Missing worms..
The bathtub worm farms that we keep under the house have been slightly neglected for a few weeks.. We currently have an aquaponic system taking up a lot of space & blocking walkways under the house making it hard to check up on the squirmers.. Knowing that the farms were going to be cut off for a while they were both fed ½ a garbage bag of wet shredded paper, a litre of coffee grounds & some leafy greens scraps from the patch to see them through until we could get back to them.. I wasn't overly concerned as they also had their manure & compost based bedding to feast on if the other food ran out.. Was hoping to harvest a load of castings for a few projects but got a bit of a shock when I opened the farms up..
The first farm I looked into was the newer bathtub farm.. This farm is located underneath the "S" bend for the bathroom sink, which had unfortunately sprung a leak over the past few weeks without us knowing.. I have a feeling the worms weren't very partial to the mint toothpaste or soap flavoured water that had been trickling into the farm.. No bodies could be found in the farm so I think they decided to jump ship..
½ of the castings in the farm were collected to be used around the patch.. I decided to leave the worms & cocoons in there so they would have a chance at a better soap free life elsewhere.. The rest of the "minty fresh" castings are being used to feed a few dead spots on the lawn..
The second, older farm had what looked like a mass exodus of worms from it & I found evidence for this in the leachate bucket where I found a few dried out, crispy worms.. We did have a bit of rain but have never had issues with damp weather causing worms to leave in large numbers before as I have seen occur in other farms.. The only thing I did differently in this farm was to use mushroom compost bedding in one end of the farm where as before I had just used it as a top dressing..
About 90% of the compost had been processed & the castings contained a good amount of cocoons so am not 100% sure as to what the problem was that caused the mass exodus..
The worms that were removed looked nice & fat which has puzzled me further.. We do have 2 rather fat skinks that frequent the worm farm but don't think they would of consumed a few thousand worms over the past few weeks..
These red wrigglers have been added to a worm barrel under one of the lime trees down the back for the time being.. I have plans to add them to a much larger farm in a few months time ;)
These red wrigglers have been added to a worm barrel under one of the lime trees down the back for the time being.. I have plans to add them to a much larger farm in a few months time ;)
It was as easy as piling the rocks up one end & hitting it with the hose once we had collected as many worms as we could from it.. The tea drained straight into a few buckets & was used to water the beds in the garden down the back..
I haven't made the farms up again as of yet & am not sure I will straight away.. While the bathtubs have worked fabulously for us up until now, I'm not sure if I will use this style of farm again as our main worm farm.. I think I have stumbled upon a far better way to get the worms to work for us in the patch..
Last November I made up a compost pile inside an unused IBC cage using shade cloth to line it & help keep the compost contained.. It was filled with layers of mulched up weed trees (Chinese elm), horse manure, lucerne/alfalfa hay & scraps from cleaning out a few garden beds.. Has to be the best compost we have made to date but you can see that for yourself in the clip below ;)
Hope to have the next compost pile on the way by the weekend.. This time I will be using lucerne/alfalfa hay, horse manure, mulched pigeon pea, mango trimmings & corn stalks to build the pile up.. Hope to have that lot of compost ready to add to the patch by Summer if all goes well..
Cheers folks & have a great one,
Rob..
