November 2012

It’s a Quiet Week on the Blog…

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Crazy Q&A Podcast – Session #4

Howdy folks! I have yet another Crazy Q&A session for your listening enjoyment (lol)!

Those of you who’ve been listening to all of them will undoubtedly notice some overlap of topics. As I’ve said, I’m basically just sitting down and responding to questions one after the other – there is no sorting, grouping by topic etc.

I personally feel that revisiting these topics is never a bad thing since it can help to reinforce the concepts/approaches I discuss.

NOTE: I mention at the end of the podcast that (more…)

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HAPPY THANKSGIVING

I just wanted to take a moment to wish all my friends in the U.S. a very “Happy Thanksgiving”! Up here in Canada we had our Thanksgiving near the beginning of October, but I’m happy to report that I’ve convinced my wife to let us have another turkey dinner this weekend (I LOVE TURKEY DINNER!!!!). Whoohoo!
๐Ÿ˜†

I’d also like to express my gratitude to all those of you who read this blog (and put up with my shenanigans) – especially those of you who have done so for years! Without all of you, none of this would be possible.

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Winter Worm Bin Experiments

By Tina Ligon

A Little History

I have been a worm wrangler since 8/2009. I live at about 8000โ€™ in the foothills of Colorado. I started with a larger bin than usual, a converted refrigerator that is stripped down to being an insulated box. I got my first worms by volunteering for a morning at a local worm farm in Fort Collins, CO, http://www.cowormman.org/. It is a great way to get started – I learned so much in those few hours. Here is an earlier post (on the RWC blog) with more details from the first year: “Tina’s Outdoor Worm Bin Experiment“.

Winter one โ€“ I got nervous with low temperatures and added (more…)

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Last Call for Vermi-Humor!

I decided to extent the deadline for vermi-humor entries until Tuesday November 20th (2012) at midnight EST. I’ve received lots of good ones so far, but I’d definitely like to see more people make an effort.

If you are looking for ideas, here are a few:
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Crazy Q&A Podcast – Session #3

Time for yet another “Crazy Q&A Podcast”!

While it does feel like I’m making decent progress, there are still plenty of questions left to answer, so you can probably expect to see quite a few more of these in the Q&A format (will try to start mixing things up a bit next month though).

Topics Touched On

– Food waste slurries as worm food
– Using Euros (Eisenia hortensis) for vermicomposting
– Transplanting seedlings from a vermicomposting system
– Harvesting vermicompost + “worm tea” vs “leachate”
– Using rabbit manure for vermicomposting
– Using “pine straw” as bedding material
– Slow nightcrawler reproduction
– Combining composting & vermicomposting
– Moisture level of finished vermicompost
– Dealing with fruit flies/gnats

Hope you enjoy it!
๐Ÿ˜Ž

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The Beast-11-15-12

As I wrote in my recent scuttle fly post, I ended up adding my worms earlier than planned (last Saturday to be exact). I wanted to make sure they established themselves in the bin as quickly as possible so as to offer some competition for the fly larvae.

I actually ended up adding Euros AND Red Worms. My original plan had been to wait for a while to add the Reds (to give the Euros a nice headstart in the system), but I noticed that there were no scuttle flies in my Red Worm bin (from my “plastic worm bin follow-along“) – unlike the Euro bin which seemed to have a fair number of them. I thought this might be a sign that Red Worms are better at outcompeting the larvae than Euros.

Whatever the case may be, I think it’s going to be a really interesting experiment to have both of them in there. Apart from wondering about Euros in flow-through systems, people also ask about mixing Euros and Reds in the same system. Normally I recommend avoiding this, since it may hamper the success of your Euros, and it makes it difficult to separate them later on – but again, it’s always fun to challenge my assumptions (based on previous experience) and to test things out again.
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