Wom Bin 2 Population Update

Worm Bin 2 is about 3 weeks old.   When I prepared it, I put in about 7-8 worms in the bin.  Pretty small number, right?  Well I just wanted to see if I can make that population grow.  Since I was still really excited then, I fed those worms a lot of big pieces: whole bills, whole weeds, and stems with lots of leaves (mostly basil and malunggay).  You can see that in the picture.   Actually, when I checked earlier, I didn't find that many leaves.  Wow, maybe they were being eaten after all.  I say that because probably like all new vermicomposters, I think my worms are eating too slowly.  But then again, I did just put in 7-8 worms.  The mass of the small bin's contents is probably 30x more than the worms, so yeah, maybe it'll take them time to finish.

Anyway, I couldn't contain my curiosity earlier and did a worm count.  It's a small bin so it can be done.  I moved each piece slowly until one side just had worms.  Guess what?  I had about 15 worms there (including a couple of babies).  Not bad.  That's like a 100% improvement in three weeks.  ;-) I can't wait for next month!

Just for fun, I moved all the bedding and the food on one side of the container.  I left the worms with a little bedding and leaves and then I added a lot of crushed eggshells (for grit, or so I've read).  I'll check if they're still alive tomorrow.  I'm afraid the crushed eggshells might feel like broken glass.  Imagine slithering on broken glass.  But hey, maybe worms are different.  We'll see.

As an oddity though, you'd find that the most common term you'll read when describing the ideal bedding is "wrung-out sponge".  I don't know why.  I think people are too liberal when lifting from the net.  Anyway, the weird thing is that I kept spraying the bed (there were ants outside and I wanted to discourage them from entering the bin) and the water kept sliding down one side (I don't know...uneven flooring probably).  Now I didn't have drainage so the moisture was collecting.   Guess where I found most of the worms?  In the wettest part of the bin.  The bedding there had certainly more water than a "wrong-out sponge", but hey, if they like it there, I'll keep wetting it for them.   What's your experience in this regard? 

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