After polluting the bins with broccoli I decided to document the clean up on video. Not all of it as the video is an afterthought. A few days have past and the clean up is working. Worms are moving throughout the bin and working. Looks like it’s mostly in the video. -13
Thought I’d make a video of the newly set up worm bin. It has been running for 2 plus weeks at this point. The bin was empty after I had introduced roaches into the bin on the cardboard I use to directly cover the substrate. I prefer it to shredded paper because I can quickly remove it and see/smell the condition when I want to.
The motivation to restart the bin came from finding infant size earth worm looking species in what I thought was sterile soil mixed last year stored in plastic bins. After counting 20 worms in a small area, I moved the small pile of soil and placed it on top of the moss prepared days before. Waited a few days then started to introduce vegetable waste.
The worms I found were at the top, mostly clustered in an old patch of oat and wheat grass I’d grown for our domestic cats munching on a mango. They had tripled in size. For now going to leave it as it is then add more wastes in a few weeks or so. -13
Pineapple- Added skin cutting/core of one pineapple, worms found within a day, completely consumed within a week in both bins. Next time I’ll either photo or video the experiment.
Onion- Added end pieces to both bins. At day 2 the underside had many of the smaller worms but the adults seemed to stay away. I’m sure they weren’t larvae of something else. Will take photos or video next time.
Broccoli- Added several stalks. Next day the odor was noticeable several feet away from the bin. I noticed that day the worms were all over the waste in the bin. By the next day they had all withdrawn below all of the waste they were feeding on. I removed as much as possible to the compost bin. Follow up will be in the next post. I’ll never put broccoli in my worm bins again, only the outdoor compost.
Cucumber- I didn’t think there would be any issues with cucumbers in the worm bin. I wasn’t sure the vinegar soaked ones would go over well so added one small slice in a couple of the corners of the bin. Surprisingly they had disappeared. There was about half a cucumber left so I divided it between the bins. By the 3rd day it was all gone. I’ve noticed that with most of the food the worms will be eating from the underside, but not with the cucumbers. Each time I’ve put it in the bin they are all over it.
Unit-13 FREMSLT 