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Thursday, August 25, 2011

I weigh myself on the bathroom scales holding two pails; then without. The difference was eight pounds, so four pounds each pail-and-paper.

My estimate then is about 3.5 lbs of damp torn paper in each pail.

I dump each pail (of wet shredded paper) into separate spots in my tray

I split one pile between the two pails. Each pail now has just under 2 lbs of wet shredded paper.

I collect the dry food-cake and try to split it into two equal portions.

Each pail receives half the cake, crumbled into chunks about two square inches each.

The cake is currently too dry to support worms. The paper below it is beautifully wet.

Here is a “fines” container with dry castings on the top.

I tip about a ½ lb of dry castings (“soil”) onto the cake. My theory is that this will give the worms something to lodge in their gut.

I split the other half of the wet paper scraps between the tubs, covering my fines.

From the bottom the layers read:

• Wet paper

• Food cake

• Fines

• Wet paper

I tip the top part of the delivered milk carton onto a white plastic bag.

A monster work tries to escape off to the top-right corner!

Unfazed I begin separating worms from matrix, tea spooning worms into a 1-lb margarine tub.

Eggs are evident. This is a large (3 mm) egg, orange in colour, so it is probably within a week or two of hatching .

When I get to the bottom of the milk container, the biggest worms have coiled themselves into a squirm.

The tub weighs in around 250g, so I reckon I have about ¼ lb of European Crawlers.

I’m guessing that the residual matrix has enough eggs to give me an equal weight of worms in about twelve weeks time. A separate nursery experiment.

A minute has passed and the worms are busily elbowing each other in an effort to move away from the surface.

A minute later; I reflect that the flash from the camera is probably like a whip cracking on their hides!

A few stragglers remain.

At most four minutes have passed and the worms are all but gone.

Now I wanted to grab 250g of red Wrigglers, but my main bin is still a muddy mess, so I’ve extracted a half-gallon of mud and have left it on a plastic sheet on top of my desk.

I’m away for 48 hours traveling. My theory is that when I return the mass will have dried out enough for me to harvest 250g of red Wrigglers with ease.

Monday, August 29, 2011

There’s been a slight change of plans ...

My Red Wriggler bin is just too wet to harvest worms , so I’ve dosed that with a large sack of shredded paper and will build the second nursery once I can harvest worms.

In the meantime, I noticed this morning that condensation had formed on the underside of the clear plastic bag I use as a lid, and that castings appear on the surface.

This is good news. The European Crawlers are settling in.

Next: Hatching

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416-993-4953 CGreaves@ChrisGreaves.com

Toronto and Mississauga, Sunday, June 09, 2013 9:52 PM

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