Disclaimer:  You may recognize things you’ve been doing and think I’m making fun of you.   I’m not.   LOT’S of others have done the same.  I’m not purposely making fun of anyone….I’m simply using relavent examples to support my points.

Even if you are a regular reader of my blog and love worms,  you probably do not spend as much time as I do thinking about worms….and I guarantee that you do not spend as much time as I do fielding questions about worms.

One subject that comes up daily is dealing with bugs.  

You’ve got two options:

1.  Try setting up your worms in their bin so that you are not asking for bug swarms.

2.  Throw your scraps to your worms and pray.

I obviously recommend option 1, but I want to talk a bit about option 2.

This may sound obvious, but one of the MOST COMMON ways people lure bugs to their worm bins is by throwing food scraps into their worm bin without covering them well with clean damp bedding.  I use the word “Obvious” because if  I wanted to ATTRACT flying bugs, I would do exactly that.   Would you prefer NOT attracting bugs?  Bury your scraps well and maintain plenty of clean damp bedding on top of the scraps.

A second common way that people attract bugs into their system is a little less obvious, but very common.

Have you ever seen a compost pile made purely of leaves?   If you have, you’ve seen the accompanying bugs.  Because leaf piles are kept outside, we just expect bugs flying in, around, and throughout.  Yet…when people bring fill their worm bins with leaves as bedding and soon see bugs, they wonder why?  Bugs don’t respect boundaries, and if you use leaves as your bedding source, expect bugs….you’ve just added them to your system.

90% of bug related problems can be resolved by burying scraps well, and not using bedding that bugs live in (Such as leaves).

Now repeat after me: 

I will not do things to attract bugs to my system!

I will not do things to attract bugs to my system!

I will not do things to attract bugs to my system!

Hey Jerry I wanted to thank you for the great red wigglers that i received. They are very efficient and seem to be doing their job quite nicely.  I had a quick question. I am now filtering my first batch after I got the red wigglers and getting some great soil but I was wondering what you use to filter the leaves from the soil and also how you seperate the worms and their eggs/coccons from the soil. Any help would be appreciated it.

thanks
Dr Luis

Hi Dr. Luis,

You are very welcome. Sounds like everything is going well for you.

If you still have a lot of leaves in there, it is not yet time to harvest. If I remember correctly, you haven’t had your worms for that long. If that is true, you will not yet have that many castings built up yet. Keep the worms alive and they will do what they do…eat, poop, breed. More worms means faster breakdown into castings and your leaves will “Disappear” over time.

It sounds like you are excited to use your castings. That’s great. You could always just pull out a couple of handfuls of castings to feed your plants. If you want to do a full harvest, you will need to wait until the worms break down the leaves…or, unless you plan on getting into the casting business, there is no real reason to filter out the leaves. They are just organic material and will not cause any harm. They just don’t “LOOK” as pretty as finished castings.

Multiple ways to get the worms out of their castings. You can push everything to one side and put some rotting vegetation covered with fresh bedding on the other. The worms will come to the food. Another way is to dump the contents of your bin outside in the light on a tarp. Make several piles and walk away for 30 minutes. When you come back out, most of your worms will be at the bottom of those piles in an attempt to get away from the light.

Forget about trying to screen the cocoons…it’s a losing battle without a commercial harvester with special screens. Not a big deal because you will accumulate more worms than you had anyway.

Just remember, worms are like ants. You will lose several hundred (Or drive yourself NUTS trying to salvage them all), but you will have gained several thousand. Not a bad trade off.