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!