Creepy Crawly Worms in the Compost

The worms are still alive.  That is pretty amazing because I did think they would be dead by now.

It’s cold, like in the low teens at night since I live in the high desert.  The amount of food scraps that are being put into that one bin is huge, like I think the family is now close to four pounds a week.  I was thinking the worms would just die from the heaps of food and the bacteria destroying the food source up leaving the worms with slim pickings.  Finally, I thought they would be dead because I honestly am not good with organic living things that aren’t green.

But they are alive, they  have spread throughout the bin and they are devouring the food.  I find they they are loving all the organic banana peels we have dumped in there.

Some of the other stuff I been putting in there have been bread.  We had some stale bread crumbs along with moldy bread that I also put in there.  Another thing I put in there was a decomposing accelerator called Bokashi.

According to the website Bokashi “is made by fermenting wheat bran with molasses and SCD Probiotics. Bokashi has traditionally been used by Japanese farmers as a soil amendment to increase the nutrient level and microbial diversity of the soil. Bokashi is a Japanese word that means “fermented organic matter.” It can be used as a soil amendment to increase the nutrient level and microbial diversity of the soil for planting.”

I used it because I am a first time composter and didn’t want to fail largely out of the fear that failure here would set back my ability to get my parents to agree to other organic urban farming projects.  Right now when I dig into the material I am beginning to see the start of “organic soil matter”.  The Bokashi has also gotten the level of bacteria/fungus growth up exponentially in the organic material.

The other fascinating thing is that while I read everywhere that you could put seeds into the compost heap and that it would kill the seeds from growing.  However, the seeds from melons and gourds and cucumbers were germinating all over the place.  Which gets me worried that if any botanical pests were able to get their seeds into the heap they will have access to all the benefits- water, nutrients and sun light.  Anyway, below is a short video of the worms when they were put into the compost.  Enjoy my narrative.