OTHER life forms in the bin

I went away for a holiday and left the worms.  I did have a friend stop in to feed and check on them part-way through the week, though they probably would have been fine.

While I was away, however, I finally had a chance to read the rest of Sandra Wiese's book: The Best Place for Garbage and I can recommend it again as a book to read BEFORE you get started.

It turns out that those little white "babies" that look like little rice noodles and that I was working so hard to 'save' from the collection tray are actually called 'potworms' and do help the composting process, but are not as essential as the larger red wigglers.  They are not baby red wigglers and I do not need to save them! When I returned from holiday, I had a quick look through the bin and found that I also did have plenty of pink baby wrigglers which was a relief.

Wiese says the potworms flourish in bins that are too wet.  Accordingly I have purchased a paper shredder and have been adding dry shredded paper periodically since I am still getting about a 1/4 cup of fluid draining out the bottom every couple of days.

From left to right: white potworm, red baby wiggler and a US penny.

The other 'normal' box inhabitant I have identified is mites.  I first noticed a cluster of little spherical dots on a pile of pea baby food I had put in.  I assumed at the time it was some kind of mold.  When I returned from holiday, I put in some cantaloupe rind and noticed the next day that it also was covered with these little dots.  If I sat still and watched, they would move re-e-a-a-l-l-y slowly.  These mites also are part of the decomposition process and, apparently, are not a problem.

About a million mites on a piece of melon rind.

Mites on a bit of shredded paper. I think the type is about 12 pt.

Wiese also mentions an insect-like creature called a 'springtail'.  I haven't gotten a good photo of these yet, but I'm pretty sure I've seen them floating on my leachate.

Addams Family Moment

My mother's day roses were finished by the end of the week, so I cut the dry blooms off the stems and gave them to the worms.  (I put the stems outside on the yard-waste pile.)  I felt a bit like Morticia Addams from the Addams Family TV show cutting the heads off the roses.

Babies in Peril!

I have been (slowly) reading Sandra Wiese's book, The Best Place for Garbage (see previous post).  [I'm not a very fast reader and with 4 kids don't get as many quiet moments to sit down with a good book.] One of many things I love about it is that the enthusiasm she conveys for her topic is TOTALLY infectious.  Reading the first couple sections I started to get all excited about various applications for vermicomposting and even started wondering what the grocery store at the bottom of the road does with all their waste fruit and veggies!  And then wondering what the lady across the road does with her goat, chicken and goose manure.  And then I came back to the reality of my situation - a brand new vermicomposter with family and work responsibilities and more hobbies than there are hours in the day.

And then several days ago I had a bit of a panic.  I drew off the lechate (what a great word -- the liquid that's being generated from the vermicomposting process) and as I was diluting it to use on my houseplants I realized there were a bunch of dead baby worms in it.  AAAkkk!  It had been 3 days since I'd drained any off, so I worried that I was doing something wrong that was driving them out of the food/bed or that I wasn't draining it quickly enough and they were drowning.

  Unfortunately I have already done some of the things Wiese says newbie vermicomposters shouldn't do.  Specifically (1) purchasing one of these commercial tiered bins, (2) including urine in the bin (potential for too much nitrogen and therefore too much heat for the worms), (3) using something other than shredded paper for bedding (I've added drier lint and several handfuls of leaves from outside).  I also worried that by pureeing banana peels and so forth I was reducing aeration and suffocating them.

So here I am panicking because I have dead babies and a list of no-no's.  So today I pulled the top bin off and checked the collecting tray.  Sure enough there were dead babies in the lechate again, but also lots of live ones swimming and crawling around.  I have avoided messing around in the working tray for fear of disturbing the wormies too much.  I decided I needed to check to see if everything was ok, so I started gently lifting bits of the contents of the tray.  Live wiggly babies and adult worms all over the place!  Wow!!  Some of the lower layers aren't recognizable anymore as the stuff I put in.  Hurray!

What to do?  I'm not sure if
(a) I just need more bedding so they're more likely to stay up in the working tray or
(b) if I need to just check the tray daily OR
(c) if I just need to accept that there will be some losses and chalk it up to natural selection.

Suggestions welcome! 

I will be buying a paper shredder, I think, since this is something Wiese is adamant about: newbies should use shredded paper as bedding.

Limitations of the Worm Box

So I noticed early on that a number of the worms had found their way into the collecting tray.  This part of the worm box is sloped to (a) collect the liquid portion of the worm waste and allow it to be decanted off, and (b) to allow the worms to find their way back into the main working tray.  I put them back and have since found that every couple days I need to check the tray to collect the stray worms.

A couple days ago my attention was drawn to a new book by vermicompost enthusiast, Sandra Wiese.  It's called, The Best Place for Garbage and is available from most booksellers in both electronic and paper editions.  Amazon offers the first 2 sections as a "sample", so I downloaded it to my IPod Touch and spent an enjoyable time reading it!  In just this first part of the book, she already addressed my worms-in-the-collecting-tray problem. 

