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.

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.

Vermiculture Update

It might sound a little odd but I just love my bin of red manure worms. I always end up with a silly grin on my face after digging around in there. I was almost embarrassingly excited when I first noticed cocoons. Cocoons means that plenty of happy worm sex has been happening and that baby worms are on their way, to the tune of 1-5 per cocoon.

About two months into the process we got a few days of rain which kept me off the farm and kicking around home. Since I had been wondering whether my worm population was holding stable, or even increasing, I decided to pull the box apart, count all the worms, and repack the box.

I likely missed a worm here or there (although I may have had the odd cocoon already release its baby worms, which I would have missed) but I ended up with around 160 worms, which is a few more than I had started with. Of greater importance though, most of these worms were significantly larger and thicker than any I had bought from the Canadian Tire bait section. Here is the lot, all in a bunch:


After all the composting materials and the worms were put back into the box, a new top layer of cardboard bedding was added and moistened with a spray bottle. I then chopped up a nice macintosh apple and put it in as a nice treat for the happily breeding buggers. Subsequent searches had led to discovering a large number of cocoons. Not only that, but I am now discovering many broken open cocoons and a large number of baby worms.

Within a month or two, this should be one VERY active compost box. When I started, one of the things I wondered was how I could tell the difference between the dry cow manure that has been added and the worm castings. Well it turns out to not be such a difficult thing to do...the castings really do look just like little turds. The castings are already beginning to pile up and I have some plants already looking forward to them!

Until next time, brothers and sisters, be good to each other.