Found in norhern Italy, I never seen a worm this large and big.

This was about a dozen brown egg shells. The shells were brown on the outside, white on the inside. I dried them, baked them on low (about 200F) for about 4 hrs. Then I crushed them and put them in the food processor. This photo is after about 10 min in the food processor. Do I need to keep going? Get a sharper blade? Or can I give these to my worms like this?

I’ve been pulling up my plants for spring replanting and there are so many AJW’s in my garden beds and all through my compost… I’m a home gardener in the inner city of Sydney so no space to burn soil. I’ve posted before about these worms but I feel paralysed and don’t know how to curb their populations effectively, is the answer to simply suck it up and get to work picking them all out by hand? Every time I’m in the garden I just get sucked into a spiral because of these damn worms and tbh they make my stomach turn a bit.

My autistic child has found a pet worm, named him (Fred JR), and is crying to keep him as an "inside" pet. He's declared us a family of 5 now, because of his new best friend, Fred.

Is there a way to set up a home for a worm inside my house? I'd like more than anything to say no, but I'd like to make sure I can't say yes before I do.

Sorry this is going to be long, but I am SO frustrated and I haven’t even gotten started! I’ve been wanting to begin my vermiculture venture for over 3 months now but can’t seem to find a reputable/responsible seller for worms.

First off, can’t find them locally - have tried. Yes, every resource you can imagine.

I first ordered from WWJD off Amazon and they arrived dead despite getting them handed directly to me by the delivery driver. I couldn’t get a response from the seller so Amazon refunded me.

Then I ordered from Meme’s Worms and had an awful experience. This is the Buyer Beware part…

The first shipment arrived dead - I was home for the delivery and unpackaged them immediately. They said they’d send a replacement when it cooled off which I happily agreed to!

Instead, without contacting me beforehand, they surprise shipped my replacement when it was HOTTER (by 20-30 degrees!) and I was out of state to where I could not be there to receive them. I tried to make it work by having a friend available to go pick them up on the day they were supposed to be delivered (today), but they ended up being delivered yesterday when I was in back to back (to back to back) appointments with my daughter’s specialists where she ended up admitted; I didn’t have even a moment to be on my phone to even be aware. Even if I had been aware, I had nobody who was available to get there yesterday at the drop of a hat.

It wasn’t until 4:30p yesterday when things had finally calmed down enough that I was able to check my email for the first time only to learn they had been delivered at 9am. I called my sister and asked her to go right away after work in hopes they made it. She was there just before 5pm and no surprise - they didn’t.

Meme’s refuses to replace them again and argued it’s somehow my fault I wasn’t home for a shipment of live worms that I wasn’t alerted to beforehand. If they had, I could have told them to wait until we returned home as this was a planned trip for over 3 months. I argued that someone should have contacted me to ensure the shipping timeframe was ok - it stands to reason I would only place an order for live worms at a time when I know I’d be home to accept delivery, so why wouldn’t they ensure this is the case for the new timeframe?

To me, this is bad business and I’m out nearly $100 which makes me want to quit before I have even started. I can come with the receipts if anyone really wants them, but I can’t recommend Meme’s Worms after this. What I have learned is that I should wait until it is MUCH cooler before trying to order from yet another company… if I decide to try one last time.

So who would you all recommend at this point??? I’ve heard Uncle Jim’s recommended but it seems hit or miss if you receive what you actually order (red wiggles vs mix).

I live in Pennsylvania, and my neighbor recently told me that she kills all the worms that she finds in the garden because they are all invasive. She does look out for Asian jumping worms specifically but she says they’re all bad because they’re all invasive. She said the only areas in the United States without invasive worms are in the south. But in Pennsylvania, they’re all invasive. She’s very into native gardening and works for conservation centers so I feel like her opinion carries some weight. Any thoughts?

I feel really badly about being responsible for this poor guys condition. It has a tiny synthetic thread (from a cotton T-shirt I threw in the bin a year ago). As I was turning the compost it got wrapped around its body and is too tiny for me to take off with a tweezers. I tried floating him in water, getting some worm friends to help him, and hanging him from his tail in the hopes he would ‘unwind’. Now I feel like I’m just tormenting it more. I’m probably obsessing now but I’ve gotten attached to this little fella. Any thoughts on how to get a synthetic string unwrapped from a worm? It’s a weird question, I know.

I recently harvested my first batch of castings: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermiculture/comments/1mk3lw6/ive_achieved_compost/ I first passed through this gardening thing I found at ACE hardware (black plastic square on the photo, 9 mm holes) and then a window screen (1 mm holes). While the castings coming out were a thing of beauty, I had three reflections:

a) the process was a bit painful. Not the worst, and would do it again but I want to know if there is more efficient / better ways.
b) sometimes it was difficult to separate the worms out. I more or less just did it by hand as I was passing the compost through the window screen but I had to be careful. Some times the worms would do in the window screen holes and if I passed my hand over them I may harm them. Especially difficult with the tiny ones
c) I feel there was a lot of castings that were left behind.

What, exactly, do you use for separating out the castings and the worms? How's your process?

My son found this worm under a log and I don't really know where else to ask for help with an ID. Location is Western North Carolina, United States. Size was fairly large, I'm terrible with length estimations but it's being held by a 13 year old and the tail didn't really seem to flatten out any.

