Previous Worm Inn Overfeeding Challenge Videos
Worm Inn Journal-02-21-10
Worm Inn Journal-02-23-10
Worm Inn Journal-02-25-10
Worm Inn Journal-03-09-10
It’s been a little over two weeks since my last Worm Inn feeding, so I thought it might not be a bad idea to shoot another update video. Not too surprisingly, things are still moving along very smoothly – well, assuming I ignore the fungus gnats. Haha! You’ll likely see some of them flying around and crawling over the surface of material in the Inn. I’m kicking myself now for being so mellow about them earlier in the year, since they are now REALLY well-established in this system.
This MAY offer me the opportunity to try something out though. I’m not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I actually put mosquito dunks in the reservoir of my vermiponics system, and there really don’t seem to be many gnats in my grow bed at all (I am pretty sure it would have been infested under normal circumstances). What’s cool is that the worms don’t seem to have been harmed in the least (as some of you may recall, back when I was doing my mosquito dunk testing, there was speculation that dunk water might harm worms). I am hoping to take down my vermiponics system very soon, and will certainly be taking a good look at what’s going on in the bed, but everything looks good to me so far (I dug around in the bed a bit today and saw worms and cocoons).
Getting back to my “opportunity”, I’m thinking I might start watering my Worm Inn slowly with the reservoir water from the vermiponics system to see if that helps reduce the gnat population.
As mentioned in the video, the other thing I want to focus on soon is harvesting vermicompost from the bottom of the Inn. I removed a small amount back when I recorded the first video and it looked great, but I’m interested to remove some more to make sure the system is still working effectively, given the crazy amounts of waste I’ve been adding. Speaking of which, I didn’t go overboard today – I only added 12.73 lb. I must say, the worms are REALLY loving this coarse “homemade manure” material I have been feeding them.
Anyway – that’s basically it.
Oh, one other thing – in case you are curious, I have added a total of just over 75 lb of food waste to the system since Jan 26 (although, 57.3 lb of that has been added within the last five weeks). It will be interesting to see how things are looking in coming months, but I can’t say I’m too disappointed with the current ~ 1.3 lb/day overall average.
8)
That is some great looking home made manure, it sure looks like the optimal worm food/habitat.
I’m looking forward for the video about it.
wow that bin certainly processes alot of waste. the decomposition rate is awsome!!! worms rise to that occasion.
I wanted to let you know that I have been really enjoying your blog. I have only started recently researching vermiculture as I had just purchased a Worm Cafe and thought maybe I should find out what I was getting myself into. I have been fascinated by your experiment with the Worm Inn and am looking forward to the next update!