Accidental But Welcome Red Worm Propagation

Back in late November, I potted a few plants into buckets. My soil was barnyard dirt, containing LOTS of well broken down cow manure, and vermicompost from my first condo worm bin. I had tried to harvest as many worms as possible out of the VC before using it as potting soil but I knew that there might be the odd baby worm or worm cocoon remaining. I figured that these would just perish in the dirt since they are not the deep burrowing type of earthworm.

Well I was wrong. Very wrong.

Some weeks back I was watering one of the plants with a spray bottle and I noticed that as I sprayed water on the soil...the soil was moving! This kind of freaked me out until I remembered that I had used VC so perhaps these were worms wiggling under the dirt. Sure enough, moving some of the dirt around revealed a fat adult red worm, thick and juicy, obviously well nourished. Then I found another, and another and another. That day I must have dug 30 fat adult red worms from the top couple inches of soil. Since then I would say I have dug out easily another 50 adult worms. Then, for certain reasons, today was the end of the plant`s life cycle and as I was removing it from the soil and breaking up the rooting in the soil (so that it can be used again as it remains rich) I discovered another 30 or 40 adult worms AND at least 40 cocoons. There were likely still a few worms and I know I didn't get all the cocoons.

So, bearing in mind that my initial worm purchase was around 150 worms, this bucket basically returned my investment in worms, all on its own. That`s pretty cool as far as I`m concerned.

I also wanted to share a picture that I captured awhile shortly after my last worm update post:


You can see a group of worms gathered around a chunk of cow manure. The picture is from about 30 seconds to a minute after I lifted the lid. Had I had the camera ready, this picture would show the whole mass of worms that was covering this chunk of cow shite. They moved pretty fast to get away from the sudden brightness of the overhead light to which they are so sensitive. I wanted to share the picture since it shows what I had been explaining about what great bedding and food manure makes.

So I`m not totally crazy for bringing shite into the house after all.

Red Worm Update

Well my little Red Wiggler breeding experiment continues to move along successfully but, as with most such ventures, there have been stumbles as well. Primarily, the opportunities for learning have come in regards to temperature, moisture...and bugs.

I believe that the temperature and moisture issues have actually been working together. My first bin often needed water added once in awhile, but the 3 main ones that I have been running lately have all become quite soggy in the bottom, despite having drain holes. One of them was actually draining some water out, including some VC and even some worms. I had to retrieve the wanderers or they'd have eventually drowned. The other two bins merely got soggy in the bottom and I have had to do plenty of stirring and adding of absorbent bedding in order to avoid smelly anaerobic activity.

I suspect moisture issue had two causes. One is simply that I have been feeding the worms things that have had a higher moisture content, like cast-off pumpkins from our fall harvest. The other factor is temperature. The one main bin that I have had here in the condo has been by far the least soggy of the three, whereas the worst of the three seems to be the bin that has been sitting on the cool floor of the basement at my parent's house out at the farm. So I think the trick is going to be keeping them off the floor and, if I can, away from the cool walls. These cooler temperatures really seem to slow down the activity of the worms, both feeding and breeding. Now that I have eased off on the feeding of water-heavy things to the condo bin, I am starting to see some very nice and nearly finished VermiCompost that should be ready for use in the greenhouse within a couple of months. Hopefully the other two bins will catch up quickly.

The more frustrating issue has been bugs.

In the last update I wrote about the fruit fly infestation that I was fighting. Well no sooner had I won that battle than I had an infestation of small manure flies which came from some dry cow patties that I brought from the farm. These little bastards are tiny things that like to come to my computer desk and fly up my nose when I am working or watching something. I don't know of any way to get rid of them other than to remove all food sources and let them die off, which is hard to do when trying to actively breed bins of worms in my condo. However soon I will be able to move the bins from here back out to the farm where bugs are much less of an issue. Let this be a lesson, however. Don't bring manure into your house unless it has been properly composted already. Its a lesson I should have known already but I am a boy after all!

