The worms are loving their new home. I am not sure if the worms just got bigger from the added water or if they already exploded their population. The Bin has tons of worms squirming to get out of the light and when I dig through a little I can't get a handful with no worms. I put some sphagnum peat moss in the fabric pot then put some compost from my other bin that isn't finished and I also put some soil amendments in there.
The amendments were 1/2 of a cup each of alfalfa pellets, gypsum, cal-phos, kelp meal, soft rock phosphate, and dolomite lime (I've read that is a death sentence for worms but they are thriving!). Once they arrived I put in some rosemary cuttings (excess from cooking), some strawberries that were starting to rot and some cabbage hearts (the part left over once you take the leaves off). I topped it off with some cardboard from some food packaging. I just opened the boxes up and laid them flat then poured some water slowly over the top and left them alone for three days. Today when I looked in there and dug around a little I was surprised and excited to see how many worms were squirming around making some good castings for me!
My 2 year old was helping me and we decided to make a small bin for him. We took a small shoe box sized plastic bin and put in some peat. We took some old grapes and put them in there with about 10 worms and covered them with more peat. Oh yeah, before adding the bedding, food and worms we drilled a few air vent holes. They are only about 1/8" holes. Hopefully that will be sufficient. I got that idea from a worm forum from a guy that said he'd been doing it that way for more than a decade. I took only a small amount of my stock to try this idea and if it works it may be a good project for other kids out there and something that my son and I can supply.
I am glad my boy enjoys the worms with me. He was hesitant about touching them at first but now he jumps in there and grabs them out to hold them and examine them. He is very gentle, even without being prompted. I've read that this is a great hobby for young kids and older ones too. It seems to be the case for me and my boy! My wife on the other hand isn't quite as thrilled as we are but she's not giving us a hard time or anything like that. She is only afraid that it is going to get smelly.
It is a valid concern since it has happened to us before. It happened before we had our son. We had a bad smell, and tons of those little fungus flies or gnats or whatever those pesky little flying devils are called. I believe that was do to me overfeeding the bin and it got too wet and went anaerobic. The gnats were attracted to the smell or came from the fruit I was adding. I haven't seen any flying insects in my bins for quite some time. They have been outside and I haven't been feeding them much fresh, as in not pre-composted, fruits and veggie scraps.
I have been giving these worms some fresh scraps and there haven't been any outbreaks of pests. I need to make sure that I don't over do it. I did notice that there is a good sized hole in a napkin that was recently placed in the bin. That amazed me since worms supposedly don't eat solids. Overall I am happy so far with my results.
What's next?
I am thinking about some of the guidelines I've read about worm capacities and the small bin I set up for my son is approximately 1/2 a square foot. So, the carrying capacity should be somewhere around 500 worms. We put 10 in there. We will add 10 more everyday and see what happens. I am not sure exactly what I am looking for or how to tell, without sorting through and counting all the worms, what the population is doing. I am planning as I type. My boy and I will add 10 worms til we have added 100 worms to the shoe box sized bin (pics coming soon!). A week from this Monday will be when we reach that goal of 100 worms. From there I guess we will decide if we want to start a new one or if it seems to be depleting my stock too much. If it is too much to supply 10 worms each day then we will need to let the population grow a little more before we try it again. This is going to be an estimate since there is no way I am going to spend my time counting up 1900 worms! In fact, I didn't even count to see if there were actually 2000 worms to begin with. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post the worms already seem to be doing particularly well so I don't see 10 worms per day being much of a problem. Only time will tell.
Gardening is difficult, just like raising worms, because there is a lot of waiting to see results. It is difficult when patience is not one of your strengths, like me. I want to see the results right now. I also want to have a production line going. It is difficult to do because I don't have any gauges except for my guesstimates. So, what I am getting at is that my action plan needs to include the inaction of waiting.
With that being said, my action plan is going to span about 3 weeks. I will add 100 worms over 10 days then wait an additional 10 days, while repeating this process with a new bin and then count up the first bin and see what the population is. After 3 to 5 of these I should be able to tell if my fabric pot bin is increasing or decreasing in population significantly, with 300 - 500 worms removed there should be a noticeable decrease. If it seems to be holding up well then I shall continue with this plan but if not I will adjust accordingly. In my next post I will be discussing some of my options as far as selling my worms or their castings or...? Let's see where this goes!
