Wood Worm Farms

Actually this story started pretty sad. On July 20th I decided to add two bluegills from a Yamaska Park lake to my aquarium. That was a bad idea. While I went on vacations on the last week of July, new fish, probably weakened by bad transportation conditions, got sick with fungus. The sickness spread to aquarium "veterans" and I lost 3 of them in 2 weeks. One of newcomers also gone. Desperate to stop the epidemic, I changed fish diet to pure red worms. This seems to help. Even one remaining bluegill eats the worms and is still alive, despite loosing its eye to fungus.
It's interesting, that by time of my absence all the cleaner mollusks disappeared from my main aquarium. Probably fish ate them in lack of good food.

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(Melissa Jordan - third from the left)

It's amazing to find out, that a virtual person, found in Internet by common hobby really exists. Nothing can replace a live person-to-person contact. I had some hesitations before this meeting with Melissa, but she exceeded all the expectations. It was a pleasure to meet a friendly WORM heart and speak about things we like.
Melissa Jordan is an owner of Wormpost Northeast.
She is 15 years in worm composting and I think, she has a great future.
Hopefully Wood Worm Farms will be a part of it.

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Since the grass clipping compost cooled down, I started to give it to worms. At the same time I put all the home compost to the outdoor bin. This strategy appears to help against fruit flies in my indoor worm bins. In approximately 4 weeks they almost completely disappeared. I think the reason for this is luck of suitable food. Also the healthy microbial population could inhibit growth of fruit flies larva.

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Here is a new cardboard shredder.
The old cardboard shredder stopped working after getting jammed once.
It worked very well before this, cutting thin and medium thickness cardboard. I claimed it's extended warranty right after the manufacturer's warranty expired... There is no repair service for those items. Let's hope it will be recycled.

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Worms in the wooden chips + grass clippings pile was for me the biggest composting surprise of the year.
Those piles prove to be an excellent shelter for worms in any season. If they are sufficiently large, they don't completely freeze in winter and don't overheat in summer.
The wood chips are not insulated from the ground. There is no fear that worms will run away: they usually stay close to food. My wood chip piles are pretty big - approximately 5m x 3m x 1.5m hight. Initially they were a mix of wood chips and fresh grass clippings. They staid one year like this, then the worms were added. One more year they multiplied there. Now I simply put some food scrap on top of the pile to lure the worms out.

Actually one could see the wood chip piles as a kind of 'mixed' wooden worm bins, where the compost is mixed with wood, instead being contained in it.

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