January 2012
You are currently browsing the articles from Red Worm Composting written in the month of January 2012.
I finally managed to get out for a daytime check-up on my winter vermicomposting bed late last week (all my coffee grounds pick-ups are made during the evening, so I don’t really have a good opportunity to SEE what’s going on when I deposit new material). In all honesty, this winter has been pretty disappointing as far as really getting the chance to test out this system goes. Temperatures have been much warmer than normal, and we’ve gone through countless thaw/freeze cycles during the last couple of months.
Obviously it’s better than having my system freeze solid on me (lol), but I was really hoping to see how well this new bed would perform in really cold weather. Call me a pessimist, but somehow I just don’t see things changing all that much over the course of the next month or so – but ya never know! (As an interesting side note – this weekend ended up being really wintry, and we now have a fair amount of snow! lol)
Unfortunately, I forgot to take my thermometer out with me – so no “official” temperature readings – but it was pretty clear to me that the bed is still quite warm. When I pulled back the tarp, the underside was wet (not frosty), and there were loads of springtails crawling around on it.
Digging around with my garden fork released plenty of steam from below – so I’d say that was a pretty good indicator as well. I was really hoping to find some solid pockets of worms this time around – but it seems as though the upper zones of the bed are not particularly worm-friendly at the moment.
As I’ve written before, one of the challenges of using coffee grounds – aside from the heat it can generate (which can actually be “good” or “bad” depending on the time of year) – is the tendency of this material to totally dry out on you. Hot, dry conditions are not exactly ideal for the worms!
My hope was that all the food waste added would help to keep the grounds moist, but I’m finding plenty of zones that have that almost “burned” look about them (something I’ve written about in some of my older coffee grounds vermicomposting posts), as shown in the images below. This is most likely the result of fungal growth (some variety of thermophilic fungi, no doubt) – not actual combustion, of course – but regardless, these zones are still way too hot and dry for the worms to live in.
I did find higher concentrations of worms around the outer edges of the main composting zone – so that’s promising. I really just need to put more effort into keeping the grounds nice and moist.
Anyway – that’s all for now. I’ll aim to provide another update in a week or two.
Written by Bentley on January 30th, 2012 with 3 comments.
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I received this from Rhonda Sherman today:
NCSU’S 13TH VERMICULTURE CONFERENCE will be held on November 5 & 6, 2012 in Chapel Hill, NC at UNC’s Friday Center (the location of last October’s conference).
Save the date on your calendar if you are interested in participating in this year’s event. Details are still being developed and will be added later to the conference website at http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/workshops/worm-conference
I look forward to seeing you in November!
Rhonda Sherman, Conference Chair
Biological & Agricultural Engineering
North Carolina State University
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/people/professionals/sherman
Written by Bentley on January 27th, 2012 with no comments.
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A couple of weeks ago, I excitedly reported that I had finally started up a brand new RWC experiment (see: “The Euros vs Reds Head to Head Challenge“)! Well, my excitement was certainly short-lived – within a couple of days, all my Euros except for one had perished (still not sure what happened there)! As I discovered yesterday, at least three of the Red Worms managed to survive.
I’ve decided to see if I can actually get this experiment off the ground (lol). Unfortunately, I don’t have heaps and heaps of Euros available, so I’ve had to make do with what I could find (in my other bin) – which happened to be six somewhat smaller worms (last time I selected individuals that were clearly adults – this time at least some of them definitely aren’t) and two cocoons.
You may be shocked to learn that I am using the exact same bins (with same material in them) – but the fact is, we’re not dealing here with some sort of persistent chemical toxin. Whatever it was that killed those Euros (my guess is a quick release of ammonia), it’s almost certainly not still going to be an issue in the bin two weeks later – especially given the fact that the surviving worm was in there the whole time, likely doing his part to make it more worm-friendly.
Similarly, I am also leaving the Red Worm bin as-is. I’ve only been able to find three worms in there, but there could very easily be some others hiding out in the bedding material (remember, they are very small) – I will definitely be able to come up with an accurate tally once they get a bit bigger, and I start adding more food.
So, it looks like the deck is still stacked in the Euros’ favor – but we shall see!
I’ll aim to provide another update next week.
Written by Bentley on January 26th, 2012 with 4 comments.
