Worm Bin(s)

My worm bin is going astonishingly well.

I have a history of trying new things and then letting them fizzle out. I guess I'm one of those people who likes to try things and then once I've mastered it or become bored with it or figured out its flaws, I move on to the next interesting thing on my list.

This worm stuff is really captivating me, though. I thought, I'm going to just start a small bin and see if I like it...

So I found some plastic containers at Wal*Mart (or is that Walmart* now?) that are from completely recycled plastic. They're about 2 feet by 1 feet with a depth of about 8 inches maybe. I got three of those. The way they nest leaves enough room that I figured I could adapt them into a pass-through system. I drilled some holes in one for ventilation, drilled some in the bottom, too, for liquid and then nested it inside another one.

I added shredded newspaper and got a couple hundred worms from the pet store, added some coffee grounds and let them go. They were quite lethargic coming straight out of the containers, but once I put the coffee grounds in, it was like magic. They squirmed their way straight to it. I guess they'd been pretty hungry at the pet store. I started adding mushrooms, tomatoes, melon and other goodies and they've tackled it all.

I went last week and bought some coir bricks and added some of that in for bedding and they really like that. It's been there for 2 days and already I'm finding lots of cocoons dispersed throughout.

The moisture level has been interesting... There's always a bit of moisture on the lid and the newspaper stays wet, but nothing has leaked out of the drainage holes so far. No worm tea for me. I read somewhere, though, that it's better to have a drier bin than a wetter bin, so I'm not messing with it. I think that the moisture from all the food I add must be plenty. I haven't had to spray or add water at all, so far.

Now that I know I can do this and not kill everything, I started a second bin. I grabbed about 1/3 of the worms from the first bin along with the layer of coir that has most of the cocoons and loaded it with some celery, coffee grounds and tea bags from yesterday. I'm going to try it without the drainage holes for now and see if I can maintain the moisture level on my own. The bins are shallow enough that I can see what's going on and I've been checking on things daily, so I'm not too worried about that.

Problems... There are some little white things alive in there and they are especially fond of the cantaloupe and tomatoes. I put some coir on top of the tomatoes where they were going crazy yesterday and today I found the majority of them dead. I don't think they're anything harmful, though, so I'm not worried too much about that.

Fruit flies... Well, the worm bins aren't actually responsible for this, but I'm a little bit worried that the fruit flies might get in there if I'm not careful. What happened is that I'd had some oranges and lemons on the counter for a while because I'd been meaning to make candied peels. I did eventually get around to it, and when I did I dropped a few peels on the floor after blanching them. I threw those into the trash can instead of the compost bucket because I read that the worms don't like citrus too much.

A few days later, I hadn't taken the trash out and there was a little swarm of fruit flies hovering around the trash. OMG they are so friggin' annoying! Anyway, I got most of them out by making a cider vinegar trap but I saw a couple hovering around the bin today. None inside, but I guess they can smell things through the ventilation holes.

The smell has surprised me. I keep thinking there's going to be some putrid rotten smell, but it's mostly the smell of wet dirt mixed with wet newspaper. The only day I noticed anything different was on melon day and it was just a sweeter smelling dirt smell. Lord help me when we've got ripe cantaloupes from the garden. Hopefully the population will have increased enough to handle the waste, because Jacob and I can eat some melons for sure.

Overall, I'm quite happy with this undertaking. If it continues going well, I might want to expand it even more to handle the garden, but not sure how feasible that is with the Texas heat. My house is too small and I don't have a shed or garage to house any bins. I'm wondering if I can just do them outside if I do it at the sides of the house where there's shade and insulate it with some hay bales or something. Not sure. Will have to do more research. Also have to think about those raccoons who love to mess with my yard enterprises. (Better keep your roundworm off me, Raccoons!)

I once had a pond and they would get in it to get my fish and trash my water lilies. They like to eat worms and I'm sure it would take no time at all before they'd figure out how to get some worm bins open. When they were trashing the pond, I tried to trap one. I got a trap from the city and put it in the side yard with a big meal of goulash inside. A raccoon got trapped and I called the city to come get him. Before they got here, however, he started making all sorts of awful noise and another raccoon showed up and sprung him from the cage.

They're too smart and I'm too lazy.

Now the pond still sits there, except for the past couple of years I've been tossing food scraps into it. It's closer to the house than our actual compost pile which is located at the back of our property. We had a problem with some poison ivy a couple of years ago around that pile, so I just started tossing them into this drained pond and watching bugs and mother nature do their thing. The birds love it. Sometimes things sprout and grow and it's interesting to have around.

We have seen other worms in this "pond" and I threw a few of my red wigglers in there last week, so this may be a testing ground to see what the temperatures do and what sort of environment they can survive and thrive in... Maybe I'll adapt the pond a bit for some serious worm growing. Maybe enough will survive the raccoons to make it worthwhile.