Mosquitoes

Both my worm bins seem to be suffering from an infestation of mosquitoes. I opened the lids to dump some scraps and was greeted by a cloud of them both times. The good news is I also seem to have a few spiders who have set shop between the two bins and I am hopeful that they will help control the population. But that was a lot of mosquitoes, should I be concerned?

The bins are working well now, I can dump food on a regular basis and have been collecting compost every now and then to sprinkle in the pots outside. I still find the conditions a bit damp, maybe I'll add dry bedding this week to see if I can lower the moisture level.

Hopefully nobody starts complaining about mosquitoes flying around the garage :-(

Eeewww, I mean... cool!

Wow. It feels like someone finally found the spring switch and turned it on this weekend. We were fortunate to get two days of sun and warm weather. I expect to see a few burnt faces tomorrow at work... people never learn.

I got myself a set of wheels yesterday (a Nissan Versa, cute little car, not much juice but at least it was barely sipping away at the gas) to visit my former boss (former from a long time ago) Lindsay. Obviously, having a car means running all the heavy-duty errands, like grocery shopping (cans) and picking up two worm composting bins from a friend in Kits.

I kinda scored on the composting. I few months back, I wrote about having to wait until April to take a course with the Vancouver Composting centre to get a bin, which meant no compost until the end of the summer. My friend's bins were already started, so I was hoping for a harvest within the next few weeks. I placed the bins downstairs in the garage, where it's dark and the temperature will stay fairly constant.

I didn't play much with the bins yesterday, as I was getting ready for dinner. It was a really nice drive to Anmore and an even nicer dinner with Lindsay, Geoff and Lucas (and Raven and Rosie, the dogs). I always love coming back to their house, this is where I stayed when I first moved to BC in 2002. They hosted me for a few weeks while my apartment was getting set up, offered a car to pick up miscellaneous items at IKEA, and invited me over at Christmas so I wouldn't be by myself. Fond memories indeed.

Today, I was on a mission: poke through the bins to see how much compost was ready to harvest. I can't bring the bins up to my balcony, they're too heavy to carry around. If it was harvest time, I intended to transfer most of the content to a bucket and then bring the bucket to the balcony, leaving it outside. The worms would crawl to the bottom, I could harvest the top soil in layers, until all was left was a bunch of worms ready to go back to a new bedding. It was a great plan.

Except that it didn't really work that way. I pulled the cover away from the first bin, mostly in the dark, and could hear the rustling of little critters. I used a flashlight to get a better idea of what was crawling around and boy, I wish I hadn't. The worms are fine, no problem, but the bugs? I read some literature online about worm composting and it's normal for other critters to set shop in there, but that many? Most were pill bugs, little grey bugs with a hard shell. I read that they chew through the hard stuff, very useful, but creepy.

It smelled a bit ripe in the bin, so I started poking around with a plastic garden fork to move the content around and discovered that a lot of food hadn't been eaten yet. Worms don't eat food immediately after you leave it in there, it takes a few days before the scraps get really gross and worm enticing. I guess my friend had a bag of apples that went bad, 'cause I saw several almost full apples in the bin. It really looked like there was enough food in there for another week. But the soil was really wet (the bins were left outside and we've had pretty rainy weather), and there was no bedding left, so I shredded a few sheets of newspaper and mixed it in, along with egg shells (to rebalance the acidity). I left the other bin untouched, the worms had enough food.

So, it will be another week (at least) until I can start keeping kitchen scraps in a container on the counter instead of throwing them in the trash. The bins are full of compost, but there was too much uneaten food to harvest. At least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Composting woes

On a beautiful, sunny and warm February day in Vancouver, it's easy to start thinking about spring, flowers, cleaning your patio planters and, soon, enough, what plants you're going to grow in there. And what best ingredient to grow healthy plants than compost. Which obviously reminded me that I hadn't looked into how to get a worm compost bin set up at home yet.

During Christmas, dad showed me his worm compost in the basement and even offered to send me home with a handful of critters. Somehow, I wasn't sure how I would pass a container full of worms through security ('cause they would freeze in checked-in luggage) if they won't even let you carry on a sealed bottle of wine. And, after all, how hard can it be to get worms, a plastic bin, and a few instructions on how to keep the creatures happy and chewing away at your food scraps?

A bit hard, if you want to start this immediately.

Today, I called the Vancouver Composting Hotline (I'm not kidding!) to book an appointment for a worm-composting introduction session. For $25, you get the basic kit to get you started (bin, bedding, worms) and a one-hour overview on this method of composting. Pretty good deal, as I've seen sites advertising worms for sale for $35 per pound (really?). Unfortunately, the first available appointment is on April 12. While I'm happy to hear that these sessions are popular, this is still two months away and if I start in April, I won't get any usable compost until July.

So, maybe I'll start asking friends if anyone knows anyone who already has a worm compost and wouldn't mind parting with a few worms to spread the composting love.