Wood Worm Farms - About Us

Fruit Fly Trap

Fruit flies is a usual problem for vermicomposting.
The best way against them is prevention, but if you got them it's very hard to get rid of.
Fly traps could bring some remedy. They alone would not eliminate the fruit flies, but could greatly reduce their number.
The flies on the picture were trapped in two hours. (You can imagine the total number of still uncaught flies!)
The trap is a very simple homemade one. It consists of three pieces:
1. Glass jar
2. Paper cone
3. Jar's lid with its central part cut out
The paper cone is slightly wider then the jar's mouth. It's wrapped around the jar and tightened with the lid.
The cone has only one opening on it's summit - 2mm in diameter.
The bait is an apple core.
I find this trap amazingly effective. It virtually "sucks in" the flies wondering around in several hours.

The last day of Evil Pumpkin

Here a local samurai crushes poor pumpkins freeing their spirits for a
reincarnation through the compost in the next generation of pumpkins - next year.

Haloween Colors

I collect the pumpkins and the leaf bags from my neighbors, as many as I can.
We have no composting programs in Kirkland (for the leafs in plastic bags) and all these treasures will go to landfill if not picked right now. Chopped pumpkins and old leaves mixed together will make a good food for worms and hence a nice vermicompost.
It's interesting that in some extent I am doing the opposite of Bentley's work but with similar result.

Using Rain Water

This simple device serves me to collect rain water. Plants and worms like it more then chlorinated water from the tap.

Here it's in action.

All the construction consists of a paint tray, a piece of wood and an
8 litre (2 gallons) used mineral water plastic container.

Food Waiste in New York

Very nice presentation. It clearly explains why landfilling food waist is a problem. Also mentions vermicomposting.

Little Invader

Since August my outdoor bin came under constant attacks of an unknown invader. It punched holes in plastic mesh and poured out the bin's content. In the middle of September the invader - a little mouse - decided to permanently move to the bin.
After several attempts to solve the conflict by political means - removing the nest, patching the holes and adding more bedding materials - it became clear, that a military action is unavoidable.
On October 3rd, after short fight the mouse was taken a prisoner of war and named Bin.
Now Bin lives in an old hamster cage and is treated accordingly with Geneva convention - eats what the 'local soldiers' eat.

Canadian Nightcrawlers - end of experiment for this year

Autumn is coming and my composting worms move to the basement.
I decided to release to the wild my Canadian Nightcrawlers until it's not too cold for them to hide. It would be hard to move their bin to the basement since it's heavy and has a lot of 'visitors' inside.

I found 52 large worms in the bin - almost all of the 'sick' worms I putted there in April. I also found some cocoons (on the picture they are shown near the cocoons of Eisenia Fedita).
The experiment confirmed that the 'wild' worms can live in a modified bin - actually simply in a wooden box - and even process dead leaves and precomposted grass clippings in a good rate.
The worms themselves look healthy.

Here is the disassembled bin.

It is simply a 3 trays bin with all the separating meshes removed and a base made from wooden pieces to let the rain water out. It was filled for 2.5 trays with a local clay soil mixed with dead leaves, old grass clippings and sand.
The remaining half tray was used to feed the worms with dead leaves and some vegetable scrap. The worms seemed to enjoy this diet.

I will probably continue this experiment next spring.

Drying before reuse

It's a good idea to dry the trays before reusing them. This will extend the tray's life and - in some extent - reduce the number of unwanted 'guests' in the bin.

Canadian nigthcrawlers progress

I keep the 'wild' Canadian Nighcrawlers since April. They live in a slightly modified 3 trays bin: the bottom stand mesh is replaced by pieces of wood, the separating mesh is removed from each tray and the bin is filled with earth.
I tried to feed them with different kind of materials, I usually use for composting worms: food scrap, dead leaves, cardboard, pre-composted grass clippings, etc... But it looks like they mostly prefer dead leaves. Approximately 100 overage size nightcrawlers finish 1 lb of wet dead leaves (mostly maple) in 2 weeks.

I am not sure they will survive indoors, so I will probably release them before winter.

Coffee cups after 3 months in a worm bin

I was surprised that paper coffee cups do not fully decompost in the bin.
They leave after them thin sheets of a plastic-like material (signed with red marks).
Those cups were not signed as fully compostable, but were advertised as
nature friendly.
Worms seem to enjoy to live inside those pieces of plastic as they usually like to lie under plastic bags left on the ground.