the end of May will be the one year
anniversary (hm, sounds like marriage... )
of the project. the worms have been chomping
away and making all sorts of little worms.
probably a few thousand worms total now, but
i have not counted. next time i turn out an
entire bin i will do a count as it will be
interesting to see how many of what kind i
can find. at 14 bins i can keep up with
whatever cooking scraps we can generate.

as winter went into spring i was worried they
weren't getting enough to eat since we'd both
been sick and there wasn't much cooking going
on. while i was contemplating buying bunny food,
looking out the window at the spiral garden, it
came to me that i would soon be weeding it so i
held off and saved the money for seeds instead.

the cheese cloth layers weren't keeping the
fungus gnats from getting in and out of the bins.
i took advantage of the cold rainy days to seam
rip them and replace the fabric with a finer
meshed material (curtains for you fungus gnats!).
that is working well.

i'm gradually shifting the contents of some
bins towards even more organics (much lighter
than clay that is for sure!). from the spiral
garden the alfalfa, trefoil, mixed clovers and
other seed free weeds have been very welcome
added feed (it goes quickly). the alfalfa is
over a foot tall already and some of the early
planted trefoil is high enough to thin a little.
i leave a fair bit in place to eventually feed
the worms and further the process of improving
that clay. most i need to leave alone -- we
do want the flowers and seeds too.

weeding, planting, many projects, the big
wheel keeps on turning. now i have to start
getting some of these worm crumbs and baby
worms back out to the gardens that really need
some help. i plan on putting a nice deep trench
down the middle of the rows so the worms will
have some familiar soil to venture out from
and that will help keep them cool in the hotter
and dryer weather. then top them with some
mulch and some small pieces of cardboard or
cardstock and then even more organic stuff on
top of that to keep the lid on (and moisture
in and hopefully the birds out). a worm refugium.
no moles around (shhh! ).

we shall see how this goes. the adventures
continue...


songbird