It has been more than half a year since I have had my worm compost factory going on. For the people who are not aware of how a worm compost system at home works, this is really easy.
By making some containers with air holes in there and regularly tossing in your foodscraps and cardboard left overs, the special compost worms do their business by eating your food waste. Their poo is fantastic compost and your garden will love it.
I have had a couple of batches of compost since the summer and it was always a good deal. Even though the compost was a bit too watery because I didn't add enough browns (old leaves or compost), also the fluid coming from the compost is a great fertilizer. You could really see the garden and the allotment come alive.
Brown tea for the allotment
I have written a couple of posts about this whole process. In this post you can read how I built the wormhotel and in this first update you could see the progress going on. Also a couple months later in this post I was super happy with the progress and the worms were doing just fine!
The population was growing and increasing rapidly and I saw a lot of happy crawlers.
Short after that the issues started with my worm friends
After being away for a while I could already notice that again the compost was too wet and there was too much moist in there. I was gone for a while and when I came back the most low container was almost overflowing with fluid. Because of this the container on top was also really moisty and the worms had moved to a container higher again.
On the picture here above the fluid level was still reasonable but it increased a lot. When I was tossing out the overflowing fluid I also saw a lot of drowned worms in there. First fail of the worm momma here.
The combo of not emptying the container before I left, not enough browns to make the compost more dry, rain coming in on the sides of the container and just too much poo production over the longer period of time turned out to be a flood fest.
No bueno
It turned out even worse when the frost came :(
Autumn turned into winter and I moved my containers to a better location. The worms don't like the cold and I got them out of the wind around a corner, underneith a little roof and against the walls of the house.
To be this seemed decent shelter as the house would present some heat and the wind would not be into place. When I checked the worms were all cuddled up to each other, I guess to use the heat from each others little bodies. They seemed relaxed!
But then the snow came......
And now 5 days later the snow is still there which means the frost is also still there. I went to to check in the container if the worms were still in there and how they were doing. I digged a bit through the foodscraps and saw nothing there......
Then I saw the pattern of dead frozen worms on the floor....
I guess they have escaped the container because of the cold seeking for something warmer, but outside it was only colder and they crawled inside the frost.
Crap...I am such a terrible worm keeping. It is a learning school as I didn't know how to do all this, but I feel really bad that I didn't act more thouroughly in trying to prevent this. I should have just taken them to a better location and not have waited so passively.
Gardening is such a learning school... Poor worms....
You did what you could and with every mistake you learn, this is gardening and even applies to the care of worms and other species, too bad they died 😢 but I hope you can try again and this time it turns out well 🙏
Will try again for sure! Maybe some have laid eggs that will come out, but will get some again for sure and get the population going again.
It is a big learning school!
well, cold is still better than hot weather, i tried this once. during summer. in asia summer is the worst thing. they were okay for 2 days, and on a heat wave they all just died, and since it was freakishly hot it smelled f****** terrible....
Oeee that is terrible as well!
Yeah 15-25 degrees Celsius is like the sweet spot, but we cant have it all right.
Adapt adapt adapt
I have terrible luck with plants, no so much with animals... but the trick is to not give up, just like everything in life.
It is indeed. One big learning moment and not giving up. Get the system started again when it is a bit warmer again and do some stuff to prevent this from happening again.