Free Chicago worms for composting, come and get them!

[jacob]

I have a surplus of red wigglers, so if you want to start composting, I'm giving away worms. Yay!

A batch of worms will usually cost you $20 or so if you had to buy them. But we all know that buying is for amateurs, right?

You need a system like this (which requires some effort to build but which you can mostly leave alone)... or a simple bucket (which you need to monitor lest the worms escape due to your 'bad government')... or you can pay $100+ for some fancy plastic contraption (no skills needed, then).

PM me if you're interested. The offer stands as long as I have a surplus or we reach November. Whichever comes first. Local pickup only (either at home or downtown). I'm not putting worms in the mail.

PS: In case you're a total composting noob, here's what you can put in: Most vegetables and fruit except onions and garlic. No meat (hence, you can't compost your victims, if any ). Brown leaves and other dry (brown) garden material. Non-glossy paper. Non-color newspapers. Bills. Credit card applications. Old school report cards. German poetry. Source code. Quantum field theory notes in particular.

PPS: You can technically run this in an apartment as long as you have some potted plants/outlet for the compost.

[IlliniDave]

I don't want your worms, but I followed the link. I wonder if that set up with the storage bin could be adapted to work with canadian nightcrawlers instead of red worms. Nightcrawlers are a much better general fishing bait, though some trout fisherman like red worms. They are not very heat tolerant though. Once I get settled in my retirement destination I'd planned on looking into farming worms, and it would be nice to combine it with composting.

[jacob]

Dunno if Canadian worms are special ... but it's my [limited] understanding that night crawlers live much deeper (several feet) in the ground whereas red wigglers thrive in the top 1 foot and also like the composting environment better. Overall, wigglers are more panfish sized.

[IlliniDave]

"Canadian" is the biological designation, not a national origin thing, like canada geese. I'm referring to the common nightcrawlers native to the midwest US, nothing exotic, as opposed to "European nightcrawlers" that can be purchased via mail. They do probably spend their inactive time a little deeper during the hottest weather (they like 50F or less when they can get it), but like red worms they do most of their feeding and breeding up near the surface where nutrition is present. I'm thinking the lower container in an arrangement like you linked might need to be partially buried in the ground, and the whole system would have to be in deep shade. Then everything would have to be carried indoors in the winter and stored in an unheated part of the basement or something. I'm just looking for an alternative to collecting a basement full of refrigerators for the purpose.