Make Sure To Buy Enough Worms For Your Project
Red wiggler Worms come in many different amounts. From 1000 up to 10,000 worms can be ordered with the click of your mouse, or the tap of your phone screen. We often see people under size how many worms they need for their particular situation. Their main goal is to save money, and to use as few worms as possible.
When vermicompsting you will want to start with way more worms than you think you will need. For example we have ran a worm bin in our store for over a year. We started with 1000 worms, and they pretty much did nothing. We added another 1000, and this helped a bit, but not enough. For our standard sized fabric style bag worm bin, we found that at least 10,000 worms would have been the best place to start.
Yes worms will multiple rather fast in perfect conditions, but after years of trial, and error, perfect conditions never happen, and your worms end up multiplying way slower than you would think.
When using worms in your living soil pots you want to make sure to use enough that they can digest your soil amendments to make the nutrients contained inside bio-available to the plant. Too little of worms, and you may notice lack luster results when going from cycle to cycle.
Let's use a 30 gallon fabric pot as an example. There are two trains of thought when you approach this, one is that you come out of the gate swinging (this is what I tend to do), the second is to do enough to get decent results, but wait for the worms to naturally reproduce to fill your containers over the next 6 to 9 months.
If you want to come out swinging, I would suggest 300 to 500 worms per container. I recently setup 10 containers this size, and used 5 pounds (5000 worms) spread about all of the pots. This may seem excessive to some, but straight out of the gate we knew the pots were going to be running at full steam. After many years of doing this I would rather just get it going the right way then save a few hundred bucks and have to wait a year for optimal results.
If you want to be more conservative, and feel like waiting, 100 worms in a 30 gallon container will work. It will take 6 to 9 months for the worms to replicate to fill the pot, but it will happen eventually. You can get good results with this, but nutrient cycling will not be as productive as it will be when your pots are completely full of worms.
The good part of using worms in your living soil pots is that they will self-regulate. This means its impossible to over fill, and almost impossible to under fill. They will self-regulate how many of them are in your containers. It really is a set it, and forget it type situation.
Is It Safe To Order Live Worms Online, Won't They Die?
This is a great question as ordering anything alive online seems a little weird. That being said, we guarantee delivery of live red wigglers for composting. If your order shows up, and the worms have died, we will send a replacement order right away.
Winter seems to be the time of year where the worms can sometimes show up dead. I have personally had only 1 order of worms over a decade show up dead, and this was in a cold ass
Colorado winter. With the speed of shipping via USPS Priority Mail, it just doesn't happen very often. In the off chance that it does, we ship a replacement right away.
What's The Best Day Of the Week To Order Worms?
You can order worms any day of the week, but ordering over the weekend for a Monday ship date seems to work out well for most. It gives the worms the entire week to show up to you with no Sunday off. It's not completely necessary, but it can help to ensure a speedy delivery, and make sure there are no issues with the worms dying.
Do I Need To Do Anything Special When I Receive My Composting Worms?
When you receive your worms you will notice they are all balled up together, and moving slowly. The best thing to do is add them to your worm bin, or no-till living soil pots, and let them get acclimated. It usually only takes a few minutes for them to start burrowing. After 30 minutes to an hour they should all be subterranean. If after a few hours you notice a few on the surface that appear dead, you can either remove them, or allow them to become part of the composting process.
Is Ordering European Nightcrawlers Online Similar?
All of the same rules apply to ordering European Nightcrawlers online. European Nightcrawlers are sometimes mixed with red wigglers in living soil pots and beds to have multiple layers of vermicomposting in the same container. It's not completely necessary, but some people like the diversity. They are also a good choice to use in your vermicomposting operation.
Trying to farm your own worms from scratch could be a next to impossible task for many people. That's why ordering live worms online is the easiest, quickest way to jump start your new garden pots, or vermicomposting project. With guaranteed live delivery, ordering composting worms online is a risk free way to conveniently get your next batch of live worms.
