I'm sure you're all waiting on the edges of your chairs for news about our worm farm. I'm getting more and more excited, as they are finally beginning to make garbage disappear. I made the mistake of thinking of this as an out-of-the-box working system: having taken the plunge and bought the Can-o-Worms, I could no longer bear to throw away kitchen garbage. However, this was like buying a brood of newborn chicks and expecting free-range eggs for breakfast the next morning. After filling up and freezing two large bags of scraps, which I labelled "worm food," I gritted my teeth and returned to former disposal habits. The worms are settling in, eating their plenteous coir fiber introductory bedding, and growing. For now, they are teenagers without teenage appetites. A fully mature system should be able to handle five to eight pounds of waste per week, but for now I must be patient.
They've shed their post-transplant shyness, however; when I lift up their moisture mat I can see they are happy and active. And they're finally beginning to turn garbage into gold, albeit in small amounts. Already we're harvesting fertilizer in the form of the liquid that drains from the bottom—it's not as good as it will be, I'm sure, but enough to keep me enthusiastic as we wait.In the meantime, I hope you don't mind that I've been getting a good deal of entertainment value out of telling folks that my mom keeps kitchen trash in her freezer. The up side is, the good news of the worm condominium is spreading!
Here's some more entertainment for you, Janet: There are two water-filled bottles in our freezer now—actually, just one at a time—labelled "Worm A/C." On days when it gets over 90 degrees—most days now—we put a frozen bottle in their condo, and they swarm to it. They can survive the heat, but they're happier (i.e. eat more and reproduce more, both actions we like to encourage) when it's cooler.
Excerpt: Our worms now have more living space: we put the second level onto their condominium/college dorm. There's still a small amount of uneaten food in their first level, but that section is full, and I think they need more food. They've b...
Weblog: Lift Up Your Hearts!
Date: May 4, 2009, 6:45 am
