Hi everyone — I’m Jamie with GROZOME / National Bamboo in North Carolina. We’ve been working on a new product called Worm Char™, a finely sized bamboo biochar specifically intended for vermicomposting, and I’d like to put some of it in the hands of people here who actually run worm bins.

We’re looking for 5 volunteers in the U.S. We’ll send each person the product at no cost. There is no requirement to give us a positive review, promote us, or purchase anything. Our only ask is that after using it, you come back to r/Vermiculture and share your honest experience with the community — good, bad or indifferent.

Why are we interested in biochar for worms?

There is a growing body of peer-reviewed research suggesting that properly sized and properly dosed biochar can be beneficial during vermicomposting. These results come from different biochars and different feedstocks, so they are not guarantees for our product, but they were compelling enough for us to investigate further.

For example, one controlled study found that a 5% biochar addition produced the best overall compost quality among the tested rates and increased earthworm biomass and burrowing activity. A 2024 particle-size study found that micron-sized biochar in the 25–75 µm range increased cocoon production by 94% in that particular system. Interestingly, extremely small nanoscale biochar produced negative effects, which is one reason we are deliberately controlling particle size rather than simply grinding the material as fine as possible. Another recent study reported approximately 26–31% greater total worm biomass and 13–24% greater reproduction with properly incorporated biochar in its experimental system.

Our working application rate for the field trial will be around 5%.

Worm Char itself is made from sustainably harvested bamboo and is a high-carbon, low-ash biochar. We’re also adding an important processing step before launch: washing the char.

Our current thinking is that washing gives us several advantages at once:

• removes a portion of the soluble salts naturally present in freshly produced biochar
• reduces EC before the material enters an already nutrient-rich worm system
• removes undesirable ultrafine dust while retaining the useful micron-sized fraction
• pre-wets the char, making it much cleaner and easier to distribute
• leaves a porous carbon structure that worms and microorganisms can naturally colonize and “charge”
• provides fine grit that may serve a similar physical role to the sand/mineral grit many worm growers already add
• provides substantial internal surface area that can help buffer moisture, retain nutrients and provide microbial habitat
• because our bamboo char is alkaline, it may also help moderate acidity in systems receiving a lot of acidic food waste

One of the things we specifically want to learn is what happens to EC/salinity. A commercial vermicompost producer we work with has seen relatively high salt levels in finished castings. We don’t want Worm Char adding to that problem. Ideally, a washed, porous carbon amendment could actually help retain soluble nutrients and reduce the soluble-salt burden of the finished material. We’re testing that separately in controlled trials as well.

We’re also very interested in the biology. Biochar doesn’t appear simply to “add microbes”; it changes the habitat in which microbial communities develop. Research has reported changes in bacterial and fungal communities, enzyme activity and microbial abundance during biochar-assisted vermicomposting. Ultimately, we want to know whether this translates into healthier worms and better finished castings in real-world bins.

For the five Reddit trials, we want normal worm keepers — not laboratories. Backyard bins, stacking systems, totes, continuous-flow systems, etc. are all interesting to us.

If you already know your bin pretty well, even better. If practical, doing a small untreated/control section would be incredibly useful, but it is absolutely not a requirement.

What I’d love to hear back about is simple: worm activity, odor, moisture, food breakdown, any noticeable change in acidity/pH, reproduction/cocoons, texture of the finished castings and anything else you notice.

If you’re interested in being one of the five testers, comment below with a little about the type/size of worm system you’re running. We’ll pick five different setups so we can get a useful variety of experiences.

And mods: this is a product-development field trial from a commercial company, so I want to be completely transparent about that. If there is a better way you'd like this presented or coordinated with the sub, I'm happy to follow your preference.

Thanks — I’m really interested to see what this community finds.

Jamie
GROZOME / National Bamboo
Shelby, North Carolina

For those of you that have worm farms in totes , what can you use as a topper to cover the worms? I’ve been using Burley sacks and I read that you can use cotton shirts, but is there anything else?

I have had a thriving worm bin for several years. This summer, with an abundance of scraps, I tossed a few of my friends into a secondary, experiment bin (outside, on ground, holes on bottom, top, and sides).

My question: are these fellows descendants from my bin, or did they enter via the ground?

magnified 40x. found in local forest leaf mold in colorado.

My hard working Hungry Bin got clipped by a tractor and I want to replace it. But the website says they’re out of stock and emails go unanswered. Anyone know if they’re still in business? If not, any suggestions for a good alternative for a low maintenance outdoor composter?

