storing night crawlers
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 9:02 am
Every year, I collect about 1-2000 night crawlers to use as bait. Every year, about mid to late may, I have a massive die off. I go through them once or twice a week, picking out the dead ones, but I'm just prolonging the inevitable. By June, all my bait is dead.
My dad can keep them in his basement all year, but I have to keep them in my shed, as all I have is a crawl space under my house and there is no way I'm going down there every time I want worms, especially when the spiders come out of hibernation. Also a die off down there would result in a stench of catastrophic proportions in my house.
I think the reason they all die in my shed is temperature, so here is the solution I came up with. I dug a hole on the north side of the shed and placed a large plastic tub in it. Filled the tub with dirt and added my worms.covered them with dead grass for food and also some straw to hold in moisture. I'll feed them lawn clippings and stuff like that if they survive. My grandfather used to feed his with oatmeal and that worked pretty good. I will probably lose some worms through the small drainage holes in the tub, but they end up in my lawn as breeding stock.
Anyone else keep worms for bait? Any tips you might want to share?
My dad can keep them in his basement all year, but I have to keep them in my shed, as all I have is a crawl space under my house and there is no way I'm going down there every time I want worms, especially when the spiders come out of hibernation. Also a die off down there would result in a stench of catastrophic proportions in my house.
I think the reason they all die in my shed is temperature, so here is the solution I came up with. I dug a hole on the north side of the shed and placed a large plastic tub in it. Filled the tub with dirt and added my worms.covered them with dead grass for food and also some straw to hold in moisture. I'll feed them lawn clippings and stuff like that if they survive. My grandfather used to feed his with oatmeal and that worked pretty good. I will probably lose some worms through the small drainage holes in the tub, but they end up in my lawn as breeding stock.
Anyone else keep worms for bait? Any tips you might want to share?