The worm bed project

Today, I got around to taking a census of the worm bed. Over 3 months ago, I bought a container of redworms from a bait shop, and brought them home to my worm bed. The colony started with 31 worms. 'By the book', the worms should have doubled in population in three months. Here is what I found today.

My population did not double. My census was 45 worms. From this, I can see that my worms are reproducing, but not at the expected rate. While the population was not doubled, the majority of the 'herd' was huge! I uncovered one worm, and he was so big that I thought for a split second that he was a garden snake that had worked his way into my worm bed to hybernate!

For those of you who either are, or are planning to start your own worm bed project, here are some more observations from this project:

- The worms seemed to congregate around clumps of grass clippings, and the waste apple/yeast 'sludge' left over from apple wine making. One word of caution...if you use chemicals on your lawn, do not put your grass clippings in your worm bed!!! They really seemed to like those two things. This spring, I will increase the percentage of grass clippings that go into the worm bed. When I added the wine making waste, I thought it may have been a mistake. Afterall, that stuff is pretty potent. My fears were without warrant. The worms seem to love it! I also found some larvae of some other critter concentrated around the apple wine waste. They looked kind of like maggots, but much larger. I wish the weather had been warmer, I would have taken them to the lake to see if the fish liked them! As I was going through the pile, I came across hundreds of these 'larvae'. Whatever left them, I couldn't help but wonder if they were competing with my worms so aggressively for food, that the competition was what kept my worm population down. I have more research to do here.

- My bed is sand deficient. This may also account for my less than ideal worm population. Worms ingest grains of sand to help them digest their food. I shouldn't have to add much, but I definately need to add some sand to the bed.

- The Really cool thing was the soil that the worms are leaving behind! That stuff is black gold! I could grab a handfull of that stuff and smell it. It was rich, dark, and very loose! I can't wait to harvest some of it this spring for planting!

Even though my herd didn't increase as predicted, I am still exceedingly pleased with the progress of this project!