But if you're wondering why I brought the cow shit into the condo, well, it makes GREAT longer term food and serves as bedding. As bedding it can come in real handy for sopping up excess moisture if the manure is very dry. And of course, plenty of bedding over top of added food that might attract bugs is always a good way to not attract them in the first place.

Worm Warning

Well I have stumbled across one of the few pitfalls in keeping an indoor worm bin. Seeing as I go on about the benefits of keeping a vermicompost bin, I thought I should likely pass on a warning as well.

The organic waste that feeds composting worms so well, can also attract pests like gnats and fruit flies. In my case, I had gotten a bit lax with some non-bin garbage in the kitchen. This led to a minor fruit fly infestation. Now, I know how to build a fruit fly trap, and did so. But some of the flies made it into one worm bin, in which I had placed some old grapes that I neglected to properly cover in bedding for just one day. Since fruit flies propagate so quickly, the next time I opened the box I was greeted by a host of exiting flies. I immediately added cardboard and chopped straw but it was too late. Evidently many eggs were already laid and juvenile fruit flies have been crawling out from the straw like so many zombies erupting from fresh graves.

I have added another trap right inside the worm bin, and have placed some dark plastic over the lid. This should keep the young flies from being drawn to the light through the ventilation holes. All I can really do now is leave the bin this way until all the decomposing vegetable matter has been processed and the feeding/breeding cycle of the flies has been interrupted. We'll see how that goes.

As far as avoiding this situation in the future, the key is ensuring that added food is always covered in bedding. This is a good idea anyway, since it also cuts down on odors and provides a better Carbon to Nitrogen ration. But it DOES make it harder to watch the worms cluster to feed, which is a priority for many...especially before the novelty of keeping worms wears off.

Hopefully this warning doesn't turn people away from vermiculture.

Peace and comfort.

Vermiculture Update

Time for a worm update.

There has not been quite the population explosion that I was expecting. I am still just at 3 tubs but I am just about to start an additional tub or perhaps two. My local aunt likes the idea so I am setting up a bin for her to use. Her husband, my uncle, is an outdoorsman hunter/guide and he loves to fish so I suspect many of their worms will end up bait. I feel a bit odd at 36 years old, talking like this (seems like something a 12 year old might write about!), but I think that is just some silly residual social programming that I have not quite exorcised. I am more than happy to have this beneficial little hobby that is catching on with some family and friends.

Back to my bins.

As I stated before, I was running low on drink tray cardboard so I was trying to use straw as bedding material. This has been working quite well but quite a bit of chopping helps to speed up the process and this can be kind of a pain in the ass. Scaling up will definitely require a small tub grinder or chipper but this will allow the processing of old round straw and hay bales. I think it will be a good investment because it can also chop up the bedding straw from the livestock. This is always mixed with plenty of manure so after it is piled to heat awhile, it can be shredded once more and then fed to the worms. This will maximize the nutrients and microbiological organisms present in the worm castings.

One mentionable aspect to using the straw as bedding is that I believe it has slowed their reproduction from what I saw in the first bin. That drink tray cardboard seems to provide the ideal breeding environment for these things. So anyone wanting a slow population increase might do well to find some straw to use as bedding for their worms. However, I may also be wrong about this, there may have been a low amount of adults spread among the 3 bins. The bin with the most adults seems like it has had a significant population increase lately, although I will look more closely tomorrow. At the very least, the straw provides them with plenty of oxygen and they definitely seem more physically active in it.

I have also discovered that compost worms LOVE pumpkins. This may be true for all melons but they are simply devouring the unusable pumpkins that I have been feeding them. I suppose this is because the flesh is so soft and mushy but there are not even traces of rind remaining after just a few days. I guess I will be planting lots of melons in the garden next year.

