Vermicomposting Challenge: Indoor Worm Bin Conclusion

Almost two months ago, I created an indoors worm bin made of an old 5-gallon water container.  My objective was to see how long it would take to fully compost a full container with just 10 small African Nightcrawlers.   Well, I'm prematurely ending that experiment.  The contents are starting to look icky.  For some reason, there's so much moisture in the bin already.  I didn't put a catch basin below the bin (just a newspaper) so it has already drenched the newspaper.  Rats, right?  Anyway, the volume has declined to about 1/5, but the newspapers are also packed tight.

I can't tell if the worm count has increased since I'm not very comfortable poking around this bin. However, I found an 8-inch worm!  I am guessing my little worms have matured already.

Well since it was all too wet, I ended the experiment by adding a good number of dry shredded newspaper on top of the contents.  Oh well, I guess it'll be an active bin again.

Just for your viewing pleasure too, I added a picture of my worms.  These came from my recent vermicompost harvest.   I think the lesson there is not to use the harvested vermicompost at once.  I left them for two weeks at an ice cream container and lots of new worms showed up!  Apparently, there were lots of cocoons in the vermicompost. 

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