Worm Poo Day (usually the 1st) has come and gone twice now, and I haven't posted much on the subject for a bit. July was a bit of a letdown, there really wasn't any point in harvesting, let alone posting about it. Trays were compacted with unfinished papergoods, and the castings that were there weren't worth the sort. So trays were swapped and we got on with life.
The summer heat wasn't kind to the process, as without central AC in the house (the duct work is there, but when the previous owner took off with one of the units, and the old clunker left behind shat itself last year - its an expensive project on the 'to do' list) the workshop area gets quite hot.
A box fan was put in front of the towers, and that helped quite a bit.
August was much better, with about 10lbs of castings from what was a rather difficult sort. Some cardboard along the way was plastic coated, so lots of little stips of plastic to be sorted. The worms themselves had retreated to the cooler lower levels of the bin, so lots of worm sorting too. This aside, the quality of castings was quite good, and although it's not up to the old levels, it's a lot better than nothing!
Some adjustments have been made as well. The idea of 'mo trays = mo fertilizer' doesn't really hold up, as you get more compacting with more weight - I've taken the 5 stack back down to 4. This means that I'll only be putting material through one tower this month. I'm also going to rework the harvest schedule to only harvesting from one tower every month. Now at first thoughts you may think that my output of fertilizer will half - but my thoughts are that this effectively doubles the time the worms can work on each tray. Since at the end of the month I still have a big sort of uneaten cardboard and paper in the tub, my problem isn't underfeeding. Given more time, I'll only be getting a single tray, but that tray should have more castings of a better quality.
This extra time being left alone should also give more time for them to increase their population. Even with the heat, that hasn't been an issue, but a higher population in each tub will increase productivity.
I'm once again thinking of expanding the worm farm and adding a tower. This will be an investment of some 100-120 dollars (given tower, worm, and possible upgrades all round) , so I'll be putting in a lot of thought before I bite the bullet. My last addition I took a tray from the old system and used it to 'kick start' the ecosystem, which sounds like a solid plan - although it still took me 4 months before it was in full swing - this is exactly the amount of time it took for new worms in a new tub, AND decreased the working population on the main bin. Albeit I did overzealously put that new tub into production, and made enough other mistakes that I can't objectively evaluate that plan. I'm currently flip flopping on whether to start one up 'from scratch' or to a tub swap and just take things slowly.
A third option would be to take a small population of worms and put them in a separate home-made container and build that populaton towards starting a new tub and monitor it's progress and population....
Decisions, decisions... but not any I need to make until Autumn/Winter.
We have nearly reached a point of no leftover papergoods in the house. The outside compost heap has been eating those for the past few months (both new and old shredded goods, and all large packing boxes) and with the fast growing summer grass, has been fed constant grass clippings as well. It is STILL only half full - maybe an inch over half after last weeks mowing. I'll continue to use this as the primary outlet of paper goods for a few more months until I get to an absolute zero balance of paper waste in the house (this will include the abundance of boxes still here from the move in a year ago, storage boxes, and the ongoing day to day of regular household trash). I'm really looking forward to seeing some of that compost in Spring - if all goes well it may be the last time I buy potting mix/garden soil.
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