all over the bucket; I just had to look small to see them. The eggs were conspicuously absent in the bin. There were worms that could not have been more than a few days old, judging by size, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but there it is.

My guess is the bin was overcrowded and possibly a bit dry, and underfed as well. I was expecting to see at least some eggs, and I'm sure there were some, but what a huge difference in makeup between the two environs.

I split off the larger worms that were easier to sort and left the small worms in the same bin. I put the larger worms in a new bin with soaked 1" squares of cardboard bottom, then soaked horse manure, with some drier horse manure on top. I'm not really sure what to do with the remainder, to get them out of old stuff...I suppose I will figure it out next week and get a better idea what to do with the bins.

I want to use the vc on the garden but am a little bit unsure how to go about it as yet. Also, at this time the worms are taking up a lot of floor space. I'm considering investing in 10 gallon roughnecks instead.

bump

Hey all. I am about ready to manufacture some more worms and I came on here because I wanted to make sure I did it the same way with the stress-bucket mix. Fifty percent dirt, fifty percent old dog food, keep it wet. Pretty simple. I hope this works as well as it did the first time back in spring 2014. I need a lot of extra worms and eggs to dump in my compost and raised beds outside. I may start 10 buckets or so.

I still have plenty of active bins in the basement, maybe 100 gallons or so of VC ready to harvest. I don't regret buying these worms at all. I think it was Fall 2014 when I built an A frame rack with 2 shelves from scrap 2x3 and OSB. I have four sterlites and four roughnecks on and under that so it doesn't take up a ton of space. I also have the 45 gallon tote on the side. I will be harvesting in the near future and probably refilling with leaf mulch/cardboard/horse manure again. I haven't harvested since summer when I was using VC for avct and in potting mix. They are very laid back, these worms. Nothing like my springer spaniels! They can't go an hour without looking for attention.

These worms live quite a long time. I still have some of those nice large euros from the two successful bucket tests, and I am going to use the same ones again. They were survivors. They almost dried up in the buckets after I forgot about them at some point. Eventually I put them in their own 10 gallon roughneck bin and I still have them. They are still the biggest worms.

One thing I have not managed to do is get all these other euros in horse manure/scraps/cardboard to grow to what I consider full size. I even bought "worm food" from a local purina mills feed store and tried a few things. They eat it some, but I've never seen a notable increase in size from it. At some point I need to split some off into peet moss or something and feed them only the worm chow. It just hasn't happened. My biggest problem is I tend to forget about them after a couple weeks of attention, and the bins dry out on top. I have been doing much better since I bought a 1-1/2 gallon pump sprayer. It takes about 10 minutes to drench them well with that, about 3/4 gallon per time.

Well.. I don't get back here too often. I learned a lot from this forum, but I really didn't like the gw forum style and I like this even less. Just now I lost and had to rewrite a paragraph above, and that always seems to happen here. I've never gotten email notifications to work here either, so returning is a matter of memory or whim. That said, in case I am not back for a while, good luck all with your worms!

Paley had some interesting ideas. Your post is very intriguing. I have never tried to duplicate his experiments but am really interested. The whole of the article by Paley seemed to leave more questions than answers to me. Very interesting concept though.

Hey, I got an email notification! Finally!

I have gone through all my worm bins now. I set up two buckets yesterday and plan to set up at least two more. I should have harvested them 6 months back. I have two large dog food bags of VC but not as many worms as I'd like to see. I had put most of two bins into my outdoor compost piles so that accounts for some of it, but I think those two I were probably the most populated so my initial estimate was high. The active areas were small and centered around pumpkin and squash scrap I put in this winter. They are all reset now with horse manure, shredded leaves, and cardboard.

I have 4 rubbermaid roughneck 10 gallon totes but I've never been able to utilize them well with horse manure. They dry out much faster than the deeper sterlites. I wonder what my thoughts on worms would be had I built an FT system when I first started? Basically everytime I have put a lid on these basement plastic bins, it gets too humid and the worms bug out, so I still just use cardboard overtop with a low wattage CFL on at all times.

I never put lids on my plastic bins. I just cover with about a 4 sheet thickness of wet newspaper. My worms never try to get out. I use a Ziploc 6.6 gallon tote and mortar trays from HD. Very good success with both. You can check out my site http:// www.Iowawormcomposting.com and there is some good info on building the Ziploc bins. There is a cover with the Ziploc bins but the entire center is cut out. Helps if you have some blues that like to wander. Newbies don't like that in their house. Don't blame them much.

BLT...If you want some big Euros just give them more space. No more than 100/sqft. Peat moss works good for bedding and you could mix horse manure in also. You really need to lime the peat moss to get the pH up. Euros don't tolerate acidic conditions as well as reds. You can feed them worm chow but they want some green stuff too in order to stay happy. You will have big worms in no time. Be sure to move your big ones every 30 days or so OR separate the cocoons out. If you let them over-populate they will shrink back up. Think Paley. This is how the bait guys raise big worms. Of course they fatten them up and sell them so problem solved.

I will have to focus on it more this year. I get what you are saying about moving them, and I have never tried that. I was actually thinking about buying a cup of nice big ones at a bait shop to start a bucket with to make sure they are euros. I have had some worms come in with the horse manure.

dumb question! -- do big worms make castings quicker, etc? (I guess I'm trying to ascertain the scientific value of fattening up my worms)

Not really. Some people like to go fishing or sell a little bait. Other than that...doesn't matter for the most part. We were talking about Euros which are a great bait worm. For reds doesn't matter.

I should have said... if you are just composting with your worms, size doesn't matter much. Some people DO sell reds for bait also.

cool thanks :)

I came back looking for that advice from iowa about bigger worms. I need to try some of that. I appreciated it when I read back then, but not sure if I got to write a thanks. So, thanks for that. I didn't get out fishing much until the last month. The bins I filled in Feb need to be harvested soon to side dress my garden crops. Half a bin done so far, a bunch to go. I may try the burlap ideas. Between the indoor bins, an outside plastic tote, and two big compost piles, I have plenty of worms to fish with and make dirt. But I STILL haven't concentrated on increasing individual size and skin toughness.

The buckets I started this year to "multiply" the best of the herd failed spectacularly. The buckets developed white hairy mold in no time flat. I lost all the experimental subjects, as I recall, even the nice big ones that were a couple years old.

Could have been a lot of things and probably was a bit of everything. It was awhile back now, but the possible reasons I recall were my garden dirt being too dry before starting, the old dog food was two years older, and the holes I put in the buckets were ice picked from the bottom up, instead of top down. The first time, a couple years back, I used mostly vegetable scrap as food, and the dirt was relatively freshly dug. This time it was all old dog food, and I remember the dirt I dug sat for quite a while before I made up the buckets.

Hey Iowa is that site still up? I get a 404.