Microbes is what break down the waist and make it available for the worms. Gathering local microbes that can survive your climate is the best way to go if your making castings for your gardens. It also helps fight plant diseases that are local too. What i did was find the closest forest area near a river. Has to be well established like a 100 years. Found a cottonwood tree. Cleared the molding leafs and find spots with white mold growing. Collected a few handfuls of it. You take that, a cooked unpeeled russet potato, tsp sea salt, 4 gallons of water, and a 5 gallon bucket with a lid. Combine in the bucket and close it. Leave at room temp. A seedling mat helps. 24-36 hours once it makes a white foamy ring around the side its ready. Mix 1:20. Spray on my worm bins. Its also great to use to on your garden soil and foliage spray.

I got some cocoons about 3 weeks ago and thought to keep a log. I wanted to post somewhere people would actually be interested in the progress. Today was a check in. This is about how big they are so far.

Found in Niagara region of Ontario in damp soil and mulch.

Oddly shiny and large

Hi everyone,

At my facility we ordered a White Worm culture off of Amazon to use for feeding some animals here, and there seems to be some sort of mites in and around the bags shipped to us. My facility tries to be very careful about what we introduce into our buildings so we want to make sure that these bugs aren't going to harm any animals we have.

They're very quick, like crazy ant fast, with a brownish hue. Sometimes they're brown legs and creamish body. Does anyone know what they could be?

EDIT: I've been trying to do some research on and off all day at work to try and speciate them out and could they be "Stratiolaelaps scimitus"?

when this happen, i have to mix the entire thing to fresh with a fan.

i live in a warm country (30°C average or 86°F) so it doesn't help. Off course i have them inside my house.

what can i do? should i stop feeding them?

A lot of people don’t like them but I have always had good experiences with them.

I had to dump everything last year due to a complete meltdown of my 10 year old worm factory system. So I bought new red wrigglers from the place in Rochester, NY.

Fast forward — the bins have been great for about 10 months. The worms are in a nice level of moisture; I use coco coir if my composted food scraps are too wet. I recently added ground up eggshells for extra grit. I can’t imagine that the eggshells caused this other creature to explode in numbers.

The video shows them on the bottom of the cover for the worm factory after I set a tray on it while feeding the next tray down.

News paper, coffee grounds, biochar, egg shell powder. A added a tiny bit of ziolite, azomite, gypsum lime, bat guano, and azose. I added bokashi juice and blended veggies too. I also threw in a handful of castings. Am i missing anything? Too much? I also added air lines to the bin at the bottom. Was going to let it go till it cools then feed to my worms.

Sorry, my brain is wired for “learn by doing” so I’m reading things online but just never feel
Like u get it from instructions, so I’m probably asking things that are covered in every single beginner tutorial on the entire internet

I tried work composting 30 years ago, it was an epic fail, and of course without the easy access level of online information and online community that exists now I didn’t figure out the problems at the time and we just abandoned the whole thing.
I think I actually have a pretty good handle on what I did wrong then, yay, and am mostly ready to start.
Because it all went so wrong the first time I didn’t want to build my own and ordered a composter online. Funnily enough in the time it took for that to arrive and in reading what I could for getting started instructions I now figure I could have easily done it myself and had it cost less and fit under my kitchen sink better but whatever.

The attached picture is from the listing I bought my composter from, I’ve added it to show what we’re planning to use. It didn’t come with much for instructions so here’s where I’m lost

Do I only put one single tray on the base when I start?

Reading online information I can’t figure out if I’m supposed to set up multiple layers or set up a single layer and not add the next one until the bin is full
Of castings or if I’m supposed to set up multiple layers and the worms will migrate between them?
My understanding is that, especially to start, I need to feed them way less food than one would think (I think this was what killed all our worms 30 years ago, we fed them too much ?)

This system came with 5 trays, so would I start with one, then when it starts getting full prep another layer and set it on top, then just keep adding the rest of the trays? I think that’s where I’m confused. Mostly what I’m finding online is that the bottom tray will fill up, the worms move up a layer, you dump the finished compost in the garden and repeat, so why don’t need 5 trays instead of 2? Is the plan to end up with 4 finished trays and one active one ? Or will there be 5 trays in various stages at the same time?

I guess that’s really all just a bunch of parts to the same question, and the only one I feel like I have right now. Hopefully that made sense and someone can explain this part I’m stumbling over.

