Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The redworms are coming!





I must confess: I am a mass vermicide.

The Great Parboiling some years ago ended my one and only experiment in vermicomposting, but it hadn't been going all that well even before the not-quite-seasonable heat wave. At that point in my life I wasn't doing enough gardening to need large quantities of vermicast, so the worms were primarily supposed to be disposing of my vegetarian food wastes. But while the idea of an indoor composting solution appealed, no allium and no citrus made them a less than satisfactory choice for me.

Years later, I'm still looking for a completely indoor composting solution; bokashi is wonderful, and in many ways absolutely perfect for me, but composting it does still require an outdoor stage*. Or processing through a wormery? The Great Al of bokashi fame and Bentley the worm guy have reported success with feeding cured bokashi to worms...

So I've ordered some red wigglers. One set shall be fed only approved foods, others on those same foods after fermentation and curing, and still others on whatever happens to be in my standard cured buckets come worm-feeding time (likely to include citrus, allium, meat and dairy).

I'm sure that tiny high-pitched scream of vermy horror is purely my imagination. -G-


DSF

image: Paul Revere's ride from Wikimedia Commons

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I dont know why you are having trouble with the worms being inside. What is the problem, smell, escaping worms? ive had mine inside since day 1 and know problems.

D. S. Foxx said...

I didn't have a problem with the worms being inside until the heat wave--though the bin wasn't in direct sunlight, the whole aparment got over 100 degrees, and the poor things cooked. If I'd realized in time how hot it was getting, I'd have put ice-bottles in the bin or moved it or anyway done _something_, but...I didn't.

I'm in a different apartment now, but since worms hadn't been the perfect answer to my needs when I had them, I chose not to purchase more. Until now; my needs have changed, and worms may once again be the answer. Just to a different question. -G-

DSF