Waste Optimization – Day 12

Yesterday, I realized with dismay that I had completely forgotten to take pictures of my optimization bin over the (long) weekend. Ugggh!

I immediately went down and had a look (and snapped some Day 11 pics). I was amazed by what I saw! Today’s (Day 12) image below should give you a pretty good idea. The carrot disks that had been frozen then thawed were completely gone (needless to say, there wasn’t even a trace of the peelings), and even the whole carrot (also frozen then thawed) had almost disappeared.

Day 0

Day 6

Day 12

There’s no doubt now that the once-fresh carrot disks will win the title of “last food standing”, but as you can see, they are well on their way to being decomposed as well.

Will be interesting to see how long it takes for them to disappear completely!

Written by Bentley on February 22nd, 2012 with 4 comments.
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4 comments

Read the comments left by other users below, or:

Rich Yarger
#1. February 22nd, 2012, at 9:27 PM.

Carrots are important for our wormy friends so that they can have good eye sight! hehe!

Great work B!

John Duffy
#2. February 22nd, 2012, at 9:58 PM.

How many worms are in that bin?

Peter
#3. February 23rd, 2012, at 5:31 PM.

Wow, what a dramatic difference. That whole carrot seals the deal, not last even though it was whole just because it was frozen.

It’s actually making me think of keeping some feeding material unfrozen (the non fruit fly friendly stuff heh) so it will act like cardboard mixed in. Help keep structure and airflow of a mostly frozen feeding which tends to go to mush and compact. Maybe as they are buried by later feedings and breakdown later, they’ll become food for the hatchlings that hatch lower down.

Bentley
#4. February 27th, 2012, at 1:44 PM.

RICH – LoL

—
JOHN – not really sure how many worms are in the bin to be totally honest. This was material brought in from an outdoor bed quite some time ago. For my next experiment I would work with a specific quantity of worms.
—
PETER – I’d be a bit careful about using any sort of “food” material as a bedding. Adding some resistant stuff (in moderation) as a long-term food source (say, just before going away on vacation for example) isn’t a bad idea. You just need to be careful to avoid having a whole bunch of the long-term stuff decomposing all at once. Could get ugly!
Carbon rich bedding materials, on the other hand, won’t ever cause problems so better to stick with them for aeration etc.

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