I don't consider myself as a pro in gardening and all its perks and I also pretend to be. As in...there are a lot of rookie mistakes to be made and in in general I make all of them.
So when I set up a wormhotel last year and started it from scratch and it acually worked I was more than surprised. One of the things that I always fall for is that I get a bit too comfortable and don't pay enough attention anymore to what is happening.
This happend to my worms as well. Since a wormhotel is a living thing it is also prone to weather conditions. As in...the worms don't like the heat too much and they will try to escape their home looking for cooler areas. But they also don't like the cold too much as they are very moisty and they will first go in some sort of hibernation, and then they just will die or also try to escape in the process.
Everything on this escaping worms situation happened unfortunately as I wrote about in this post
Get this party started!
Not all worms had died during this winter break, a couple of them were still left. I guess there are also a bunch of eggs in the broken down stuff which eventually give little worms back. You can already see in the the lowest container that there is a lot of motion in there which eventually hopefully give more new life.
Now I recently got this flashy gift of two containers full of worms from my buddy @dersjoerd who had a way better winter season with his worms and even had a chance to thin out his population by giving some to me. Now that is what I call cool!
So I put my new worms together with the old ones on the already nice container and made some adjustments to make them feel at home.
First of all, it is still really cold here during the nights so I have kept my worm container inside the shed at the moment for them to not freeze to death or try to escape.
Second of all, worms don't like lights at all and will stay away from it. So I have kept a little light outside of their container so it stays more attractive for them to stay inside the container.
I also slashed an old cucumber into pieces since that seems to be their favourite food as like a starter to their new home with some 'comfortfood' as I would call it hahaha.
This is going just fine!
What is even the best thing?
This cucumber thing is really working out as everytime you lift a piece of the cucumber, there is a ton of worms hanging on to it or living underneith of it. So that is really working. But it is almost difficult in the jungle of internet bonanza to find usefull info as everything is just repeating each other. Don't feed onion, don't feed peppers. These guys have no taste buds so who cares... They eat everything but I guess the texture of cucumber is easy for them.
I know I need to add a lot more browns in there for a more dry mixture since it is always a bit too wet, that I can see. But for the rest.....All the internet heroes are just repeating themselves, and you have to filter a bit in what is reasonable.
But for now a week later after adding these worms, a signs are on green for getting a decent population and make the most awesome eco nutricious fertilizer at home.
Why was I doing this with the worms again??
The idea is that the worms eat the scraps and that they leave poo from that food and that is the part that you use. But also parts that are not fully digested by the worms as yet as just decomposing and that is also perfect for in the garden.
So my green food scraps disappear in there and also a serious amount of cardboard and paper that is just left over. After that...I have awesome natural fertiliser to use on my plants. YAY!