It was in the section about housing -- specifically the limitations of my chosen vermicomposting vessel.  She says that worms don't actually know where the food is.  They wander blindly through the substrate, eating and pooing as they go.  If they happen to drop down into the tray, it isn't unpleasant, it's actually rather nice, so they have no motivation to escape nor any inkling of which way to go.  Wiese indicates that eventually they either drown in the compost tea or starve to death unless they are rescued every couple days and returned to the upper levels of the box.

It was quite gratifying to know I wasn't doing something wrong to drive them to their death in the collecting tray and that I was right to return them to their food source!  My only concern is what happens in the future when I've got all 3 levels going.  Right now it's easy to remove the single level and fish the worms out.  It will be quite a bit heavier when there are 3 full levels ... I guess I'll have to take each level off separately and stack them in reverse order or something.  We'll cross that bridge in a couple months, shall we?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to purchasing the rest of Wiese's book and can definitely recommend it from the little I've read so far!  I particularly liked the comment she made about the instructions that come with the commercial worm boxes -- "Not to discredit those always-too-brief instructions, mind you.  The instructions definitely have enough to get you started and troubleshoot a lot of the more common problems.  But if they made the instructions too detailed, it would be a whole book, and not just "instructions" (and frankly, my book is better)." :)  I certainly found the instructions that came with my box  WAY to brief and too poorly organized to be a lot of help without reading them 10 times.

Hint: I also laughed so hard at her disclaimer on the dedication page.  My kids came running to see what the joke was!

Worms languishing in the collecting tray. The white thing on the right is the inside part of the spigot that allows one to draw off the compost tea.

Food for the Worms

Worm food!

For their first meal, I started with 4 oz of various vegetables, some herbal tea bags (with papers, strings and staples removed) and some crushed egg shells.  All of this was chopped up with some kitchen shears into smaller pieces so it would break down faster and put on top of the coir bedding and recovered with the shredded paper.

Three days later, I gave them their second meal (8 oz):

The big white thing is called a "G-Diaper".  It's an insert that goes in a cloth outer wrap and is used in place of cloth prefolds for diapering babies.  They can be flushed or composted, so I thought I'd see what the worms thought of it.  Since it had dried, I re-wet it with some of the "tea" from the bottom of the composter.

Three days later I added 9 oz more food - veggies, fruit, banana peel, flower leaves, egg shells and baby food.

The next feeding was a mixure of food waste including cereal dust at the bottom of the bag, and some dried leaves from outside, a torn-up envelope and some drier lint.

This was the progress on Day 16:

If you look really carefully you can see little brown dots all over the "waste".  These are the castings or poops that the worms are leaving behind as they go.

So on day 16, I had a collection of banana peels (we'd been having smoothies!)  Now, in my regular compost pile outside, these babies take a long time to break down, so I was concerned about giving so many to the worms all at one time.  I remembered Walter the Worm Guy saying that he put egg shells in the blender to break them down and make the nutrients more available to the worms.  I wondered what would happen if I put banana peels in the blender...

No problem!

So I added some egg shells for good measure and poured the whole lot on top of the other food.  I then covered it with some moistened shredded paper.

If my husband sees this post he'll look at me suspiciously next time I offer him a smoothie!

Photos: The Worms Arrive!

Here is the box that the postman held at arm's length.

Contents: Instructions, invoice, styrofoam insulating box, wadded up newspaper packing, carton of worms and compost, escaped worms (top left corner) and a ziploc bag with some gummy worms (nice touch!!).

Upon taking the lid off the carton you can see where the worms were escaping.

Settled into their new home!

(inspected by my 2 1/2 year old daughter)

So I spread the compost they travelled in over the coir bedding, rinsed out the carton with some water and poured that over the compost, then re-covered with the shredded paper (which was quite damp after sitting on the wet coir for a week).

Photos: Setting up the Composter

This is the cover of the Worm Box purchased from the County.

The package included a bag of shredded paper, a bag with the hardware required to put the box together, a coir "brick" and a set of instructions.

I had some help putting it together from my 1 year old daughter.

Once the coir had been mixed with water and spread into the box, this is what it looked like.

Shredded paper spread on top of the coir bedding to retain moisture.

All assembled and awaiting the worms!

Day 8: Baby worms!

Tonight I added another 9oz food to the bin.  As I pulled back the paper, there were little clumps of whitish babies - about 3/4 inch long wiggling through the coir bedding.  The bigger guys were working the food from previous days.

Tonight I gave them a handful of leaves from outside, egg shells, a banana peel, flower stems, fruit and vegetable ends, and some fruit and vegetable baby food that had gone off.  As previously, I chopped it all up with my kitchen shears and mashed it all together.

I have found the camera cable, so get ready for those photos that are worth a thousand words!

