Corn Cob Composting

Yet another quiet spell here on the blog the last little while. Sorry folks! I’ve been very focused on a really important work project. Once I put that puppy to bed things should definitely get a lot more active around here!

Anyway, just thought I’d write a quick post to get things rolling here again. Back on Sept 3rd I added some intact corn cobs (along with other food waste and some cardboard) to my indoor bins to see what would happen. Today (Sept 12th) I thought I would check to see how things were coming along

As you can see we’ve made some progress! Things are definitely decaying, especially the peaches I put in. Unfortunately I had to dig around in the bin after taking this shot (was taking some other photos), so I won’t have any more shots with everyting in the same place (definitely more effective for showing changes over time). Oh well – I’m sure I’ll have plenty more worm bin ‘play by plays’.

I didn’t see too many worms crawling on the corn, but I did see many congregated beneath (in both bins).

I would imagine that there is a pretty juicy buffet of assorted microbes growing on the corn by now (and in fact you can easily see some of the fungal colonization in the picture above).

Both of my indoor bins (and outdoor bins for that matter) have a huge population of springtails. I discovered what look to be immature springtails today, but they may also be another (smaller) species. I’ve included an ‘extreme close-up’ below. The small gray flecks on the kernels are what I’m referring to. You can see the ‘normal’ springtails (with white ones) quite clearly as well. There also seems to be some eggs or small mites in the picture as well. I will have to investigate again soon to see if I can figure out what those are.

Anyway, that’s all for now! I took some cool pictures of worm eggs today, so stay tuned for a post about that in the near future!

Technorati Tags: worm bin, redworms, red worms, worm composting, corn cobs, springtails, vermicomposting

Written by Bentley on September 12th, 2007 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on Home Vermicomposting.

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