March was rough for me- lots of stress with school and work and life in general. The usual stuff, I guess. But unfortunately, my worms have also been experiencing a stressful spring. Today I'd like to share a story that I hope will be entertaining and serve as a learning experience for everyone out there who is currently worm composting or is thinking of adopting a herd.
As I mentioned earlier on, I adopted a herd (aka a squirm!) of red wigglers and put them in a green bin provided by Cathy's Crawly Composters. Things were going fine up until one fateful day when I visited a friend's farm and he gave me a bagful of dried leaves to add as carbon for the worms. Made sense to me; worms generally like dried leaves and natural carbon sources. So, I added the leaves to the bin and mixed them in a bit. After a few days, periodically checking on my worms, I noticed a few small bugs on the inside of the bin. My first thought was "oh no, fruit flies. What am I doing wrong now?" but upon closer inspection they weren't flying away and they were smaller than fruit flies (which generally get fat if there is plentiful food around). I left it at that, but the next day I checked again and the whole bin was overrun with these small, fast moving little things. BIG problems. I knew I had to deal with it so I picked up the whole bin, bugs worms and all and put it outside on my balcony while I frantically tried to clean up the stray little bugs that had escaped with a vacuum.
As it happens, that was right about the time Toronto experienced a spring deep freeze- temperatures were well below freezing and that very night was the night we also got a deluge of snowfall. So, I figured that the cold would kill the bugs and the worms would hopefully huddle together in the centre of their pile, keep themselves insulated from the cold with their bedding and then everything would be fine. I was only partly right. I phoned my friend who gave me the leaves and told him the story. He identified the bugs as spider mites which he assured me didn't bite but that they were definitely from the leaves and he should have told me but didn't think about it at the time. No kidding. So, I asked him what I had to do now- either save the worms or let them freeze to death essentially were my options.
He told me that if I wanted to save the worms, I would have to collect them individually, put them in a yogurt container and bathe them to make sure they were clean of all debris and possible mites. Afterward, I'd have to make them a whole new container with fresh bedding and food. *sigh* I really didnt' want to let my herd die so I went out in the bitter cold and tried to scoop up the worms. Luckily my prediction that they would huddle was correct, so it didnt' take long to find them and scoop them en mass into a container and bring them inside where it was warm. However, almost immediately the mites started escaping out of the container and I knew that I had to start the bathing process immediately. Those darn mites didnt' die after only a few hours in the cold, so the only option left was to clean off the worms I saved and make sure they had a clean new home.
This is where it got interesting for me. I was told to use a sieve to put the worms in and essentially rinse them off like you would spaghetti. I also was instructed to make sure the sieve was fine enough that the worms couldn't fall through. Well, I thought, I have a sieve that spaghetti doesn't fall through so this should be good enough. Red wigglers aren't called red wigglers for nothing. As I was trying to rinse off my worms, using the most tepid, gently flowing stream of water I could muster from my tap, they came alive and then some. In fact, some of them, evidently not liking the shower of water, were trying to escape through the holes of the sieve. Slippery worms they were, some of them made it half way and then got themeselves stuck so I had to hold the sieve in one hand on the bottom to prevent this, while with the other hand trying to collect the stray worms that managed to abandon ship altogether and unknowingly were making their way to their doom down the drain. No easy task doing this while wearing rubber gloves, either.
Finally after repeatedly switching the worms from the yogurt container full of water to rinsing them in the sieve, and trying to rinse of each worm individually (just to be safe), I tried to give them one final rinse and accidentally turned the hot water tap too far and gave my worms what looked like an electric shock. I felt so bad, really didn't mean to do it but after that they were very displeased. Finally I put them in the yogurt container with some water to rest a bit while I washed up everything and began the process of finding them a new home. I had to borrow a ziploc bin and took about half an hour shredding fresh newspaper by hand till my fingertips were black. To make amends, I pureed some of the finest worm food I could find to make it easy for them to eat and placed the clean worms in their new home.
Fast forward a week and a half later- my worms got transferred to a slightly larger bin and have been doing o.k. I found a few dead worms in the corners of the bin but the ones that have survived look really healthy and well-fed so I'm hoping that these strong ones will reproduce and create a new strong herd for me. There is no strong odour (except for when the worms die- they really stink when they're dead), so I know things are back to normal. I'm considering keeping them in the bin they are in (it's clear but they seem to like it so far) and just adding another one of the same size on top to start building a worm tower. As I build it I will post pictures and give some updates on whether or not it works.
So, the moral of the story is: if you are going to worm compost indoors, DO NOT include carbon materials from the outdoors, even if it doesn't look dirty. If your composter is kept outdoors, that is a different story of course, but generally it's better to stick to carbon sources like newspaper, cardboard, paper egg cartons, etc. It was a very interesting learning experience for me, and even though it wasn't funny at the time now when I look back on it I can' t help but chuckle. Me giving my worms a bath, trying to convince my worms not to embark on a suicide mission down the drain, apologizing frantically for shocking them with hot water..hee hee hee.
I also realized afterward that I really have gotten attached to them, bless their little wormy hearts!
Happy worm composting, everyone!
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