Wood Worm Farms

In my perionyx excavatus experiment I have mixed results.
The P.E. numbers decreased.
Several factors could be responsible for this:
1. There was a problem with other worms i.e. Eisenia Fetida and European Nightcrawlers got into P.E. bin by my error. In my bin structure Eisenia Fetida seems to outcompete P.E.
2. I kept their bin outdoors during Canadian 'warmer' months.
3. It seems like the conditions (food, humidity, bedding, etc) were significantly different in my bin, then in the place, they lived before.
If so, they should adopt and multiply again. In spite of all this I still see many P.E. when feeding the worms or digging into compost.

Some findings by now:
1. I never notice any P.E. left their bin.
2. P.E. peacefully coexist with both Red Worms and European Nightcrawlers. It seems like in abundance of food they occupy different niches.
3. In wooden bins P.E. do not outcompete other worms, rather opposite.
4. I didn't notice any significant improvement in decomposting rate or compost quality by now.
5. P.E. are capable to survive in temperature 10C - 15C for at least 5 months.

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Here is the whole vermicompost generated from a family of 5 person for
5.5 months.
All the allowed compostable material was sent to compost.
The total weight of the compost is 40 pounds.
Estimating our weekly garbage generation as 5lb, we produced 115 pounds of food scrap during this time.
So reduction ratio is 23:8 or 65%.
The total volume of the produced compost is about 10 cu.ft. So that proves, that there is no problem to store vermicompost during the winter time even with relative shortage of space.

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This year I plan to renew the Canadian Nightcrawler experiment.
The experiment of the last year went normally, but after worms were released I found all of them
dead in that place... Probably they switched to winter mode and were
not ready for a cold night.
This year I shall release them more cautiously or not release at all.

The aim of this experiment is to find out whether Canadian Nightcrawlers are capable to process effectively any kind of organic waste and is it possible to make a continuous flow process using them.

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When snow melted I discovered those strange piles on my backyard.
They appeared to be dandelion roots. Curious of who and why extracted and heaped so many roots I studied the surroundings and discovered many
holes and tunnels leading to the heaps. It looked like a work of local field mice (I can't identify them precisely).
Immediately arose a question: why did they do this?
Together with my kids we developed 3 theories:
1. The population of local backyard mice grown, thanks to vermicomposting program, and needs more food.
2. Due to the early winter the mice ran out of their regular food and turned to dandelion roots (abundant in my backyard), and due to early spring they didn't consume all of them (unfortunately).
3. The mice decided to offer a sacrifice to free their Queen from captivity.

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One more step toward the finished compost.

It's interesting that I found several European Nightcrawlers in the first tray, when I was emptying it.
Since the last change I used a perforated plastic sheet to save moisture and the first tray became too wet. This created favorable
conditions for European Nightcrawlers. Those worms got to this bin in Summer from another bin. They probably escaped their bin and somehow colonized the nearest plastic bag with dry leafs, that I used for bedding for all the bins. (I discovered holes in that bag later.) I was surprised that they remained alive in spite of hard competition from Tiger Worms.

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