Food and Bedding - 2023 12 27

 

This is so interesting. I aerated my worm bins and in the process added alfalfa pellets and coffee chaff to help dry out the wet food and bedding. I did not understand the difference between food and bedding, and also, what IS food or bedding.

It turns out alfalfa pellets are food. Coffee chaff is bedding. What the worms are eating is the bacteria that grows on the food. Sometimes they eat bedding too, but it takes much longer to be edible for the worms as the bacteria does not grow as quickly on the 'brown' bedding. Bacteria grows quickly on the 'green' food.

When I checked the temperature of the bin the day before, the thermometer was registering the temperature as slightly above least favourable (too cool). 

I thought I needed to turn up the heat in the worm barn and I adjusted it slightly upward. This did not make much a difference to the temperature in the bin. However, the day after I added the alfalfa pellets, the temperature had climbed into least favourable again, but this time it was getting too hot.

When I put my hands into the organic material I could feel how warm it was to touch. This had happened overnight. What it signified was that I had too high a concentration of green food compared to the brown bedding and it was allowing too much bacterial activity to heat up the area. In one bin the temperature was warmer but not too hot, the worms were active in the warm area. In another bin the temperature was too high and there were no worms in the main warm area. Where I found the worms in that bin was deep under the surface and on the border between the old area of castings and dirt and the new, too hot, food. They were eating what they could from the edge.

I made a mixture of sawdust and water and mixed that into the hot area. The sawdust would bring balance by introducing more brown organic matter. I added water because the heat generated by the composting action had dried out the bedding. 

I'll check it today and see how it is going.