Our
NEW Worm Composting Bin- The Chronicles, Day 18
03:05 PM
We're bearing down on 3 weeks with
our new WormFarm 360, which is good because my partner is starting to ask
questions like "Where's the compost....When can I dump the tray ... How
long do we need to wait to get rich, organic worm castings for my box roses?
Patience princess, It's not like microwaving oatmeal. We're actually waiting
for mother nature to decompose this organic material in real time. We've
probably all seen those cool time-lapse films of strawberries rotting, ice
cream melting, the lifecycle of the dandelion and yogurt growing mold and shriveling
up- all cool stuff. That's exactly what we're doing here, but we're using a
thousand worms to gently accelerate the process. As far as quantities and
timelines go, we're adding food scraps to the tray about 10 times per week
before the tray is full- this tray we're dumping into, is called the
"working tray." We try to stick to a 60/40 mix of food to fiber. The
fiber is paper, cardboard, junk mail, paper towels etc., while the food is just
about anything other than meat and citrus. The meat, too fatty and greasy,
leads to a smelly worm bin. The citrus radically upsets the pH of the worm bed
and freaks the worms out. Under that "working tray", is the
"processing tray," or the first tray we filled when we started, also
the bottom tray. That's where the compost is, or where the most involved layer
of food decomposition occurs- the oldest stuff. Since I added the second tray
with new food scraps about a 3 days ago, I haven't looked at the processing
tray.
Monday morning is my WormFarm 360
maintenance day. I usually get up early and take the layers apart and get a
look at the contents of these different trays. If you remember from the top,
our tray 1 is nothing but dead leaves. This tray acts as a barrier between
fruit flies and the food waste beginning to decompose in our active tray, or
tray 2. I peel back the 4 or 5 sheets of soggy newspaper which act as a
moisture cap to the new garbage. Yeah, the worms are doing their thing. I
inspect this layer carefully and see the worms fully involved in a pile of coffee
grounds, which is a treat for them I read, a pile of moldy bread scraps,
asparagus, carrot, beans and celery scraps. I also had a whole bunch of
strawberry tops and cut up banana rind, melons and 4-6 crushed egg shells.
Layer 2 looking good... all decomposing, everything moist, nicely balanced,
clean and running well. Now onto the processing tray or tray 3, which I haven't
seen in awhile.
Upon initial inspection, everything
looks like it has been compacted like a sheet of patchwork concrete. I remember
from the manual, that after a couple weeks, and a every couple weeks
thereafter, I'm supposed to take the little yellow rake enclosed in the kit,
and gently mix up the layer- kind of gently folding the top to the bottom and
getting some fresh, new air in there. You have to go easy and gently because
there's a boatload of worms in there and they're not happy to see you, or to be
seen. This mixing it up, aerates the contents and speeds up the decomposition.
I'm guessing were about half way to the finish line with this tray. Most of the
food products have disappeared into rich, dark brown globs, but there's still a
good amount of the paper squares and cardboard still there. I think our tray is
about two weeks from being soup- that would mean it takes about 5-6 weeks to
make a tray of compost providing the conditions are right, you feed them
regularly- but not overfeed, and keep the temperature and moisture content to
their liking. We've had hot and humid weather as of late, and the forecast is
for more of the same. Therefore, the worms go back to the dining room as that's
too warm for them on the screen porch. They go deep into the core of the
bedding and slow way down, kind of like us. Next week, I'm planning on buying
biodegradable bags and building another old school compost pile in the back
yard.
Day 18... all good.
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