Have I mentioned how much I absolutely LOVE and feel a little bit cheered up whenever I see a whole mass of my vermicomposting worms in the places where I’d placed food and used cardboard or shredded newspaper to cover it?

No?

Well, I do.

I recently decided to try out some version of flow-through composting, and bought two small baskets with large enough holes. I propped one on top of the other using small little bricks so that there’s about a 3 to 4cm gap between the two bases of the baskets. Then I transferred a handful of worm casting to the top basket, spreading the casting out along the length. Also transferred quite a bit of worms into the basket, and then added chopped up veggie scraps and cardboard shreds over the food.

To the small gap left in the bin, I compiled all the worms there, and also added food scraps and newspaper shreds.

Today (and a few of the days), when I went to disturb the bin and basket with a chopstick to aerate the casting (so it doesn’t become anaerobic and stink), I saw the worms of both sections all huddled and intertwined in crazy masses beneath the food and paper. I just went squeeee. =D It means that I’m doing stuff right, since the worms are attracted to the sections where I placed the rotting food, and not to the empty sections.

One thing which scared me – well, more like startled, really – today was that I opened my bin, and a huge adult black soldier fly flew out. Since my bin’s airholes are way too tiny for the adults to get in to lay their eggs, and I’d also stretched a pantyhose over the lid, the conclusion I have was that the larva was already present when I bought the castings from two different suppliers.

But since neither the larvae nor the adults hurt the worms nor the bin’s ecosystem, and the larvae actually helps to compost food faster and their poop provides food for the worms, I let it go.

I LOVELOVELOVE! my worms and worm bin. =D