Remember a while back when I was writing about that I was starting my own worming compost little farm in this post? The whole process of throwing your food wastes in a container and the worms eat your waste and turn it into compost?
Well I have had this for about 6 weeks now and it is time to see what the status is on how the worms are doing.
Is this already a compost factory or did all the worms decide to leave or just die?
This is how I DIY made the containers. With holes on the sides and bottom for air for the worms
Lets start with the good news!
The good news is I am extremely happy with how the worm situation is going. It seems like all of them are still there and I also have the feeling that they have been multiplying a lot.
Small disclaimer: If you don't like crawly stuff maybe ignore these next couple of pictures.
This is the middle container on where it all started. This is where I had put the worms with their own compost and leaves 'as a home' for them. From this middle container they crawl up to the top container to eat the food scraps I toss in there.
As you can see there are a lot of worms in there! I wrote about this in the other post that these have to be tiger worms or Eisenia Fetidia because they actually eat your scraps. Not all worms do this.
You can recognise these tiger worms by how red they are. As you can see they are way more red than regular earth worms which you will find in your grass.
And they are still there in bigger numbers. I call this a win! But even more important. All my food scraps end up in this container and I never have to empty it. Literally everything gets eaten.
From the carrot scraps to onion scales to egg shells to old coffee. Everything goes in there. You just need to be sure to also add enough 'brown' in there for the balance. That means old leaves and pieces of cardboard go in there for the proper diet.
And....What about the compost?
The compost is still in process! The worms are still in the middle container and go up to the top one to eat but also come back to the middle one. The compost is ready when it is all dried out and we are not there as yet.
The soil is super moisty and that is also part of the deal. It even gets more moisty that it started and that is also because of the what the worms excrete.
This moist ends up in the bottom container (the one without the holes) and this fluid is called vermicompost-tea
So what to do with the fluid then? Apparently this is like super food for your plants and you use it as a fertilizer. Add 1 part of this brown fluid and 9 parts of water together to get the smoothy for your plants. I have just used it for the first time in the allotment and we will see if the plants like it!
Brown tea for the allotment
So...what was the downside?
Honestly, up until now there really is no downside as yet. The foodscraps are all eaten and it seems like compost is being produced. Nice and circular with hardly any effort.
What I have learned it to look at the balance of what I am feeding the worms. I don't think I have tossed in enough browns and that is why there is so much moist so that needs some attention.
On the other hand, if everything gets eaten...is there even a problem? But what I have also noticed is that when you end your scraps with some leaves on it you will also get less fruit flies when it is hot outside. And that might be a good idea here and there because it is annoying when you open up the container that they fly out.
I surely will keep you guys updated on the project, but up until now it is a big winner!