jueves, 5 de mayo de 2011

<b>Vermicomposting</b>: Are my Worms Eating at all? | Kitchen Compost

I just started a red worm vermicompost with 1 pound of baby red worms. They’re all really little right now, but there’s 1 pound of them, and I thought red worms were supposed to eat their own body weight in 2 days. It’s been almost a week and it doesn’t look like they’ve eaten almost anything.

Here’s what I did:
Got a 5 gallon bucket
Drilled 1/8" holes in the bottom, the sides, and the top. I don’t know how many, but I drilled quite a few.
I laid down strips of damp cardboard on the bottom.
I added the worms with 1 pound of soil.
I added probably 2 pounds of organic matter; vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, etc. No meat, dairy, or fatty stuff!
I added dry strips of cardboard and paper to the top.

The composting layer is only about 3-4 inches deep. The rest of the bucket is full of the top bedding, and a few inches for the bottom bedding.

There are no odors.

A little bit of liquid has come out of the bottom into the catch tray.

I check on them about once a day, and everything looks about exactly the same. I expect that 1 pound of red worms should finish 2 pounds of food in 4 days.

Are they supposed to be eating this slowly?

Eating their weight every two days is extremely optomistic. Yes, they are eating, but look at the size of a worm, and the weight of a worm. A couple of grams at the most. Call them 1 1/2 gram each for an adult worm. There are 28 1/2 grams per ounce, 16 ounces per pound, so it is going to take those worms quite a few days to eat a couple of pounds.

That is if they don’t escape by crawling between the cardboard and the bucket, and out the holes.


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