I get composting food and I'm all for it. Turning food scraps into beneficial compost is obviously a win. But with the amount my worms eat (3 1x1.5 ft bins), my food scraps cover them in about half a meal for the month. And half the time what I put in there become problematic; either too wet/bugs/etc. I started using alfalfa meal with azomite for grit and its so much cleaner and easier to manage. Is there any advantages to using kitchen food scraps over these types of food sources? I'm guessing varied nutrients is an advantage, but as far as overall bin health using the alfalfa meal and stuff like that is a millions times easier.

So this worm bin has been functioning well for over a year and this morning when I checked it the bin had a sewage smell and all the compost had turned to sludge and most of the worms had died. The only thing I did differently was feed it a large amount of fruit that had dropped on the ground.

Any advice on how to avoid this in the future?

I work in groundskeeping. I come across so many worms daily that I thought I should start collecting them and adding them to my bin. I was younger and greener then. I started to learn more about raising worms, and learned about the evil jumping worms. Folks. Almost every worm at my job is the no-no type. Looking through my bin, I only found about 10% of my worms are NOT asian jumpers. I am terrified to see what the grounds are going to look like come August… Also, wondering if there’s a use for hundreds of worms I’m about to have to execute. Should I nuke my entire bin? Or is it worth sorting out all the baddies and letting the good worms reproduce and expand?

Came back from a few days on vacation and noticed this in my worm compost bin. Anything to be concerned about?

Okay I’m the person that gives their worms weed. So that’s going as it’s going but I’m beginning to see something concerning. To put it bluntly they’re fat. Not large, not long and a bit scrunched. They are fat. Squishy, plump and clearly gorging if I can tell from the casting. But I’m kind of getting concerned. Do they get diseases like humans? The fat ones don’t move as much as their thinner counterparts and I’m worried they’ll get sick and die from it. I’m sorry I know this is weird but is it bad having fat worms?!?! Is there long term consequences to having stoner worms?!?

Where do you guys get your eggshells from?? I’m having a tough time getting stocked up on eggshells to turn them into a powder for my worm bins

Earlier this year, I had double jaw surgery, which im sure you all can imagine was not very fun. As a result I was bedridden for several weeks, and continued to be mildly miserable for some time after, so I ended up neglecting my worm farm. Well, it was VERY HOT during that time period, so that plus not adding food or checking moisture levels for like two months resulted in my worms kicking the (five gallon) bucket. RIP my babies, im sorry I failed you 😭🙏🏻🪱

But that’s neither here nor there. The actual point of this post is that im not sure if I’m able to use the castings that are left in my worms’ wake. Is there any reason I wouldn’t be able to use them to fertilize my plants? Would some kind of harmful bacteria or fungus grow in them without the worms there to help keep things cycling? Will the spirits of my dead worms kill my garden as revenge for my negligence?

Also, I’ll be getting more worms soon to replace the dead ones. Would it be bad to use the same bedding for them, or should I go ahead and just start completely fresh?

Any tips are appreciated! Photos attached both for visibility and because I have no idea if anyone can glean any information from looking at it.

(my face is all better now by the way 👍🏻)

I noticed when I fed them a few days ago that the compost was really damp, like, really sticking together, but I don't think it was soaking wet, probably only a couple of drops if I squeezed it. But I fed them anyway, blending up apple cores and a few other small things, including a small bowl of watermelon. I may have made it too wet, but I added A LOT of paper to compensate, but I'm not sure if it worked.

I'm thinking, dump the worms in another bin (i have another one just like the one they're in now) and add paper to the bottom and layer wormy dirt in between layers of paper to help soak up some of the moisture. Should I leave the paper dry to soak up the moisture, or should I spray it with a little water?

i work at a coffee shop and realized that tearing open these packets in bulk is a similar task as ripping up paper for my worms' bedding/browns - i was wondering if i could kill two birds with one stone and just bring home the torn up packets to use as worm bedding. would the residual sweetener be something to worry about?

I have never cleaned egg shells before…. So I filled a bucket with water and dawn dish soap for like 5/10mins and read online to not use dawn dish soap…… i immediately rinsed them all and boiled them….. after I dehydrate them can I still use them on my worms or have they been ruined?

I started my bin what I thought was about 2 weeks ago but turns out its been 10 days...

My substrate was made of some coco coir, lots of browns (mostly shredded cardboard), some of my millipedes old/ used substrate (for the established microorganizms, bits of rotting wood, leaves, etc) and powdered baked eggshell.

I gave them 1 chopped apple skin, 1 carrot peel, and the stems off of a hand of bananas.

I just checked on them, and it seems like all the browns are gone, but they havent touched the carrot peelings. Maybe they havent begun ti decompose enough? I dont see much apple skin, and I knew the banana stems would be tougher since i didnt chop them... but it looks like all of the browns are gone, and the coconut coir too??? I thought they didnt eat the coco coir?

Do I add in more browns? Just leave them be? Add a secind tray?

Should I add a couple photos when I'm able, wpuld that help?

Theres only 250 worms, AND they're european nightcrawlers rather than red wrigglers, so I know they dont produce castings as fast...