Building a Child's Worm Farm

Today I made a worm farm for my daughter. The idea was from a book with kid's crafts. It is a jar with a layer of sand, a layer of potting soil, another layer of sand and another of soil and then the worms and compost with aged leaves on top. Am hoping to teach her about what worms do and to allow myself the opportunity to observe them a little bit closer. I just it in a dark place and kept the lid off so that it can stay aerated. The sand I used was from the beach that I flushed several times with fresh water. Below is a time lapse of the worm farm taken over a period of one month.

Mission: Extraction

Today I invaded my worm bin trays on a mission. Since I learned this week that papaya seeds are very bad for my worm population, I decided that I had no other choice than to pull out all of the seeds. I quickly realized that was a hopeless task. There were papaya seeds everywhere, and very difficult to distinguish in all of the vermicompost. After a few minutes, I changed my strategy. I was going to have to extract the worms and worm eggs instead!

After sifting through the two trays which had papaya seeds in them and placing the worms and eggs in a different tray, I dumped the contaminated vermicompost and bedding into my husband's compost bin.

Fortunately, there were many fresh eggs and newly hatched worms, so I was able to save my worm population from an impending sterilization even though the seeds had been in there for several weeks.

Hopefully the transition won't shock them too much and they'll go back to eating, pooping and procreating soon!

Seeds, sterility & a hearty humbug!

What is the one thing you're not supposed to feed your vermicomposting worms? Sure, there are several things which aren't beneficial to the system, but what item can actually be quite damaging to your worm farm? Papaya seeds. Worms love the flesh and the rinds, but the seeds can cause them to become sterile. The seeds don't decompose for a very long time and continually leech a toxin into the bin which causes the worms to lose their virility. Which means, if you're not careful, your worm population could die off.

So the next time you throw your papaya into the bin, be sure to remove those seeds first. Incidentally, if you live in the right climate, they can be quite easy to sprout and grow trees from.

One more tidbit to remember, when feeding your worms, be sure to mix up the type of food you give them, if you constantly give them a lot of wet, fleshy foods, it is possible that the bin will become too wet which makes it all to susceptible to unfriendly conditions for your trusty little red friends. Include scraps of dryer items regularly as well to help keep a balanced moisture level in your bin.