I want to add some worms to my flower beds but can't find anyone who sells "outdoor" worms. I am going to vermicompost one of these days simply because I actually Like worms. LOL But until then I'm wondering if they can go to work right in my garden.
:) Jane
Can Red Wigglers Live Outdoors in Zone 6?
The temperature range they can tolerate is generally 40-80, but that can fluctuate a bit. They will dig down deeper for warmth, but not as deep as regular earthworms.
I am in Northern PA and have no problem with my red wigglers enjoying the winter here. I have many raised beds with worms surviving and composting all winter. It helps to throw something over the beds, like black plastic garbage bags of leaves or anything. I have a compost heap (pictured here somewhere) surrounded by straw bales and topped with glass storm door panels that had worms surfacing right under the snow this winter.
There were beds in my basement with temps up to 114F (from composting manure) that had worms enjoying the heat. these guys are pretty flexible.
Jeff
da Vermeister
I want to start vermicomposting where temperature is about 55 degree C'.please help me.
siamak_asefi: What kind of help do you need? For worms, you should find a supplier on the Internet of African Nightcrawlers (Eudrillus Eugeniae) as they would be more suitable to the hot temperatures in your country. Typical composting worms (Eisenia foetida and Eisenia hortensis) will not survive 55°C (131°F). I would suggest that you dig a hole (1 foot deep, 2 feet wide and 3 feet long) in the ground (sand?) and fill it full of damp, but not wet, shredded newspaper or straw. Add the worms and bury organic matter (vegetable sraps, coffee grounds, fruit peels, etc.) in the bedding. Periodically add more organic matter as the worms eat what you have added. Keep the bed moist at all times.
If you need more information, send me an email: RickplusDebbie@Yahoo.com
This message was edited Jun 11, 2009 2:18 PM
This message was edited Jun 11, 2009 2:20 PM
Is there a worm that would tolerate zone 3 out of doors? If you dig a hole what keeps them in the hole and not going elsewhere? I am just exploring this idea.
Keeping them around depends on habitat for them to live. I don't know of anyway to guarantee they stay. They need food (decomposing materials) in the soil. They need enough drainage so the ground is moist, but not wet enough to drown them.
My raised garden beds have worms in them now. Also my mulched flower bed areas are beginning to attract more. And I've even found a big one in my compost pile. However, most of the yard is clay and there are few if any worms that I've found in the grassy area of my yard.
The only worms that I know are contained are the ones in my worm bin inside... and a few of them should be nominated for the Darwin award for trying to escape the box.
Good information. Thanks
At least some of my red wiggler worms survived outdoors here in Vermont last winter. I believe I'm in Zone 3 (Zone 4 by the map, but I'm a bit of the way up a mountain). We had temps as low as -30F.
http://vermontworms.com/compost-worm-update-june-2009/
To survive sustained freezing temps outdoors, contact with the ground is essential, and you'd need a pretty big bin/pile to generate and retain heat. A standard Rubbermaid or wooden worm bin in Zone 3 with no access to the ground would almost certainly get wiped out.
This message was edited Jul 13, 2009 10:18 PM
Redworms (red wigglers; Eisenia fetida) are an epegeic species of earthworm found throughout North America and are certainly cold hardy to zone 6. AFAIK the eggs in their coccoons can sustain much lower temps than the adults. In the wild, adults control their temp by moving up, down, or horizontally in the soil to get away from harmful temps that become either too hot or too cold for them. Thus, they only need artificially controlled temp when colonized in a bin (because of that confinement).
I have a commercial worm compost bin, yet I've never purchased redworms for it. Instead I harvested the original colonizers of my bin from naturally wild redworms found in my own backyard. There was a fully shaded corner of the property under a canopy of towering old locust trees. In early July I simply began dumping fruit and vegetable wastes from the kitchen there, keeping out any gardening/landscape wastes. I did not disturb the pile until late October, when I found dozens of redworms near the bottom.
Most plants require some acidity in the soil, and wild redworms are adapted to acidic compost. Therefore colonizing your composter with wild redworms from your locale is far more advantageous for gardening than the use of commercially raised redworms that have become adapted to pH neutralized compost beds that are cultured for optimum production of redworms (not compost).
If your yard has no deep shade with litter from old growth trees, then it may not have any wild redworms regardless of which climate zone you live in. In that case, if there is a woodland near your neighborhood, then late next spring start a temporary compost pile of kitchen wastes at a secluded spot there for a few months. That should be sufficicient to amass a starter supply of wild redworms for your home composter.
janegael, great responses on your thread...just thought I would add my 2 pennys worth. I have been on sabatical for more than a year from DG and have been playing catchup on my back thread readings. I was around when the vermicomposting thread just got started and gald to see it is still vital. I am in zone 4 where the ground freezes down to as much as 18-inches during the winter. There are no native earthworms in my garden, however I have been culturing red wigglers for various purposes for more than four decades. My comments on overwintering red wigglers out doors would parallel kurtzinpa's almost exactly. I have an above ground compost bin for horse manure which I liberally dose in the spring with red wigglers from my four indooor binds. I start filling the bin in the fall and add some wigglers then, and supprisingly enogh some do overwinter. I aslo have two 8' x 4' raised beds which are dug down as much as two and four feet into the ground which are also filled with horsemanure in the fall. The spring survivors each year are generally smaller and dark red as compared to my indoor worms which are 3X larger and lighter in color.
The one recommendation I would make that keeping several indoor compost bins is basically a good way to insure a constant supply of these amaizing critters. I have four large plastic tubs which are kept in my insulsated garage (50 F mean temp). In the winter I use an old rug underneath the bins to keep the cold cement floor from sapping heat away from the bins. Once I tried an experiment using a seed heating mat to raise the temperatuire of the bins during the winter. Went out of town for several weeks and when I returned the media (peatmoss) was completely bone dry in each of the four bins. To my complete surprise after rehydrating the media the culture within a month was back and thriving. So my conclusion is. it is darn hard to kill these critters.
And, I have also seen a few survivors in my garden in the spring where I had previously dug deep holes for composted pumpkin and tomato plants.
anjjou's comment on raising worms woutdoors is exactly how my grandfather raised fishing worms in Michigan. It's also possibly a good way to get a starter supply if you are planning to raise them indoors. That's how I started my culture back in the 60's with worms collected from a neighbor's covered leaf bin. There may be other kinds of worms using anjou's method, but the red wigglers will probably be less than 2' in length, dark red in color, and a little thicker than a pencil lead. My recommendation is to get a fast start from a friendly DG'er willing to share an aliqout from their supply.
m