Climate and Temperature
The most common worms used in composting systems, redworms (Eisenia foetida, Eisenia andrei, and Lumbricus rubellus) feed most rapidly at temperatures of 15–25 °C (59-77 °F). They can survive at 10 °C (50 °F). Temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F) may harm them. This temperature range means that indoor vermicomposting with redworms is suitable in all but tropical climates. (Other worms like Perionyx excavatus are suitable for warmer climates.) If a worm bin is kept outside, it should be placed in a sheltered position away from direct sunlight and insulated against frost in winter.
It is necessary to monitor the temperatures of large-scale bin systems (which can have high heat-retentive properties), as the feedstocks used can compost, heating up the worm bins as they decay and killing the worms.
Read more about this topic: Vermicompost
Famous quotes containing the words climate and/or temperature:
“The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)