Outside Worm Bin (Update 4)

I've been extremely busy the last few weeks with my personal life (wife is pregnant~twins) and I've also been spending a lot of time on my other hobbies that are more winter appropriate, so the worms have taken a backseat lately and it is now time for an update!

I started the day by grabbing a 5 gallon bucket and heading over to the field next door to see what my neighbor might have tossed out "into the wild" lol. I was able to find a lot of oranges, corn on the cobb, lemons, pumpkins and some other blobs of goop that used to be a vegetable at some point before decomposition made them unrecognizable!

I used a shovel to toss all these mold covered, rotting, goopy vegetables into a bucket of decomposing grass clippings I had already added.

The result was a nasty, goopy mess of fermenting goodness that the worms will go crazy over. I poured it into the corner of the bin where all the rabbit urine soaked newspaper has been tossed as a sort of "experiment" to see how it effects the worms and if they'll even move into that side of the bin, due to the high concentrations of salts. I doubted it, until I started to dig a little.

To my utter shock and surprise there was a giant fat worm soaking up that urine soaked newspaper and he seemed to be lively. I picked up a stick to get a closer look.

And he waved!

The best wave a worm can do without arms that is! (or hands XD)

So I decided to check on my other little experiment, you know, the one where I started the worms off in one corner of the bin (the front, upper right), used the left half of it (both corners) for a "hot compost" area (Leaves mixed with grass) as a sort of "natural heater" that keeps the bin warm all winter. The back right corner is where the rabbit urine soaked newspaper is added.

 

 

Then I realized something, I never actually added any grass to the left half, only leaves from the various trees in my yard, so I went and got some and mixed it in.

 

I made sure to mix the leaves in since a lot of them had compacted and started to form an ooze....

Then I mixed it all up more with some cardboard and other stuff that was already in the bin, being careful not to disturb the corner with the worms, which are now moving up, towards the urine soaked newspaper, eating all the pumpkins that are sitting in the middle, rotting and fermenting nicely.

I also pulled some pumpkin seeds out of the rot that were growing into seedlings and transplanted a few into the ground.

I checked to make sure there wasn't any root rot before I placed a small winter row. They'll either grow or they wont, but they have a much better chance at success in soil, rather than trash imo. :)

Until our next up(date) :D! See you in the garden!