YJL

Or I should say worm container since it’s tiny. This is my third attempt to make a worm bin, the previous two didn’t end well.

One month, the tiny and bigger worms are crawling all over, the tiny ones are actually on the half-decomposed food. Pre-rot jar is getting ready for their food.

First one was just a plastic shopping bag with many holes I punched and I dumped food scraps and a few worms, silly hoping that they would thrive in the bag. It didn’t go well certainly. Too big for second and still for a newbie like me, about 35×25×20 cm³ ~ 4.62 gallon. There was an air flow issue and I didn’t understand why those worms didn’t much eat the food I give them.

After two failures, I decided to re-start small.

Some plastic container — 929 cc ~ 1 quart

This tiny plastic container is 13 cm in diameter and 7 cm in height, that is 929 cc ~ 0.98 quart. I put in about 10 to 20 worms with some soil with them, the bedding was pieces of cardboard, small rectangular shape other than strips you see normally. I checked up on them every single day, make sure it’s moist enough and they have enough food.

The food I was feeding them was rotten food, not at beginning when I was still unaware that worms don’t eat fresh food, those veggie ends you just cut off. They eat decomposed food. So, I have a jar for those scraps to rot inside.

White mold growing crazy

The food got white mold growing, watery, and muddy. They looked disgusting in black or unrecognized color underneath the mold. They smelt just terribly awful, you think college student dorm room stinks, wait until you smell the food you lovely prepare for the worms.

The truth is the worm loves them!

An unexpected seedling peeping out

Some day after I put it, I saw small crawling thingy on the rotten food, suddenly realizing that those were babies. By the amount of new tiny worms, I could only conclude not only those worm I added were making babies in their free time. I didn’t think there were that many cocoon in the soil came with the worms, simply too many.

Close-up shot on the tiny worms

Now, a month later, those tiny white baby worms have grown to more than 1 cm in length. The adult ones are getting bigger, too. I now know I have succeeded with this container. Originally, I thought, sooner, probably in February, I would have to have a bigger accommodation for them or they will overcrowd, but after I saw the following:

Really overcrowded and lots of poop

It’s time to make them a new and bigger home.

The one apparent problem with my worm bin is I don’t see any worm casting as I see in the pictures on line. Maybe it’s too wet or wrong wigglers or they are still too tiny to poop big? I am not sure, but I am planning to mix these with soil directly, and hope that would work, or just make compost tea out of them.

If you are new to worm composting, start small and get to know them first. This plastic provide me an almost 360° view in reverse, I could watch them without disturb the worms too much.