European night crawlers

snew

snew

Well-Known Member
So I'm setting up a new worm bin and I'm considering European Night Crawlers. Of course all of the literature says its the best think since sliced bread (I buy mine un slices).
Have you had and experience or do you know someone that has? I'm particularly concerned about how the handle heat. My red worms got cooked in the heat this past summer so if they are hardier I'm in.

Thanks,

Snew
 
W

Wetdog

Well-Known Member
The Euros are in the same family as the RW (Eisenia), and basically just a larger version. Figure pretty much the same AFA heat goes. If you cooked the RW, the same set-up will probably cook the euros.

I have a bin of each, RW and euros. I mainly started the euros for the bait part, the RW are hard to get on a hook. But, I've been very happy with them.

Really hot, you ought to look into the African nightcrawlers, but they need it warm all the time IIRC. No first hand experience.

Wet
 
snew

snew

Well-Known Member
My thought with the using the European night crawler is that I could bury the food deeper and keep out the black soldier flies. Since I could bury the food deeper I though I would have less flies in the summer, and keep everything from becoming a soggy mess. I did talk to a worm farmer here, he said the only thing to do about the flies is pick out the larvae.
And I thought the worms would be great for fishing.
 
Masonic72

Masonic72

Well-Known Member
Green Dragon 2011 said:
Check out red worm composting (redwormcomposting.com) Bentley can answer all of your questions and their is all kinds of info on this site.
Click to expand...
This where i got all my worms , they have been very good .and reproduce so fast.. I also have euro's . Euro worms ar ok .but they dont produce as fast and dont produce eat as much. I do however like both .worm tea is fantastic!
 
W

Wetdog

Well-Known Member
snew said:
My thought with the using the European night crawler is that I could bury the food deeper and keep out the black soldier flies. Since I could bury the food deeper I though I would have less flies in the summer, and keep everything from becoming a soggy mess. I did talk to a worm farmer here, he said the only thing to do about the flies is pick out the larvae.
And I thought the worms would be great for fishing.
Click to expand...
I'm really liking the Euros for *my* set up. My bedding is pretty much the beginning of my soiless mix. Peat moss, perlite, lime and some amendments that the worms like. Alfalfa meal, soybean meal, kelp meal, coffee grounds, Azomite and maybe a couple others I'm forgetting. I mix this up and let it cook a bit before use.

Anyway, the euros dig and burrow much more than the RW, who tend to stay near the top. If I dig around, I find the euros everywhere from top to bottom and they seem to churn the bedding more.

They are a bit slower than the RW, but not by much, from what I've seen and they'll handle deeper initial bedding better it seems.

What I do with both bins is pretty much leave then alone for 3 months or so and empty the entire bin at once. But, with the RW I start with less bedding and add some every so often. With the euros, I add deeper bedding and sometimes bury the food and sometimes leave it on top. I'll add bedding as the level goes down. 2-3 weeks before I harvest the bin I stop all food. Cuts down on the 'leftovers', although what I feed them would be going into my mix anyway.

I usually get ~10-13 gallons of vermicompost, mostly castings, when I harvest a bin. Recently harvested my RW bin and got 10 gallons.

Wet
 
snew

snew

Well-Known Member
Wetdog said:
I'm really liking the Euros for *my* set up. My bedding is pretty much the beginning of my soiless mix. Peat moss, perlite, lime and some amendments that the worms like. Alfalfa meal, soybean meal, kelp meal, coffee grounds, Azomite and maybe a couple others I'm forgetting. I mix this up and let it cook a bit before use.

Anyway, the euros dig and burrow much more than the RW, who tend to stay near the top. If I dig around, I find the euros everywhere from top to bottom and they seem to churn the bedding more.

They are a bit slower than the RW, but not by much, from what I've seen and they'll handle deeper initial bedding better it seems.

What I do with both bins is pretty much leave then alone for 3 months or so and empty the entire bin at once. But, with the RW I start with less bedding and add some every so often. With the euros, I add deeper bedding and sometimes bury the food and sometimes leave it on top. I'll add bedding as the level goes down. 2-3 weeks before I harvest the bin I stop all food. Cuts down on the 'leftovers', although what I feed them would be going into my mix anyway.

I usually get ~10-13 gallons of vermicompost, mostly castings, when I harvest a bin. Recently harvested my RW bin and got 10 gallons.

Wet
Click to expand...
That sounds great. I've never built such and intense bedding. Thank you Wet
 
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