The worms have arrived!

These are my eisenia fetida, a.k.a., Red Wigglers. They came from Texas Wild West Wigglers (2 pounds for $30 + $4.30 in postage, an average price for that many worms). Shipped on Feb 16, 1999, they came in a cloth sack in a cardboard box and I put all but a dozen into three bins. One was originally one of those huge metal tins full of popcorn you get at Xmas; the other two are coolers. Their bedding is shredded office paper and newspaper.

 Texas Wild West Wigglers (Red that is)
          Philip & Sandra Hincks
          132 Wellington Ln
          Wichita Falls, Texas 76305
          phone: 940-851-0334
          fax: 940-761-2513
          Redworms 1lb at $15.00 (includes shipping). 

Red River Wigglers Nolen Hicks HC 73 Box 240 Burneyville OK, 73430 580-276-2883 wigglers@ardmore.com

I was surprised that within four hours, each had a little white stripe from eating the plain white paper! With the addition of something like lawn clippings, they turn used paper into amazingly good rich black soil. Along with them there are numerous tiny things that symbiotically help to break the paper down, like little mites.

The remaining dozen went into my latest invention: the desktop wormbin, a 7" clear plastic container.

They're breeding. For those who don't already know, this is accomplished by two worms making a kind of jelly-suit that wraps both of them. They trade seed, both lay eggs, then they both wriggle out, leaving a blob of gel with up to 20 embryos inside it.

...The desktop wormbin thrives. The remainder of the worm population now inhabits 2 plastic coolers and 2 drums. About three ounces were culled from all of these, to live in the garden. There was a problem with little flies in one so I cut open a trashbag and placed it close to the bedding and up the sides. This gave them no room in which to buzz around and the entrapped moisture made being a fly much more difficult.

Here's the current population of the desktop bin. This is the little formation you get when you "table" a bin, that is, shine a bright light and remove the loose soil from the top. At the bottom you are left with a squirmy mass, which I've dubbed a "pie".

...Eggs have appeared here, there, and everywhere. I picked one up, expecting it to be rubbery and fragile. In fact, it was firm and smooth and seems to be pretty tough, with an outside not unlike a gelcap Vitamin E. They started out as translucent and yellow-gold, shaped like a sphere with bumps at two ends or like a lemon. They darkened after about two weeks.
...A beautiful phenomenon that I haven't managed to photograph has caught my eye. Some of the worms have an opalescent sheen. It ranges from a pearlescence to flashes of blue-green to rival the colors of a morpho butterfly.

(DESKTOP WORMBIN: The same box
from the earlier picture: the
paper really has turned into black
dirt!)

...It occurs to me that the castings seem to have a property of holding moisture longer than other kinds of dirt. Handling the soil with my hands has left my skin not too cold, soft and strangely clean. It's just the opposite of playing with clay, which makes my hands freezy-cold, dries my skin, and resists washing off even with soap. I've decided that a portion of the first castings will be mixed with sand to see if cacti do well in it.

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Update: Sun. August 15, 1999

I'm up to three coolers. They're crawling with alot of worms and very little paper, it's all a greyish damp fluff. The fourth bin, round and made of plastic, was turned out into the garden. The Desktop Bin, what I call my Ambassador Worms, is also doing fine on apple cores and banana peels and well-used tea leaves.

I've started looking around for homes for the population boom I'll be facing probably in about 2 months.

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Update: September 10, 1999

The round drums have a tendency to smell bad for the first few days after I've buried garbage so I've taken those worms and sold them to the Philly Chili Company. I used a handful of the round drum worms to start bin made from a foam cooler (from the gas station Exxon). I like how this foam ice-chest has a lid that clips on, and a handle.

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Update: Mon. January 17, 2000

The worm populations are booming again, in three ice-chests. The foam cooler works *great*. On the last day of 1999, I planted pumpkin seeds in worm castings; they're now about 6" tall, with three (real) leaves each. ZOOM!! My cacti grown from seeds in the sand/castings mix are now 3" tall. (So now I know, cacti do just fine in it.) Pretty soon I'll Table all three bins and put a few pounds of worms in bags and sell them.

MILLIPEDES?!

I've stumbled onto a more "Texan" species for composting: millipedes! Knowing my worms hate oak leaves, I piled them in a corner of the garden. Going back later (last year) I found a population of 'pedes milling about happily. I confess my first reaction was horror. Squirmy wet worms were one thing, but these hard-shelled glossy dark brown were quite another. Didn't they bite? weren't they poisonous? What if they got into the worm bins, would they eat all the worms??

After a little research, I was relieved to find that they didn't bite, and they were, like worms, eaters of decaying plant matter. (It's *centipedes* that bite, and are carnivorous.) They need humidity and won't infest anyplace sufficiently dry. How do they metabolize the tanin of the oak leaves? Are 'pede castings any good for farming? Do they get along with worms?

so...I've started trying to grow them in a little tank.

It's Nov. 7, 2001. I gave most of my worms away to neighborhood farmers and gardeners. Working at Zippity, I had no time to feed them. My Desktop Bin is still going just fine; I have nine worms left. I think I'm going to order some more of them now. 8)