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!