My Worm Bin July 29

     The top of my compost remained moist thanks to the re-used plastic bag I placed on top. However, the compost has been turning anaerobic or, rather, smelly. I turned all the food waste in there as usual. I began to wonder at this point, as usual, why, even though I turn this compost every week, it always ends up compacting back down and smelly again. Meanwhile, the black soldier larvae have been getting even happier with the compost. Not to say they make bad compost either or that I wouldn't want to experiment with them but I do want my worms to make their comeback. My thermometer has been acting funny lately so I'm getting a new battery for it. I also noticed that throughout the winter, my compost contents never made it below freezing. This is good news. As long as the bin never gets below freezing, the worms will be okay throughout the winter. The worms living in the bottom of the bin seem to have congregated in a little blueberry pint full of old worm castings-there are only a few left. The poor guys are really dying out. In an effort to keep them from dying off completely I decided to place a couple re-used strawberry pints full of compost from above down in the harvest chamber for the worms to munch on. The compost water is slightly smelly and it does not seem to be improving the basil's growth seeing the seed I watered with compost water has not even germinated yet. The flowers watered with compost leachate don't seem to be doing any better than the other flowers, and the hydrangeas... still too early to tell. I'm going to keep going with this experiment. In the fall semester I'm going to aerate my compost leachate and even try mixing some of it with the waste syrup made in at Bates Dining Hall at Sarah Lawrence College.

     I put a bunch of holes in the plastic cover for the compost bin. Perhaps this extra air will improve the conditions. I'm also not adding any more food waste. This will help the contents cool down some so the worms will have a chance to repopulate the bin. I did add some paper to it though. The paper may even help with cooling down the bin. There are a bunch of strawberry containers I found the other day. Then I realized I can go to any place that sells smoothies and take their strawberry and blueberry containers to re-use for packaging my compost. Now all I need is a good label. Meanwhile, I also need to arrange a means of shipping worms for people who live far away.

     A customer of mine said she likes the worm castings. There are some strong, healthy squash growing in my old worm castings that I made up in my dorm room from the 2010-2011 school year. They smelled horrible a few weeks ago. It's a miracle to see how just adding water, aerating by hand, allowing to sit for a few weeks, and allowing adequate water drainage can so drastically improve these worm castings. In fact, the squash just volunteered themselves!!