The amendments were 1/2 of a cup each of alfalfa pellets, gypsum, cal-phos, kelp meal, soft rock phosphate, and dolomite lime (I've read that is a death sentence for worms but they are thriving!). Once they arrived I put in some rosemary cuttings (excess from cooking), some strawberries that were starting to rot and some cabbage hearts (the part left over once you take the leaves off). I topped it off with some cardboard from some food packaging. I just opened the boxes up and laid them flat then poured some water slowly over the top and left them alone for three days. Today when I looked in there and dug around a little I was surprised and excited to see how many worms were squirming around making some good castings for me!
My 2 year old was helping me and we decided to make a small bin for him. We took a small shoe box sized plastic bin and put in some peat. We took some old grapes and put them in there with about 10 worms and covered them with more peat. Oh yeah, before adding the bedding, food and worms we drilled a few air vent holes. They are only about 1/8" holes. Hopefully that will be sufficient. I got that idea from a worm forum from a guy that said he'd been doing it that way for more than a decade. I took only a small amount of my stock to try this idea and if it works it may be a good project for other kids out there and something that my son and I can supply.
I am glad my boy enjoys the worms with me. He was hesitant about touching them at first but now he jumps in there and grabs them out to hold them and examine them. He is very gentle, even without being prompted. I've read that this is a great hobby for young kids and older ones too. It seems to be the case for me and my boy! My wife on the other hand isn't quite as thrilled as we are but she's not giving us a hard time or anything like that. She is only afraid that it is going to get smelly.
It is a valid concern since it has happened to us before. It happened before we had our son. We had a bad smell, and tons of those little fungus flies or gnats or whatever those pesky little flying devils are called. I believe that was do to me overfeeding the bin and it got too wet and went anaerobic. The gnats were attracted to the smell or came from the fruit I was adding. I haven't seen any flying insects in my bins for quite some time. They have been outside and I haven't been feeding them much fresh, as in not pre-composted, fruits and veggie scraps.
I have been giving these worms some fresh scraps and there haven't been any outbreaks of pests. I need to make sure that I don't over do it. I did notice that there is a good sized hole in a napkin that was recently placed in the bin. That amazed me since worms supposedly don't eat solids. Overall I am happy so far with my results.
What's next?
I am thinking about some of the guidelines I've read about worm capacities and the small bin I set up for my son is approximately 1/2 a square foot. So, the carrying capacity should be somewhere around 500 worms. We put 10 in there. We will add 10 more everyday and see what happens. I am not sure exactly what I am looking for or how to tell, without sorting through and counting all the worms, what the population is doing. I am planning as I type. My boy and I will add 10 worms til we have added 100 worms to the shoe box sized bin (pics coming soon!). A week from this Monday will be when we reach that goal of 100 worms. From there I guess we will decide if we want to start a new one or if it seems to be depleting my stock too much. If it is too much to supply 10 worms each day then we will need to let the population grow a little more before we try it again. This is going to be an estimate since there is no way I am going to spend my time counting up 1900 worms! In fact, I didn't even count to see if there were actually 2000 worms to begin with. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post the worms already seem to be doing particularly well so I don't see 10 worms per day being much of a problem. Only time will tell.
Gardening is difficult, just like raising worms, because there is a lot of waiting to see results. It is difficult when patience is not one of your strengths, like me. I want to see the results right now. I also want to have a production line going. It is difficult to do because I don't have any gauges except for my guesstimates. So, what I am getting at is that my action plan needs to include the inaction of waiting.
With that being said, my action plan is going to span about 3 weeks. I will add 100 worms over 10 days then wait an additional 10 days, while repeating this process with a new bin and then count up the first bin and see what the population is. After 3 to 5 of these I should be able to tell if my fabric pot bin is increasing or decreasing in population significantly, with 300 - 500 worms removed there should be a noticeable decrease. If it seems to be holding up well then I shall continue with this plan but if not I will adjust accordingly. In my next post I will be discussing some of my options as far as selling my worms or their castings or...? Let's see where this goes!
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