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Question from Matt:
My bin sat for 2 weeks prior to adding worms and was smelling pretty
bad, as expected. Two and a half weeks after adding the worms the
smell went away which is a good sign. The contents of the bin have
settled at least 6 inches so I added some shredded newspaper on the
top and moistened. I check it once per week and am finding 10-15 worms
crawling on the side of the bin above the bedding. Is this normal?
Should I add additional scraps to the bin? Do the worms eat the
bedding?
Hi Matt,
Let me start by saying that an aging bin actually shouldn’t smell bad. The idea is to mix in enough bulky, absorbent bedding (such as shredded cardboard), and provide enough air flow so this doesn’t become an issue. A smelly bin is typically indicative of anaerobic conditions – which can develop when: 1) too much food is added, or 2) not enough bedding is added, or 3) conditions become too wet, or 4) there isn’t enough air flow. Most often it is some combination of these (for example – moisture and aeration tend to be inversely proportional to one another – so if conditions are “too wet” you are basically guaranteed to also have “poor air flow”).
Anyway – I’m really glad your worms were able to remedy the situation. They tend to mix things up and aerate the materials, thus helping to eliminate some of those major anaerobic zones.
It sounds like everything is proceeding nicely (a drop in the level of materials is a good sign for sure)! I wouldn’t worry TOO much about having a handful of worms on the sides – this is VERY normal in an enclosed plastic bin. You might want to add more air holes in the sides and lids (can’t really have “too many”) just to make sure there is decent air flow – I also highly recommend keeping a nice thick layer of bedding up top at all times. When you add this material dry, it serves to absorb moisture in this upper zone making it less appealing to the worms. It has the added bonus of guaranteeing that you will always have plenty of bedding to mix with your food wastes – I really like this K.I.S.S. approach since it means I don’t need to remember to add any bedding with my food. All I need to do is make sure I keep that layer at the top nice a thick all the time.
As for feeding, if the worms have processed most of the food you added when setting up the bin, by all means add some more. The key is simply to use their progress as your guide. If materials seem to be piling up a bit, definitely slow down your feeding until the worms catch up. To help them along, be sure to optimize the materials as well (age, freeze, chop etc). To answer your question – yes, worms do indeed consume bedding materials so don’t worry too much about starving them! (much easier to over-feed)
Hope this helps!
Written by Bentley on January 25th, 2012 with 4 comments.
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I can’t believe it’s been nearly 20 days since my last Worm Inn Journal update! Yikes.
With my WF-360 check-up yesterday, I figured it was only fair to see how my poor, neglected Worm Inn worms were doing today.
My last feeding (~ 3.3 lb of shredded carrots) was back on Jan 5th and, other than the occasional addition of water, the system has basically been left alone since that time…and it shows. The level of material in the Inn has gone down quite a bit, and while there was certainly some evidence of there having been shredded carrots in there at one point, there really wasn’t much.
I was happy to find LOTS of worms down below in spite of the less-than-optimal conditions. Aside from processing the food that’s been added, they’ve clearly been munching away on the shredded cardboard bedding as well.
Before feeding today, I decided to water everything down a bit since it was looking pretty dry.
Given how low the level of material was, I decided to use the old cover layer as my base layer below my new food materials. The amount of food I added today was 1.039 kg (2.29 lb). As was the case yesterday, I didn’t have access to any (thawed out) frozen food scraps so I decided to make do with a fairly fresh collection of scraps I’ve been collecting for the past day or so. Again, I made sure to compensate for this by cutting everything up as best I could with a pair of heavy duty scissors (as you can see below, that cluster of leaves at the top of a pineapple is really tough!!).
Once I was satisfied with how finely chopped everything was (minus the pineapple leaves! lol) I simply spread the materials over top of my base bedding layer, before adding a brand new layer of dry bedding over top.
—
My aim this time around had been to treat this Worm Inn as a “normal” system – rather than attempting to overfeed as I did with my “Overfeeding Challenge“. Well, it seems I’ve ended up down in the opposite direction so far!
Time to start adding waste materials on a much more regular basis, that’s for sure. With my flying pest problems now behind me (he wrote as he knocked on wood – lol), this shouldn’t create ANY problems!
Stay tuned!
Written by Bentley on January 24th, 2012 with 6 comments.
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