Worms are here!

Ha ha! The worms have arrived! They arrived in a bag in a box -- they were all huddled together. I am excited to get started with worm composting. My only concern is that I ordered a mix of red worms (Eisenia foetida) and night crawlers (Eisenia hortensis). I'm not sure that the hortensis will be happy in the confinement of a worm bin. But I guess we'll see -- if a year from now I only have foetida in the bin, then I guess the hortensis weren't okay.

Anyway, here's a handful of soon to be compost worms.

And here's a little beetle that stowed away in the worm sack (I put it outside).

You can see the worms searching around the edges of the tray before they went into the composter.


And here is the composter itself. I just used a 5 gallon bucket. I drilled 1/4 inch holes in the bottom for drainage (and to allow migration for stacking in the future), and 1/16 inch holes around the rim and in the lid for ventilation.
I got a lot of info on Washington University's site. And I really recommend going to Composters.com to shop the huge selection of compost products (including general yard maintenance products).