We've got (baby) worms!

I've been neglecting the worm bins lately, since it seems like all I find when I poke around in there are those annoying whiteflies or fruitflies (don't inhale when you open the lid!).

Everything I read about worm bins says overfeeding is more of a problem than underfeeding (I guess worms don't really eat that much), so other than making sure the bedding does not get too dry during the last heat wave, I'd given up on them for a while.

This past weekend I decided to check on them again. I opened the lower layer, where supposedly the "younger" worms hang out, and was able to see 2 or 3 right away without having to poke around. They are in the dark more, so the worms did not hide as quickly. Also, this is the layer that would have had the worm eggs when I got the Worm Factory a few months ago, so some must have hatched by now.

But what about the upper layer, where I had never seen more than 2 adult worms? Supposedly there were dozens in the original batch, but I never saw anywhere near that number. I poked around and saw some tiny pink baby worms, which made me happy. This means the adults had laid new eggs and they had hatched! Aaaaawwww! How cute!

Encouraged, I placed the defrosted, microwaved, shredded food bits in the top layer, and poked around some more. I found an eggshell from a feeding a month ago, and inside were dozens of tiny wiggly white worms. Discussion with a friend's 7-year old daughters confirmed these are also baby redworms. They start out white and get pinker, then red as they get bigger. Yippee--the worms are not totally dead. I may actually start feeding them again.

Barley vs red wiggler worms: picky eater smackdown!

Barley only likes dry food. He will use a paper towel to dry off pasta, and has no qualms about using my cloth napkins to wipe brown sauce off chicken picked out of Chinese food. If he could get away with eating the pizza without the cheese, he would. Then he could more easily wipe off the oil and the sauce underneath, to render it the perfect beige food. You could describe Barley's diet as anti-Atkins. All carbs, nothing but carbs, skip the protein, veggies, and fruit, please.

The worms, on the other hand, prefer moist food. Vegetable refuse only, no meats or fats. Limited carbs, please, and eggshells and coffee grounds WITH filters thrown in are a treat. Worms also don't mind fruitflies, ants, and other vermin sharing their food.

Barley, in contrast, tolerates the presence of his brother at the same table, but don't even THINK about stealing a french fry, bro!

In summary:
Wet food? Worms, yes. Barley, no.
Vegetables? Worms, any kind. Barley, only carrots, cucumbers, corn, or broccoli.
Fruit? Worms, everything but citrus--peels welcome. Barley, only peeled apples and bananas.
Carbs? Worms, ok in small amounts. Barley, yes please, and nothing but please.
Meat? Worms, no. Barley, plain chicken, beef, hot dogs, meatballs, kielbasa.

Judge's ruling: while the worms have a wider variety of foods they will eat, I believe the worms are actually pickier eaters than my son. I have owned a food processor for 3 years, and never once used it. I had to pull it out this week to puree the worm food, before I nuked it, then froze it (to kill fruit fly larvae), then defrosted it. Heck, I don't work this hard to cook dinner for my family!

Frankly, I've been obsessing a bit about the worm tray. Haven't blogged every detail, since I think some readers are not that into vermiculture (almost sounds like a skinny noodle you'd serve with meatballs, doesn't it?). The primary angst is wondering if they are eating and thriving, since I can't ever seem to find any, even at night with a flashlight. Also, the fruitfly population is exploding, hence the need to start nuking the scraps I am putting out. Today, I checked out all the layers of the bins, and still could not find any adults in the working top tray. However, inspection of the lower tray exposed 3 juvenile worms immediately without poking around, so I am confident there are likely quite a bit more in there. Click this link to read a past post about the habits of teenage worms. Or not.

Will Starbux make them jittery?

I picked up a couple of free gallons of coffee grinds from my favorite coffee establishment. I had asked them to collect it the night before. That's a lot of coffee they go through in one morning! I've been saving mine, but after 2 weeks, we don't have more than a cup or 2. I plan to use it when planting my remaining 2 miniature blueberry bushes, to increase acidity in the soil.

I got to wondering if the blueberry bushes will absorb the caffeine at all? Will the blueberries keep me awake at night?

And then I remembered the worms! (thought you'd escaped that topic for a bit, didn't you?) If I feed the worms coffee grounds, will that make them more active? Jittery? Prematurely gray? Enquiring minds want to know!

The worms are here!

OK, they've just arrived by UPS. DH is working on them right now--they look very content sitting in their tray--wiggling away when we lift the newspaper on top of them. I am a little disappointed that the model I bought did not come with the gabled roof--we may have to buy one separately. Or maybe DH could make one for them. Not a big issue now as we are probably done with rain for a while.

DH will microwave the frozen food we have ready for them. I won't have more details to post until my teaching day is done. But we are proud new "parents" oohing and aahing over our newly arrived pets.

Worms on the wing

OK, so I am burying this post behind the earthquake one, 'cuz I understand some people just might not be all that interested in worms and composting. We just ordered the cadillac of worm bins: The Worm Factory in black (post-consumer recycled plastic, OF COURSE!). We bought from Evergreen Farms, which had posted the Craigs List ad. Dave at Evergreen is a really nice guy, and they are shipping us our worms IN the tray, with habitat all established already to minimize stress on the worms. That is SO sweet! And these worm bins come with tech support, as I was invited to email questions anytime and they will email or even CALL me back!

I also learned that the juvenile worms don't migrate to the top layer like the adults do. Because their food requirements are different, they hang out in the more processed lower layer until all nutrients are used up, then migrate upward. Does anyone else have an image of drunken teenage worms hanging out in the basement eating processed snack foods and beer, while the more mature adult worms sit upstairs and lay eggs?