Day 6: Activity

I waited the prescribed 3 days after adding the first bit of food to the composter and then checked to be sure the worms were infiltrating the food.  They had done so, so last night I added 8 oz of further food.  It was a mixture of fruit, vegetables and a used biodegradable G-Diaper insert.  The diaper was quite hard to cut up because it had dried, so I drained all the worm tea from the bottom of the composter (about 2/3 cup) and used that to moisten the diaper so it could be better broken down.

Interestingly there was also a large mass of worms that had slid down into the collection tray and had deposited a large mound of casts.  I scooped them up and put them back into the working tray.

Still looking for the camera cable!

Day 2: Waiting

The temperature outside has not risen above 52°F.  Inside the house it’s about 66°F (yes, we keep it cold).  Inside the worm bin it’s a couple degrees warmer.  It’s kind of funny to lift the lid.  A bunch of the worms have their little head ends above the shredded paper and they duck down under the paper when the light hits them.  I checked the corner where the food is, and there are worms among it.  The instructions say to give them 3 days to start working the food and to not disturb them too much.

And So It Begins...

I have wanted a worm composter for a number of years.  I have seen it as a solution to a number of my composting challenges namely:  (1) the compost pile located just far enough away that it’s inconvenient to go out to it in the rain (a nearly daily occurrence in the places I’ve lived for the last decade and a half); (2) infestation of the compost with rodents looking for hand-outs and granddaddy slugs doing their part for nature; and (3) bowls of rotting veggies on my counter or in a cupboard attracting flies while waiting to be taken out to the compost bin.  A worm composter is a quick, closed, odor-free method of turning organic, fibrous material into lovely soil to add to my garden.

            Worm bins can be a bit pricey.  Most are made of plastic and can run upwards of $80.  Considering my regular compost bin was made from scraps of wood for free, the cost was a bit of a hurdle.  Recently our county offered worm composters for sale at a significantly reduced price, so I bought one.  I assembled it and ordered my worms.

Unfortunately the instructions are not very well-organized (apologies to a Mr. Ralph Rhoads who wrote them), so this is going to be a bit of an experiment.  The bin came with 3 layers which appear to be referred to as “working trays” and “processing trays”.  All the pictures show the trays sitting on top of each other at equal depths, but this doesn’t appear to happen initially.  The top trays sit snuggly on whatever is in the tray beneath them.  This makes sense since we want the worms to be able to move seamlessly between the layers.  If there was an air gap, they’d be unable to do this.

            Worms need “bedding”. The kit came with a “brick” of coir (basically the hairy fiber from a coconut) which I was told to soak and break apart until it formed a “granular texture/saturation point, not unlike used coffee grounds.”  I put this in the bottom tray and then covered it with the shredded paper that was also included with the kit.  I then added the rest of the trays and the lid (with a handle that was included in the kit but which was not mentioned anywhere in the instructions).  That was a week ago and today I checked it and it is still nice and moist, waiting for its new inhabitants.

            The instructions from the county encouraged us to purchase worms from a local source.  They specify the species Eisenia fetida (the “red wiggler”) which is a striped red worm.  My understanding is that any old worms will do the job (even the regular earthworms that I dig up in my garden), but this particular species is quick and reproduces rapidly which enables you to add more and more waste and have it break down at a good pace.  The instructions say you can start with as little as ½ lb of worms, but I couldn’t find a local place that would sell less than a pound.  I checked the website, FindWorms.com and found some local producers.  I ended up purchasing from a cheerful chap named Walter at WeGotWorms4U.com (his headline is “We Got Worms… in a good way!”). 

The worms arrived today in a brown box marked, “Live Worms”.  The poor postman came up the drive wearing gloves and carrying the box at arm’s length.  I threw open the door and greeted him with, “My worms!!”  He looked very skeptical and was grateful to hand them over to me.  I explained what a worm composter was and he went on his way… probably thinking the lady in the white and green house is a bit of a nut case. 

When I opened the box it looked like the lid of the tub hadn’t been put on tightly.  There was a knot of worms off to the side burrowing in the folds of the newspaper that had been included as padding.  It was impressive how many “casts” (poops) had been deposited in just the 36 hours since they had left their home.  They all appeared to be alive – I poked as many as I could during the process of the transfer to their new home and they all recoiled.  The baby ones are translucent – like little rice noodles.  Walter had advised me to rinse out the container to make sure to get out all the babies and eggs.  I pulled out all the shredded paper, put the worms onto the coir bedding and then re-covered them with the paper to get settled before I start to add vegetable matter.

It’s pretty cold outside for April – the instructions say the worms work best between 60 and 80°F (15.5 and 26.6°C).  By late evening it had gotten to below 40°F according to the thermometer on our deck so I brought the bin inside (Shhh, don’t tell my husband).  I’m adding 4 ounces of food to one corner tonight.  On the menu: some slightly slimy carrots, moldy fruit, limp lettuce, breakfast cereal crumbs, crushed egg shells, a used herbal tea bag (minus the tag, string and staples), and some fresh drier lint.  MMMmmmm tasty!  We’ll see what they think.

I'll be posting photos as soon as I find the camera cable.