Composting with Red Wigglers vs Nightcrawlers
Did you know that 1 pound of worms can eat 1 pound of food waste per day? Using worms to tend to a lot of your household trash (food waste and a lot of paper products) is easy.
We have been composting with red wiggler worms for a few years now. Those are the worms most recommended by gardeners and home composters. Recently though, we wanted to try out something new. We built a new small home composting system to give nightcrawler worms a chance at composting some of our scraps.
Red wigglers reproduce quicker
When it comes to vermicomposting (composting with worms), you want worms that can keep up with the waste you are adding to your bin. Red wigglers are able to reproduce as needed, based on the amount of food waste added to your bin. Nightcrawlers are slower in general, and that includes reproducing. They will reproduce, but it takes more time. This can be an issue if you intend to add food waste to your bin frequently. If you are going to be an extremely casual composter - just the odd egg-shells, banana peel, and coffee grounds, night crawlers could work for you.
Nightcrawlers live up to their creepy name
I am personally not scared of worms (though bugs with legs is a totally different story). Nightcrawlers are thick and long. If you are vermicompost-interested, but the idea of worms makes you squeamish, go with the red wigglers. Red wigglers are much smaller and even if you are scared of worms, eventually you might even find them kind of cute.
Worm Castings Consistency
Already we have noticed a difference in the consistency of the worms’ “black gold” or worm castings. The Nightcrawlers make a deep, rich, even-textured black gold. I have not yet used those castings on my plants, but I can’t wait to try. Our plants already love the compost the red wigglers make for us, so it will be interesting to see if there is any difference.
Overall, I still recommend red wigglers as the primary vermicomposting worm. They are easier to manage and get the job done. They are difficult to kill or mess up - although I do not recommend it, I have had a compost bin I did not feed for a year, and the red wigglers were still living.