Anyway, this new information prompted me to go to FOUR bins, instead of 3, as I want ALL the worms as far from me as possible when I go to harvest the rich compost in the bottom tray. 4 will give me a one tray margin of error. And really, I am pretty squeamish. Maybe I'll get DH to do the harvesting. Heh.

Dave at Everwood had sent me homework to prepare for my 1000 new pets, who will be arriving by UPS before the end of the week. He suggests I may want to puree and even microwave the worm food to make it easier to digest. This is starting to feel like babies all over again. At least there will be no diapers to change this time!

Clay and worms

Ok, I have 3 miniature blueberry bushes waiting to get in the ground--and I can't get deeper than 8 inches into the soil. I've hit the clay layer. Despite being heavier than I want to be (hello Jenny Craig?), I don't apparently weigh enough to press my shovel into the clay, even when I stand on both sides of the shovel and jump up and down on it!

I'm going to have to get a pick-axe, I think. I hate this $%$#@#@ clay.

One bright spot is that we are on our way to getting 1,000 new pets! The worm composting idea has really taken off. Only Barley wants nothing to do with the new project. I was proud of myself for not bringing up my newest research project at dinner with my friends last night. Talking about worm composting over a spaghetti dinner just seemed like a bad idea.

DH has agreed to take on any task that I find too gross to handle. With no space to dedicate to real composting, and kitchen scraps being a fairly large portion of the waste stream coming out of American households, worm composting seems like the responsible thing for us as a family to be doing. Plus it beats the heck out of trying to dig a compost hole big enough out of this %$%^$# clay soil. But I digress.

Here is a link that talks about the advantages of worm composting, aka "vermicomposting".

I found 3 "continuous flow-through" manufactured worm bins that seem to operate on the same principles: Wriggly Wranch, Can O Worms, and the Worm Factory. The idea is that as the worms generate compost, they rise up to the top layer of the compost to get to the food scraps you are providing. When you have enough compost to harvest, you take the worm castings from the bottom tray for your garden, and rotate it to the top after you empty it. I like anything that minimizes my contact with the little wiggly things.

My friend showed me her Worm Factory, and I have to admit I was pretty impressed by how not-as-gross-as-I expected it was. Each of these can run over $100 - 150 after shipping, and worms are not always included. However, in the San Fran Bay area, there was a Craigslist ad for a West Coast dealer who offered a complete package for $100. Check your local ads for a deal.

Even better, a lot of municipalities offer the Wriggly Wranch free or discounted to their residents, as it eases pressure on the local landfill. It is not as attractive as the Worm Factory, so if you have to put it someplace where you will be seeing it in your backyard, you may want to think about getting the Worm Factory instead.

Some cities offer "composting basics" classes in conjunction with the discounted worm bins. Here are links for Alameda, San Jose, and San Mateo. Check out your locale as well!

If your budget is tight, here is a link to a page that shows how to make your own. You just need a tub, and good ventilation. However, being the wimpy, squeamish type that am, I prefer the manufactured versions that have layers.

Once you have your worm bin, you can read up on maintenance and troubleshooting on this worm composting blog! Wow, there are blogs for everything, aren't there? This probably isn't even the only one out there--just the first one I found. There is even a social network-who knew?

Who's been eating my garden?!

One of the strawberry plants had 5 blooms on it already. Once the white petals had dropped off, I was watching it daily, as the little green nubs in the middle would grow into our first strawberries!

I went out to check on our little garden patch in front this morning, and I discovered a terrible crime had occurred! This morning, ALL FIVE of the stems had been bitten through, and the green nubs were lying on the ground, half-chewed up. This will never do--they didn't even get a chance to turn into strawberries!

Suddenly all the squirrels and birds frolicking in our backyard do not seem so innocuous. They seem downright menacing! I am tempted to deck myself out in camo and stake out the strawberry plants overnight to catch the culprit. Going overboard? Me? Why would you say that?

I found this site to research how to defend my strawberries from the depredations of suburban wildlife. Hmm, it says here that new strawberries should have their first blooms pinched off to enable a good root system to grow. Seems like maybe the critter may have done me a favor. This is similar to the advice I got on the blueberry bushes--don't let them bear fruit the first year. At least with strawberries, it is just the first round of blooms to be pinched off.

I bought these as bareroot strawberries, which was a kick. The garden shop clerk pointed me toward a huge barrel full of strawberry plants. I turned back, and said, no, I don't need something that big, I just want a few seedlings. She walked me over, like a slow-witted child, and grabbed a bunch from the top. They were very loosely packed, so they came right up, but I think they must have left a root tendril or 2 behind. She was not trying to be particularly careful with them. Then she stuck them in a plastic bag and handed it to me--not even any dirt! (Duh, Jo, bareroot--get it??) I could now see that they were actually 5 plants twist-tied together. Well, if they could survive that kind of manhandling, then they could survive my gardening!

At the least, this strawberry beheading incident is making me rethink the wisdom of setting up that birdbath in the yard...we are practically inviting them to come eat our garden, aren't we? I'll have to think about this now...

On the upside, my friend showed me her worm farm...and it really was not as gross as I thought it would be. Some fruitflies in the top layer, to be expected, but hey, it's outside anyway. Add kitchen waste and cover with mulch. Middle layer had the worms and all the earth they'd made in 9 months. And a spigot on the bottom layer for the worm "tea" to use as fertilizer. If I can get my boys to assist with maintenance, this might work after all. Since I want to plant 2 more blueberry bushes in the only open dirt the in the backyard, having a real compost pile is no longer going to work.