Vermicomposting with Europeon Night Crawlers #1

Adding 500 worms to my worm composting box.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• vermicomposting
• worms
• fertilizer
• gardening
• bait
• fishing

[luk3r3volution]

I've got African Nightcrawlers in one bin. Your European Nightcrawlers look bigger. I can't keep ENs because it's too hot for them here. Apparently either nightcrawler are good bait because they don't have that sliminess that the red wrigglers have. I have been led to understand that the fish don't like that slime.

[woofish1]

I have never heard fish don't like the slime on a worm. From what I hear European Nightcrawlers are very tolerant of warm temps. How hot is it where you live? Don't you have a basement, garage or crawl space which maintains a somewhat cooler temp. I raised Africans years ago and the EN's are a much better worm for both fishing and composting.

[luk3r3volution]

They're huge!

[woofish1]

Now that they are feeding in the box they are really fat an juicy. A great bait for fishing and they eat a lot more than my red wigglers....Woo

[best333WillC]

I have euro's and red worms. IN separate bins, what is an easy way to tell a difference between them/

[ccoasterdesigner]

So in composting with worms wich would you choose out of the worms that you have used, and then over all worm???

[woofish1]

Continuation -- Both types of nightcrawlers make good baits and also do a good job of composting garbage. I have even combined the European night crawlers with the red wigglers in a single box. They live in harmony and jointly do a great job of vermicomposting. With this mix you get some large worms for bait along with the most effective composting results of the Red wigglers.

[woofish1]

For many years I have been raising Red Wigglers inside in composting boxes. They do a wonderful job of converting kitchen organic garbage into rich compost used by gardeners. Being a fisherman I wanted larger worms for bait. With this in mind I added European nightcrawlers last year and African nightcrawlers more recently.

[luk3r3volution]

Don't know where I heard about the slime thing. Someone was holding it up as a reason to use nightcrawlers. Summer average daytime temperatures are high 30s to mid 40s degrees celcius. I have not been able to find anyone growing/keeping ENs in South East Queensland, Australia but I would be happy to find some and start an EN bin to experiment. We don't have a basement or a crawl space and the garage is the hottest part of the house.

[woofish1]

The worms in your yard are probably Canadian Nightcrawlers which I agree are much larger than European Nightcrawlers. I used to collect them after it rained for bait years ago. A great worm for fishing. However, you can keep them alive for quite a while under proper conditions, but raising them in boxes like I do with red wigglers and European Nightcrawlers is not possible as far as I know. They live very deep in the ground and do not feed on the top like the other worms.