Here is a little video to give an idea of what I mean:



In the background of the video, you can hear Dmitri Orlov of Club Orlov being interviewed by KMO on the C-Realm Podcast. If you've not yet had a listen at the C-Realm, I seriously suggest it. I enjoy it so much that I have gone back to listen from the beginning. I started back in June or July and I am up to episode 129 now. That is 128 hours of listening so far! And I have loved almost every episode. From psychedelia to peak oil to philosophy, this show feeds my head amazingly well. I am downloading most of them, since I know I will want to listen again later.

Before I go, I want to pass on a little suggestion, regarding vermicomposting. After putting raw potato skins in my first bin, and turnips in a recent bin, I really suggest avoiding dense root vegetables without chopping them up quite a lot. I am not joking at all when I say these things last a LONG time in your worm bin, if you do not do so. Potato skins bits may even sprout. I would watch the starch concentrations anyway.

That's all for now, I think.

Be good to each other.

My Bin o' Worms

Aside from a few days of concern, my condo worm composting project is coming along quite nicely. I do not think it is exaggeration to say that the population seems to have at least tripled. Each handful I look at contains several baby or juvenile worms now, and some of the adults are particularly large and juicy looking. I would say that cocoon production has slowed down, but I do still see plenty of new cocoons all the time.

There have been a few days of concern, however. I think it was just a few days after the last update when I started to notice some sluggishness in some of the worms, as well as what I can only describe as a sour kind of smell in the bin. I even found one worm laying on top of the bedding, with some kind of bubble-like growth on its dorsal side. When I pressed this bubble slightly it burst open, releasing a small amount of very foul smelling liquid. I have no idea what caused this, but thankfully I have not noticed any other so stricken worms.

However, I started to see more worms laying atop the top bedding layer, moving very little when the lid was removed. This is odd as red worms are not fond of light and usually scoot beneath the surface fast should they be topside when I remove the lid. I thought, due to the sour smell, that perhaps the Carbon:Nitrogen balance was leaning too far on the Nitrogen side. Adding more cardboard bedding seemed to help for a day, but then one night I lifted the lid to find about 20 worms climbing the walls and a few even on the inside of the lid. This means the problem was now even worse and was causing a serious amount of mutinous escape attempts. Given the fact that there was all kinds of food for them in the form of manure, cardboard and vegetative waste, I was fairly confidant that they were not starving. Also, the areas containing concentrated food was usually crawling with feeding worms, so over-feeding was likely not an issue either.

Castings were definitely starting to build up, so I began to wonder if oxygenation was lacking. I still found quite a few worms all through the bin so I didn't really think this was the issue either. Then I noticed that the materials might have been getting rather dry so I used a spray bottle to add about 1/3 of a litre of water. This led to a significant drop in escape attempts, but it did not stop them entirely.

The last noticeable potential cause was temperature. We had a couple of weeks of quite hot temperatures here, and even with the lights off and curtains drawn, this condo was getting pretty hot inside. Apparently this was heating the bin beyond a comfortable temperature because aiming a fan at the bin from about 3 feet away seems to have stopped the escape attempts completely.

Looking back, I suspect that more than one of these factors were working together to throw the system out of balance. I'm glad that keeping an eye on it probably helped to regain balance but I have a feeling that, in the long-term, adding water was likely all that was needed. I also added a tiny amount of normal dirt, since worms digest via a gizzard which needs tiny grit and their guts need to replenish clay which is used in processing and released in the castings.

I am also using a 12.5" deep tub in this system and this might be a little bit too deep for the width/length dimensions (16"X24"). I have started a second bin which is only 8" deep. This might provide a more efficient depth/surface area ratio. I am letting this second bin sit without any worms for awhile, letting the decomposition processes get a nice start. I am using the typical cardboard (drink tray/egg carton) bedding and crumbled cow manure. I also added two chopped up apples and sprayed probably 2 litres of water in, since the manure was very dry. Its been very cool to check this second bin once a day and see the formation of molds (I think) and long, fragile mushrooms. I just realized that I should be taking pictures of this progression. I may well start doing so.

If only our human systems were so easily sorted out. Still, there are definite lessons to be learned from observing and interacting with such limited systems.

Peace and comfort to all.