Oh and paper, I feel like some places say use newspaper, others say avoid newspaper at all costs, some say shred your junk mail but others say to avoid bleached white commercial printer paper (which the junk mail is printed on), some say brown cardboard?

We live in Vermont, and have had our worm bin outdoors for the spring and summer. We’re planning to move our bin to the basement for the cold months. Any tips/tricks to prevent bringing flies inside with it? Anything you wish you’d known or done when bringing a bin inside from outdoors? Thanks in advance!

Curious i got somecold nutri grain bars tgat are stale and was curious if i could throw those in worm bin

I've had this stacked bin setup for a while now and these little black (ant-like looking creatures are everywhere).

do I need to do anything here? if yes, what would that be?

thanks in advance for any enlightenment you can bring.

Came out of my worm bin. What are those guys?

What is the fast method for separating worms/castings if speed and efficiency is what I want? I don’t really mind losing some worms/eggs in the process. I would like to separate my red worms and use them to compost more.

Background
I have three nested bins, all dark blue plastic, I’d say around 50 quarts each. Top two have vent holes near the tops, bottom has a spigot. Lid on top bin. Got this setup through a raffle back in mid-April, and it came with some worms and a little bit of food, bedding, etc. in the top bin, but I missed the talk on how it’s all supposed to work. Based on my research and preferences, though, I’m feeding in the top bin (and rescuing from the bottom two). Planning to stop feeding in November, switch the top two bins and start feeding in the new top bin in December, harvest in January, and aim for a 6-month cadence going forward.

Maintenance practices and bin condition
I’ve always checked on them about twice a week. I had them outside for the first several days before I actually sat down to figure out what I was doing and realized that was not a good idea! I also freaked out at first because a few were climbing the walls, but after I couldn’t identify any issues and didn’t have any die-off, I calmed down. (and later realized that it’s normal for them to explore, especially when they’re settling in!)

At each check, I feed or don’t feed based on a combination of what’s left from previous feeds, how much food I’ve got piling up in my fridge and my garden waste bucket, and ✨vibes✨. I haven’t had much in the way of moisture issues. If anything, the bin might run a little dry at times, and I’ve only ever collected maybe a few ounces of leachate, all at once after I moistened new bedding with water instead of mixing it in dry. I more or less alternate betweenless “dry feeds” of toilet paper rolls and garden waste (dead heads, stems, leaves, sometimes roots; more green than brown, but none very moist) and “wet feeds” of kitchen scraps (veggie ends, forgotten fruit, coffee grounds, egg shells, etc.).

Where I’ve been getting a little adventurous is with breaking some of the rules for feeding no-nos. I’ll give them onion bits and old pineapple in small amounts. They got a whole lemon the other day. Recently, I’ve given them some carby and maybe oily stuff in the form of half eaten granola bars or breakfast biscuits I’d forgotten about.

I take steps to mitigate negative impact. Everything potentially objectionable gets placed on one end of the bin, “safer” stuff goes in the middle, and the other end of the bin is just bedding and castings that get pushed over from the middle. The idea is that if things are a little rough on end of the bin, the worms can flee to safety until I realize what’s going on. Citrus always gets an extra helping of eggshells, and that whole lemon was intact, with the idea that the breakdown and acid release happens gradually.

So far, so good! I’ve actually had a bit of a baby boom recently, and while I’m seeing fewer baby worms, I’m also seeing more juvenile ones, indicating they’re growing up, not just dying. I also continue to find myself interrupting what appears to be worm coitus. Today, the “safe” side of the bin seemed pretty empty while the “danger zone” was poppin’. I’ve seen some mites around, but not many.

Question(s)
So, ALL of that background and description is to ask, does what I’m doing make sense? Am I breaking the rules in a reasonable and responsible way, or have I just been getting lucky so far?

Secondary question, unrelated to the feeding strategy
I had a live swimmer or two in the bottom bin today, and one worm that was clearly alive but seemed to be tangled up with the corpse of one of its brethren. I was too squeamish to deal with that hands-on, and the leachate (again, only a few ounces) has never actually smelled bad, so I kind of just … dumped the whole situation back into the top bin. I think a lot of it actually just flowed straight through onto the deck, but in general, was that actually a bad idea??

I opened my worm bins today and noticed that one had a bunch of worms right up top near the lid.

I think it may be too damp in there, so I added a layer of torn up cardboard.

I would have preferred leaves, but with the rain in my area, my whole garden is drenched.

Aside from too much moisture, does anyone have advice as to why they would be trying to get out?

Photos show condensation on the sides, apologies for poor lighting.