Today I decided to check on the little clump of wool sitting in my VB48 system. I was curious to see how extensively the worms had moved into the material (if at all) – and whether or not they seemed to be pulling the wool into the surrounding habitat.
I didn’t discover anything too earth-shattering, I’m afraid. It did look as though the material has been pulled into the surrounding (aged-manure) habitat, and that some worms had set up shop in the lower reaches of the wool clump – but there certainly hasn’t been any sort of serious vermi-invasion of the material (as seems to be the case with Natura Eco-Cloths).
It is important to point out, though, that I haven’t done anything to try and make the wool more inviting. I can’t help but wonder what regular water-spritzing or (even better) actually putting some food wastes in the material would do. My hunch is that we’d see a lot more worms moving in!
The “Eco-Cloth” experiment took place in a well-moistened, enclosed worm bin, so it’s tough to make a real comparison. As such, I think my next step should be to add the wool to one of my enclosed plastic bins to see if that makes a difference.
I’ll keep you posted!
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Bentley,
I wonder if the natural lanolin in wool bothers the worms?
I have lots of llama fiber and it’s naturally dry, no lanolin.
Think I’ll try it out as it should be a source of protein(?) like our hair right? Maybe the worms will like it. Has to taste better than manure too : ) : )
Gina
Ahhhh – interesting, Gina! Thanks for sharing that info.
I DID notice that the wool was quite oily when I first got it – I too wondered if this would be an issue (and it very well could be – at least initially).
Please let me know how you make out with the llama fiber – I bet that will work well. I think even the sheep wool could work well in certain situations.
Bentley, Its not to late to make some socks of that wool. Might even be able to make a nice sweater too.
Then you just need to auction it off to fund your projects!
Cool project, I can’t wait to see what happens when you start to make the wool more inviting to the worms.