Frequently Asked Questions

Why are my worms escaping out the bottom and swimming in the puddle beneath my bin?
Worms will naturally seek out moisture, and if accessible, they will head for the wettest spot they can find. Put them back in or let them find their way back on their own. You can discourage their little swimming expeditions by elevating your bin higher so there is more of an air space beneath your bin, and by frequently draining the drip pan so that leachate (water seeped through the worm bed) does not accumulate. Water your plants with the leachate - it contains soluable nutrients and beneficial microorganisms.

My worms are hanging out on TOP of the newspaper cover! How do I get them to go back down into the bed?
Worms will move throughout the bedding material based on moisture, temperature, pH, food, barometric pressure and WHIM! Worms don't eat 24 hours a day - they may be cooling off, looking for a mating partner, or just resting. If it's humid and dimly lit, they will often come to the cool surface. They may also disappear deep into the bedding for periods of time. Don't worry about them and don't attempt to micromanage – they can and will take care of themselves. All you have to do is attend to their basic needs: feed and water them generously, make sure the bin is draining freely and always keep the food covered with moist paper.

My worms are not consuming food very fast. How can I get them to eat more?
Keep in mind that different foods will decompose at different rates. Lettuce, melon rinds, papaya, rice, bread, etc., will disappear quickly, whereas cabbage, potato skins, citrus peels, and banana peel will sit there for a while before they break down. Speed up feeding rate by chopping food waste – the finer the better (some people use their Cuisinart) – to create more surface area. You can also collect your food waste in the freezer, where ice crystals break the cell walls. Be sure to thaw before feeding!

What do I do about fruit flies?
Fruit flies are a fact of life in worm bins and we all get them once in a while, because their eggs come in on rinds and peels. If your bin is outdoors and you don't mind them, fruit flies are not an issue, because they do absolutely no harm. While a few flies from time to time are inevitable, no one likes a huge infestation in their house – it's a nuisance.

Fortunately, fruit flies are easily controlled. Always, ALWAYS, keep a one-to-two inch layer of moist paper covering your food – no pukas. Fruit fly adults will not burrow through a barrier to lay their eggs. You might try freezing your food first to kill off any fruit fly eggs in food scraps. If you do get a big explosion of fly maggots in the food, remove infested material from the bed. If adult flies get well-established in your bin, sink a little cup of red wine or cooking sherry into the bedding and let them drown in it. You can also use a strong hand-held vacuum (Dust Buster) and suck 'em up in one sweep! If you are fruit flies in your house are a problem, we carry a nice-looking fruit fly trap that seems to do the trick.

What are all these BUGS doing in my worm bin?
All the little critters you see scampering around the worm bin – mites, earwigs, springtails, beetles, sowbugs, millipedes, snails, spiders, Asian roaches, etc. – are members in good standing of the decomposer community. They are in there doing their job – breaking down decaying organic matter so that nutrients can be recycled. The mites, for example (tiny moving dots) act as shredders who scrape the surface of material so that bacteria and fungi can get in and break it down. All these organisms are either eating decaying matter or each other and they will not leave the bin. They will do no harm to you, your house, pets, kids, or plants. Your worms have no teeth or grinding mechanism – they are dependent on their many bin-mates to break down the food for them.

Ocassionally you may inadvertently create a perfect environment for certain critters and will experience a population boom, sometimes called an "infestation." Not to worry – just let it run its course. No harm will be done, and nature will re-establish a balance over time.

There are ants in my bin. Is this a problem?
Ants are freeloaders – snatching food from our bins and taking it elsewhere – and although they are not a problem, they are most definitely a nuisance. You can isolate your bin from ants by placing your drip pan in a second pan filled with soapy water or talc (baby powder), or by smearing a ring of vaseline around the inner rim of your drip pan. Ants will not cross water, talc, or vaseline.

There are really big ugly maggots in my bin! Is this a problem?
Meet the marvelous wasp-mimicking black soldier fly larvae, Hermetia illucens! Soldier fly larvae tend to show up in large numbers and can be quite alarming on first encounter. To their credit, they are world-class decomposers and grind through massive amounts of organic matter like no other. Aggressive eaters, in bins they can sometimes compete with the worms for the available food supply, so make sure there's plenty of food on hand if they show up. You can either ignore them, let them eat, pupate, emerge as adults and fly off, or you can pick them out of your bin. I personally prefer to pick them out and toss them out to the garden lizards, who find them delicious.

My bin stinks! What I'm I doing wrong?
A healthy worm bin should have no offensive odor whatsoever. You are either overfeeding, or your bin drainage system is clogged and excess water is filling up the little pockets of air that provide oxygen to our beneficial aerobic bateria. If your system has gone stinky-swampy or anaerobic, unplug clogged drainage holes and make sure your bin is elevated so it can drain freely.

If drainage is not the problem, you are feeding your worms too much. Stop feeding for a few days to give the worms a chance to catch up and then slow down your feeding rate. Drench the bin with plenty of water daily to help flush out oxygen-depleted water and air.

Are there any foods that are poisonous to worms?
The only food waste that seem to do damage to worms are papaya SEEDS. They do not break down and leach into the bin some substance that renders our worms temporarily sterile. Papaya skin and flesh is OK. It's my opinion that you should feed an intense food like coffee grounds only in moderation - once a week maybe, not every day. A little common sense goes a long way when it comes to feeding. For example, a lemon mixed in with a variety of food wastes is OK, but an entire bin-load of lemons is just too much acid at once. If you have a question about a particular food, try a small amount and see what happens.

I want to move my worms from this little pot to a big storage-container bin. Is this OK?
Epigeic worms like our Perionyx excavatus prefer to live in crowded, dense colonies. If your objective is to promote fast reproduction, keep them in a small bin and let them outgrow it before moving them on to a larger container. If you put a small number of worms in a big bin, they spend so much time and energy looking for each other their reproduction rate drops way down. The recommended worm-to-bin ratio is one to two pounds of worms for every square foot of surface area. We find that a 10-gallon Sterilite tub (surface area just under two square feet), started with 1/4 pound of worms, will reach capacity of two or three pounds of worms within a year's time.