No, no problems or complaints in this post. We’re not upset that we have worms but rather pleased instead. We recently started our very own worm farm after finding ourselves plagued with an endless supply of fruit flies in our kitchen who just loved munching down on whatever was waiting to go to our compost bin or recycling container. Naturally, this was something we wanted to eradicate as quickly as possible, and since we’d been researching about worm farms and vermicomposting already, we figured now was a great time to dive right in.
This is our current setup. We ordered about 400 worms online and they arrived about 36 hours later. Thankfully we’d already started building up our worm bin so they could move right in, once we’d filled the bin with damp newspaper shreds.
The bottom of the blue tub has a bunch of small holes in it, through which excess water can drain as well as worm tee, which is extremely high in nutrients and a wonderful natural fertilizer for your plants. We put some on our tomato plants and they seem to have really done well afterwards. We have no comparison plant but they are nearly as tall as the neighbor’s tomato plants now, which are about a month ahead of ours. That must mean something, right?
We’ve had the worms set up for about 10 days now and have no complaints so far. Well, they could eat faster but each little worm can only handle so much food at a time. The fruit fly problem has been greatly reduced, especially now with our makeshift cover over the box. And it’s pretty amazing to be able to walk back there, lift the papers to put some additional compost material, and come out with your hands still smelling clean.
There’s quite a few castings in there now and Stefan thinks they have been reproducing also. I’m still a fledgling with these things and am pretty scared of killing them all; but they seem very hardy and happy so far. And with them just a few steps away in the mudroom, it’s completely convenient to feed and check on them regularly. Now we just have to determine the best method for cleaning and sorting things out so we can harvest the castings to be used for fertilizer and give the worms a comfy new home.
good luck with your worms! We had worms for about 3 months before we were overrun with fungus gnats. It was my own fault, overfeeding (and overfeeding with watermelon rind which is really watery). Make sure the previous scraps are gone or nearly gone before feeding again!
Oh no!
I’m totally paranoid about killing them already so I’m pretty sure I won’t do that. More likely that I’ll underfeed. But that’s why the hubby is around – it was his project to learn about and he is ultimately responsible for them. So far so good but it’s only been a couple weeks so we can only continue to hope for the best lol.
Yep, my worms my responsibility. But self doubt is definitely a factor for me too. Haven’t checked on them since the weekend when it seemed they where doing wonderful. Seems like they are finally reproducing also, so they can eat more junk……