A Wonderful Gardening Day!

 Not only did my husband harvest and eat the very first crop of 2022 (asparagus) today, I discovered that tiny shoots of green are appearing in our cold frame, despite the below-freezing nights we've had since I planted them April 9, a week ago!  Thrilled seems like an inadequate word -- I am dancing with delight!

And I added another tray to our worm farm.  (I'm going to call this "leveling up," an inside joke for all you D&D fans.)

 

 We started the worm farm December 1.  Per the instructions, we should have needed that second tray sooner than we did.  Or maybe I was late in getting it in there.  It sinks down quite a bit into the first tray, so the first tray probably didn't need to be that full in order for the worms to get from one to the other. 

Worms LOVE cucumbers, by the way...

  

What do I think of worm farming? Well, they're quiet and low maintenance!  They don't smell unless my husband has added too much food, and then I just leave the lid off for a few hours.  (Smelling is a sign of anaerobic decomposition -- not enough air, usually caused by more food than the worms and microbes can keep up with.) I wouldn't say it is "fun for the whole family," mostly because as pets worms are BORING.  They don't interact. They don't like light and they don't like to be touched. If they are happy, they move down into the soil, so you can't see them.

Also, it's really hard to tell how you are doing as a worm guardian.  I told my Mom that this must be like being a new parent:  You urgently want to know that everything is ok, and communication is vague and hard to decipher.  At least a baby will cry when she is unhappy.  But worms?  You get nothing.  If they are unhappy, they either try to escape (hasn't happen so far) or they die.  (Not sure on that.)  So you lean over the tray and whisper to creatures who may or may not have ears: "Are you too hot?  Too cold?  Too moist?  Too wet?  Are you hungry?  Am I overfeeding you?"  Worms can die from overfeeding, so the last is not an idle question.

They do consume food waste, maybe a quarter of what we produce in terms of apple cores and banana peels.  (Keep in mind we produce more peels, rinds, cores, and other remnants of food prep than most people do because 90% of what we eat is homemade.)  I'm OK with 25% - for one thing, I want to continue to have some to add to our big compost heap, and for another, that amount should increase as the number of worms increases.

I wish I knew if we had more worms than when we started. If you do everything perfectly, their numbers are supposed to double every 90 days, eventually topping out as they adjust their breeding based on their food supply.

So far, we haven't harvested any worm castings, which was the whole point of the exercise. I'm going to wait until we have the third tray going, so it will be a while.  In theory when the whole system is up and running, you can get as much as a tray a month.

If you are considering getting worms, I wouldn't necessarily let this discourage you.  Just know that it takes a loooong time before there is a return on your investment, if it is castings you are after.  The initial expense also makes me think that it is going to be years before we break even in terms of increased garden productivity.  I'm not sure if I'm glad I did it yet.  Ask me next summer!  :)