Garbage can full of old lettuce – the worms should enjoy this!
On Friday, my worms got a nice treat in the form of 60-70 lb of old lettuce (just a guesstimate) that my dad picked up for me at the local food bank.
I haven’t been feeding these worms as often as I had hoped (a lot of my own food waste is being diverted into other systems, such as the Worm Inn), so I was quite pleased to receive an email from my contact at the food bank last week. They don’t end up with all that much in the way of perishable worm-friendly food materials, but I’ve been more than happy to take it off their hands whenever they do!
I was originally planning to chop the lettuce up quite a bit before adding it to the bed (to help speed up the decomposition process), but didn’t end up having enough time to do so. No biggie though – I’m sure it won’t take long for the material to produce a nice microbial buffet for the worms to munch on!
Adding the lettuce to the bed simply involved pulling away a bunch of straw/hay from the top, dumping it in, then covering it up.
We’ve had many sunny (and rather mild) days as of late so I think my only concern at this point is that I might end up overheating the system. Unfortunately, my indoor temperature monitor doesn’t seem to be receiving accurate readings from the probe buried in the bed, so I will definitely need to do some manual readings this week (not a big deal, since I want to check on things anyway).
I’ll definitely keep everyone posted!
Written by Bentley on March 8th, 2010 with 3 comments.
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I’m sure some of you must be wondering how my vermiponics system is coming along these days. I haven’t written an update since Feb 19. Well, after what seemed to be a very smooth start, things kinda went downhill rather quickly. The water in the reservoir became ‘muddy’ looking and started to really stink!
This is what the water was starting to look like prior to me making some changes to the system
It was pretty obvious that the biological oxygen demand (BOD) was far beyond what the trickling water (and air stone) could provide. The radishes started looking really sickly as well – almost certainly due to the fact that grow bed was receiving reservoir water in the zone where they were growing.
Rather than throw in the towel, or wait around to see if the plants would start filtering the water a bit better, I decided to change things up a bit. I removed the water tube altogether and cranked up the output (it is adjustable) of the pump, basically creating a aeration fountain right in the reservoir. I also did some partial water changes, and ended up raising the level of water in the reservoir so as to make contact with the bottom of the grow bed.
Things have certainly improved a great deal since then. The water no longer stinks, and it also just looks a lot cleaner in general. The radishes made a nice comeback, and the lettuce has continued to grow as well (although, as mentioned, I think it would help to have a more powerful lighting system), so they are probably doing a better job of cleansing the water. Apart from relying on the wicking of water up from the bottom, I have also been manually pouring reservoir water into the grow bed from time to time as well.
I’m not 100% sure how the worm population is doing, but it should be interesting to find out once I decide to dismantle the system.
I am definitely looking forward to trying this on a larger scale outside on my deck this year once the weather is warm enough!
Written by Bentley on March 8th, 2010 with 2 comments.
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