February 04, 2004
Worms
I am happy to report that the worms are doing much better this winter!! As Mark alluded to earlier, we have composting worms in a box in our basement. Last winter they really were in a downward spiral. I'm not sure how it started, maybe moving them from Danville to Peacham in the middle of winter? Overwatering? Anyway, once the downward spiral starts it seems to feeds on itself, because fewer worms take longer to eat the compost, so the whole system starts tilting toward more anaerobic, which makes the worms unhappy so they eat less, not to mention turns the worm box into a stinky mess of rotting garbage.
But this year I started by giving them lots of melon scraps at the end of last summer. Melons are their favorite food. I bought a shredder for the newspaper that they use as bedding, and I was careful not to overfeed them, and now we have lots of very healthy and hungry worms as you can see in the above photo. And even though it looks gross, it doesn't smell or anything and produces beautiful and very rich compost. Save the earth one worm at a time!!!
Posted by maryellen at February 4, 2004 05:10 PMoh, I want one of those! do they take all your compost or do you have a regular compost outside too? I guess it depends on the size of your worm population...anyway, very cool!
maya
They take pretty much all our compost, and I think I could build up the population to take even more. I don't give them citrus peels, because those are a little tough for them, plus, we eat a lot of citrus in the winter which is a slower (colder) time for them. Also, I don't give them meat or dairy or any other stuff that I wouldn't compost anyway. They love coffee grounds and egg shells and toilet paper rolls though.
We have a stackable tray system that I bought. Its okay, but it still leaks too much to have it in the kitchen. You can also just take one of those big plastic storage bins and drill a bunch of air holes in it. That's a little trickier to keep it moist but not wet, like the worms like, but totally doable. You can find directions for how to do that pretty easily on the net.
The worms can't take a freeze, but since you live in Austin, you might be able to put your worms in a bin outside if you can protect them enough when frost is expected.
You can buy worms through the mail or I can mail you some of mine.
Posted by: maryellen at February 6, 2004 05:07 PM