Mishaps and memories in a tropical wonderland. Currently I am focusing on increasing my worm population and their yield of vermicompost so that I can use the humus to improve my garden soil and as soil blocks for my seedlings. This blog will follow my experiments in the garden and is open to questions and suggestions. Enjoy!
About a week and a half ago I was starting to get some fruit flies interested in my worm bin. Since the trays aren't deep enough to cover the newly added kitchen scraps with enough bedding to keep the fruit flies out, I've been looking for other means to deter them by. I happened upon some fresh coconut husk that I decided to pull apart and add to the top of my tray as extra bedding since worms like coconut coir. Turns out it does a good job of minimizing fruit fly activity. As it breaks down and more items are added on top, it also provides excellent aeration.
UPDATE JAN. 24, 2010: The shredded coconut husk helped for a week or two, and then the fruit flies learned how to navigate through it.
This past sunday, I embarked on a desperate mission to eradicate the extremely invasive New Zealand Mud Snail.
According to the Center for Invasive Species Research in Riverside, California, the color of the snail shell is variable, and can range from gray and dark brown to light brown. The snail is usually 4-6 mm in length in areas that have been invaded, but snails can grow to almost twice this size, up to 12 mm, in New Zealand where populations are much lower. New Zealand mud snail is a nocturnal grazer that feeds on plant and animal detritus, algae, and diatoms. Invasive populations have an unusual mode of reproduction. New Zealand mud snails can reproduce asexually and female snails are born with developing embryos inside them. Consequently, all populations consist of genetically identical clones. In New Zealand, native mud snail populations consist of sexually reproducing populations (the males make up less than 5% of the populations) and asexually reproducing females. Each snail can produce around 230 offspring a year, and reproduction typically occurs during the spring and summer.
Snails can live for 24 hrs without water, and for up to 50 days on damp surfaces. The snail is . . . tolerant of estuarine conditions and can live at depths of up to 45 m on solid and silty substrates. Once introduced into a new area, New Zealand mud snails can reach densities exceeding 500,000 per square meter. (http://cisr.ucr.edu).
Upon my discovery as to what the snails in my bin were, I set to figuring out how to get rid of them. After discussing things on a couple of different forums, I decided that the only way would be to get rid of all of my bedding, wash my bin with the hottest water I could stand, and rinse off my worms and cocoons the best that I could. Then I put them in fresh bedding and left them alone for several days. The best way to kill the snails is to put them in salt water, so I took all of my contaminated bedding and dumped it in salt water and then disposed of it.
Today I checked my worms to make sure that I did have a few at least, that survived the stress. They were happily munching away on the rotting food and bedding I had provided for them. Hopefully there are no remnants left of the snails so I won't have to put my worms through that again.
The aspiration of Firefly Gardens is to help make people more aware of vermicomposting, it's benefits and how easy it is to do. Hopefully others will find the information found here to be inspirational and helpful by learning from my experiences in worm farming. Although the majority of the blog centers on raising worms and creating compost, there will also be other helpful information about gardening and homesteading.
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