Monday, February 12, 2007
Is it spring yet? My worm project has my attention...
Being a newcomer to this area, I've got a sneaking suspicion this really good weather I'm seeing right now is gonna turn on me in a few weeks. For the last week, we've been thawing and going through the "muddies".
Fortunately, the soil is so sandy that even if you track it in the house, it quickly dries and sweeps up very nicely.
When the dogs come in, there are many sets of muddy prints all across the carpet, into the kitchen, up on the couch and beds. I've got sand in my bed just from them coming in to greet me in the mornings.
I drew up the rough sketches for the first worm boxes. If all goes well, we should have enough castings to radically improve our own soil later this year. From everything I've read, success is a matter or trial and error.
I really believe that our biggest challenges here will be the temperature extremes. It's been very cold (at least 10 days below zero) at night. We'll have to plan for some kind of insulation from the cold for the worms.
In the summer, it's typically 85 to 95 but rarely over 100. By placing the beds against the north side concrete block wall, that should provide some shade, as well as some insulation.
We'll insulate the box with foam around the perimeter and on the lid. Since the worms will go pretty dormant in the winter, I think covering them with old hay and a tarp should provide decent protection.
We have several railroad ties and a bunch of lumber and some plywood on hand. Not sure how much is truly usable.
As for worms, Dusty has created a decent pile of manure and if we can't find enough worms there... the dairy down the road has acres of manure piles. Bet we'll find plenty there.
What are we gonna feed them?
They love raw veggie and fruit scraps. They'll also devour shredded paper, news paper and cardboard. Once we exhaust our own waste supply, I plan to contact the medical clinic for shredded paper, and the local grocery store for other scraps. Oh, they also like horse manure and we'll have plenty of that.
Labels: Worm Farm
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