T-money: We put each leg of out worm bin into cups of water, kind of like little moats. It worked pretty well.

Also, for the ants(T-money), we put each of the legs of our worm bin into cups of water; kind of like a little moats. It has worked well.

I read on this page that the worms dont eat their bedding.
*So how does the newspaper disapear into compost?

* How do I get rid of fruit flies & ants

*What if the worms try to escape my bin at the holes in the bottom

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I’d like to recommend this site that is specifically about worm composting.

I think I must have worded this page badly. Worms do also consume the bedding material over time. So shredded newspaper or coir or shredded cardboard will disappear and turn into worm castings.

For ants, you can keep the worm bin in a garage or inside or someplace where ants can’t easily find the bin. If you have an ant problem, you could try spraying the outside of the bin with something non-toxic like Orange Guard. Don’t spray it inside the bin though!

With fruit flies, you want to make sure any fruit scraps are buried way down in the bin under the bedding. Or alternatively, you can stop adding fruit scraps completely, and stick to vegetables and other materials that don’t attract fruit flies. They are very hard to get rid of, once you have them.

If massive amounts of worms are trying to escape, you probably have some kind of problem in the bin and the worms aren’t happy there. If it’s just a few, it’s not a big deal. In one of my bins, the worms go back and forth between the top tray where the food and bedding is, and the bottom moisture collection tray. It just depends on where they want to be.

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I’m based in the United States and unfortunately don’t have any knowledge of the New Zealand flatworm.

If you’ve got a healthy enough population now near your heap, my inclination would be to leave things alone rather than mess with it.

The thing I want to know is, how often is it optimal to stir or disrupt compost so as not to stress the worms and cocoons? Is once a week ok? More, less?

Also, if i take out the finished compost, right now I just pick through and remove the worms I can see and replace them in the new compost — is this the best way to do it? Am I losing all the babies? I honestly spent a lot of money on those worms! and, I was hoping to use them pretty regularly for my snakes. its been since last fall and they are making compost, but there really aren’t that many worms and I thought maybe I was stirring too often. I don’t want to deplete them, and I want them to be able to breed the most successfully.

Thanks so much for any info :}}

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I’m actually more of a regular composting expert than a vermicomposting expert, so I’m going to have to admit that I am not sure about the answer to your question on this one.

So I’m going to recommend the best book on worm composting, Worms Eat My Garbage!

In general, I would say that if it looks like your worms are disappearing, you’re probably feeding them to your snakes faster than they can reproduce. I don’t think that the stirring is really going to cause any major problems for you per se, and that it’s just that the worms aren’t breeding fast enough to keep up with your pace.