I’ve spent a couple days working on the worm bins. We got lazy this past spring and the worm bins became infested with ANTS!!!!!! Arg
See before I had been using place the feet in a container of water or mineral oil method of keeping ants out of the worm bins. This method works fine when the bins are in an environment with little/no debris to be scratched up into the containers (I have free range chickens that like to scratch under the bins and that tends to fill the containers with mulch and dirt giving the ants a way into the bins if not constantly cleaned out and topped up with fresh water/oil.)
Well, I got the bright idea not too long ago to see if the small chain link fence rail was the right size for a uniseal. It is. The 1 3/8″ fence top rail has the same outside size as 1″ PVC pipe. So…
Looking in container
Making stand
ant proof stand
The top rails are cut to about 3′ then pounded 1/2 to 3/4 of the way into the ground and I used the section with the smaller bit at one end up to make it easier to slide the uniseal with the container onto the upright. Then I used a small 4″ bit of rail attached to the rail clamp and the horizontal popped onto the top of the verticals. I hope this will make lifting the top off to replace the containers if they crack from the sun in the future easier.
Now an important thing here is to add a good bit of Diatomaceous Earth down inside the pipe so that ants can’t come up inside the pipe. The container full of liquid will keep the ants from coming up the outside of the pipe.
By mounting the containers around the pipe like this, I’m able to have the containers up higher and avoid much of the chicken scratching problem.
Hopefully this will make my worm bins more manageable and also make weed whacking around them easier so we can avoid the problem of ants walking across weed bridges onto the bins too.
bins on new stands
old wood bins
two bins one stand