Apologies for the tardiness of this week’s Savage Worm Journal. I was on an island with no internet access for the long weekend. Anywhoo, get excited for an eventful week here in the land of worms. Here you can see the little savages trying to escape (the brown specks are poo):
Why are they trying to run, you might ask? We don’t know. There is conflicting evidence because one hypothesis is that they are hungry (possible, since it has been 9 days since last they were fed), however, we have also developed quite the infestation of fruit flies (which implies that there is an excess of food). Most likely the fruit flies are attracted to our food scrap bin, which, as you can see (but lucky you, not smell), has developed a lovely pungent juice:
Dan, looking as if he is about to vom from the smell:
Please note: the scrap bin only smells when Andrea scoops up scraps from the bottom that have had time to decompose and ferment – it doesn’t stink up the kitchen. The worm bin itself doesn’t smell in the least. Strong evidence that the fruit flies like our scrap bin:
Maggots. Or rather, pupae. I was not around to see the maggot stage of the fruit fly life cycle, but I hear they were big and gross. Here is Andrea, trying to dump the pupae outside so they don’t eclose in our home:
Just in case they do: we have this little contraption to lure in the flies and catch them. It is filled with vinegar at the moment, but we might up the ante with a bit of red wine, if we can bring ourselves to spare any. We have also decided to cut back on the amount of food we send to the scrap bin for a while. And we fed the worms only two piles of food this week, in zones 3 & 6.
So ninjas, this week has brought us a bit of the grimy side of vermicomposting, but hopefully soon we will master the artful balance of scrap to food to worm to fly ratio to keep our worms and home happy.
Peep the archives for the rest of the Savage Worms posts.