[NOTE: I meant to get this up on May 15th – and have back-dated it accordingly]
I decided I might as well write my first update post for my fun little coffee cup experiment. Before I do that I should mention that my first post should have been (and now has been changed to) “Day 0”, not “Day 1”. Not exactly critically important stuff I know – but easy enough to correct, so I decided to do so!
As you can see from the photo above, after 6 days nothing looks all that different from when we started. Upon closer examination however you can see that we are in fact making some progress.
The underside of the coffee cup is clearly starting to break down. You can see a decent amount of worm ‘turd’ (aka castings) as well.
I was surprised to find quite a few worms not only under the cup (next picture down), but actually in the cup and in the rim of the cup.
Nice little collection of worms below. What’s interesting is that there were far more worms below the coffee cup than below the watermelon rinds! As you can see, I have a VERY healthy springtail population! In fact, all my bins have massive populations of these little creatures! Check out the next pic for an extreme close-up!
Watermelon rind – up close and personal. I was actually really impressed with my close-up abilities of my digital camera! You can see microbial colonization of the melon flesh (dark dots), springtails, and even a mite. Pretty cool!
Anyway, should be interesting to see how things pan out over the next few weeks!
Previous Posts in the Series:
Coffee Cup Challenge – Day 0
Hi Bentley, this is great ! Your pictures are unreal, it looks like you used a microscope.Were your worms always waste eaters? I am trying to get my manure compost eaters to switch to household waste as I mentioned in the worm forum.I came here to this site once before but then I forgot to again, I have it in my “favourites” now so I can come back easily.
Hi Alison,
Thanks for stopping by.
Truth be told, I was pretty amazed with the photos myself. It’s amazing what a digital camera with macro function can do!
As for manure eaters getting converted into general waste eaters, if you ease them into it I’m sure it won’t be too hard at all.
I’ve had some difficulty in the past when trying to introduce manure worms directly into a normal worm bin, but I think in your case you have aged manure in with them, don’t you?
Anyway, as long as you don’t change their habitat too drastically all at once they should be just fine.
B.