Handling Vermiculture Pest Problems
Posted: Monday, February 02, 2009
by Anthony Coe
Working Worms
Regardless of whether you've started your worm farm for vermicompost, worm tea, worm castings, to do your part against global warming, or just to have bait for fishing pests can be a big problem. So lets roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty as we look at some ways to prevent pests from ruining your worm bed.
- Protecting your worm bed (prevention is better than cure)
The best way to handle worm farm pests is to ensure that they don't establish themselves in the first place. Therefore it is best to keep your worm beds well maintained by ensuring that:
- Your bin lid or farm enclosure is secure.
- The worms and bedding are covered with either a sheet of plastic or a damp sheet of hessian.
- Food scraps are covered with bedding to prevent them becoming mouldy and attracting pests.
- No meat, greasy food, or pet faeces is included in the feed as these attract flies - therefore maggots - and possibly even rats, which can literally gnaw their way into plastic bins.
For continuous worm farming it is recommended that you house your worm bin, or other worm farming medium, in enclosed places such as: garages, sheds, basements or out-buildings; therefore making them less accessible to pests. It would also be helpful to screen the buildings as will help limit your losses to rodents, birds, mammals, snakes and most of the larger earthworm pests. Of course, screens and gratings placed at the top and bottom of the beds can also be effective, but you can never have too many lines of defence.
How to Deal with Earthworm Pests
For information sake all of the following creatures pose a threat to earthworms: ants, mites, slugs, raccoons, springtails, rats, moles, amphibians, reptiles, gophers, certain beetle larvae, maggots, and a variety of other insects. Fortunately, most of these villains can be neutralised by properly constructed bins, screening, or - all together now - good worm bed management. Nonetheless, we'll take a closer look at some our beloved worms greatest enemies and what can be done about them.
Ants
Watch out for ants as they can wreck your beds in a matter of days and therefore require immediate action. Ants are attracted to the feed so don't spill any near your bins and clear away any old spillage as soon as it is spotted. If your bin isn't too big and has legs, another way to keep ants out is to put each of your bin's legs in a dish of water. If the ant invasion has already begun, you can dust the area around your beds with pyrethrum dust or douse the ant nest and the trails leading to your bin with a granular insecticide, although be sure not to use any insecticide on the actual worm bed soil. If ants are already in the beds soak the section they are in and they will usually go away.
Mites
Most worm beds usually contain several species of mites (the most important for, our purposes, being the earthworm mite), which pose no real threat to the worms unless their population spirals too high this usually happens as a result of poor bed management. Earthworm mites are small and are usually brown, reddish or somewhere in-between. They tend to concentrate near the edges and surfaces of the worm beds and around clusters of feed. They are not known for attacking the earthworms but do eat the earthworms feed. When the mite population is too high the worms will burrow deep into the beds and not come to the surface to feed, which hampers worm reproduction and growth. High mite populations usually result from:
1. Over-feeding. Maintaining a proper feeding schedule (for example: one that ensures the feed is eaten in a few days) will prevent the feed from going off in the beds.
2. Feeding the earthworms meaty or wet feed. Large mite populations are often the result of using over moist garbage and vegetable refuse as feed. Adding the occasional soggy vegetable leftover probably won't cause a problem but don't make a habit of it.
3. Over-watering. A rule of thumb when watering is to keep the beds but not wet. Poor bed drainage can also facilitate a mite problem and make the beds less hospitable to worms. Ensure that there are adequate drainage holes at the bottom of your worm bin or housing.
Remember the same conditions that ensure high worm production will be less favourable to mites. If you find your worm farm overrun by mites, expose the beds to the sun for a few hours. Cut back on water and feed and then, every 1 to 3 days, add calcium carbonate. Another method is to over water the bed forcing the mites to the surface and then burning them with a blowtorch. Both of these methods though are only short-term remedies and eventually you will have to improve the conditions in you worm farm if you want to keep the mite population low.
Flies
Excess flies buzzing around you worm bins or worm farms are usually the result of having used meat, greasy food waste, or pet faeces as feed. They can also result in maggots if the beds aren't properly sealed. If your farm is kept indoors or under some sort of shading as it should be then you can hung up some fly strips, which will draw them away from the farms. Again, a properly maintained worm farm will normally not stink and therefore not attract flies.
Springtails
These wingless oblong insects live on decaying and sometimes living plant matter and are a sub-class Apterygota. You can recognise them because they jump when disturbed and can turn a bed suffice white if the population is large enough. Although they have on occasion be observed to eat dead or weak worms, they are primarily a threat because they eat the worm fee and can, when the populations are big enough, drive the worms deep into the beds and keep them from coming to the surface to feed. One deals with them the same way one deals with mites.
Ant Coe has a degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa and is passionate about promoting the use of cheap solutions, for the various problems facing poor communities in Africa. DIY worm farming or vermiculture is one such proposal. Few poor African communities can afford the high cost of commercial fertilizer and worm compost is an excellent source of free organic enrichment for school and village gardens. Visit his website at http://www.working-worms.com/ for further information.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Eh, an article about worm farms? I guess there are a large number of niches out there.
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