The Journey

The Worm Swag: Food challenge part 2, results after a week

Posted in A day in a worm farm, The Worm Swag on Apr 09, 2017

After a week, there are still many food pieces left but they are all difficult to break down food pieces (banana peels, avocado skins, citrus skins etc...) but as you can see on the below images, the level has dropped down quite a bit.

The Worm Swag: Food challenge part 2

Posted in A day in a worm farm, The Worm Swag on Apr 04, 2017

Tonight, my kitchen scraps collection bucket is full again. The other worm bins have already been fed over the weekend so I wanted to retry the previous challenge and see if I can consistently get the same results or if it was fluke. But this time I won't prepare the food scraps and will dump straight on top of a thick layer of shredded cardboard.

This is how the content looked like before I added anything as part as today's experiement. You can see it has dropped quite a bit, almost like if the 10L from the last experiment have all vanished...

As usual, a lot of dry bedding material is added...

The Worm Swag: Food challenge part 1

Posted in A day in a worm farm, The Worm Swag on Apr 04, 2017

On March 18th I decided that the Swag was ready for a food challenge and dumped into it 10L of kitchen scraps that I have gradually collected over the week in a indoor composting bucket. Reminder: that Swag has been started about 3 months prior to the experiment and was filled with bedding and worms from several RELN Worm Factories (Australian domestic worm bins).

The food scraps has prepared by mixing it with hand torn newspaper and adding a little bit of garden lime (calcium carbonate) to help control the pH (acidity). I usually add dry bedding materials (newspaper, corrugated cardboard) to ...

Worm'ag Issue 2 and new eBook available

Posted in A day in a worm farm on Mar 13, 2017

I launched Worm'ag in December 2016 as a quarterly online magazine. It is quite a challenging project but fun and enriching. I learned that you need to handle many more aspects than just writing the actual articles. A magazine is very visual, so I not only had to have the articles but I also had to deal with the photographs and the layout. Another challenge is when you start to get external people involved, there is a lot of back and forth to fine tune the content. I don't have a designer or a co-editor and I do my own photography so getting the magazine out on time is a lot of time managemen...

Homemade BSFL protapod

Posted in A day in a worm farm, Black Soldier Fly Larvae on Feb 19, 2017

Couple of weeks ago I found this I don't know what type of plastic container in a rubbish bin near a marina so I took it back as I could do something for the Black Soldier Fly Larvae. The bottom has a conical shape so I thought it would be great for drainage. The dimensions of the container are 44cm (17in) diameter, 30cm (12in) deep and the tapered zone is 18cm (7in) high.

Today I decided to make a mini protapod. I started to make the ramp by cutting a triangle out of a foam play mat for kids. It is glued to the container using some aquarium grade silicon caulk.

I then fitted a 32mm PVC pipe...

A tour of my BSFL biopod in video

Posted in A day in a worm farm, Black Soldier Fly Larvae on Jan 21, 2017

Today even though it was cloudy the temperature was over 30C (86F) and rain was predicted for late afternoon. As I got home I saw about 6 female flies escaping the bin and 14 egg clusters have been deposited in the new and old trap (which I have thrown in the new bin so the few eggs left would hatch).

Also good news is the ramp seems to work as I can see some stains the pupae have left behind and some of them are still on the surface of the collection bucket.

I added the photo at the end of the video I did for the bin construction tour.

Related content:

• Please also check the photos of my hom...

My homemade BSFL biopod

Posted in A day in a worm farm, Black Soldier Fly Larvae on Jan 18, 2017

My prototype BSFL bin was working all right for what I needed it for. I don't have chicken or fish to feed the pupae to so I didn't need a perfect bin for the larvae. But here were the issues I found with that prototype:

• it was too shallow and was filled uppretty quick and there would be no space for a drain filter layer.
• BSFL are able to climb vertical walls if the moisture on the walls is high enough for them to stick to it. So in the prototype bin some managed to escape to the outside. Not critical for me though.

I've been sent the link to another BSFL bin which I like even though it is d...

How to collect Black Soldier Fly eggs

Posted in A day in a worm farm, Black Soldier Fly Larvae on Jan 17, 2017

I'm currently working on my new BSFL composting bin and will soon post the pictures and maybe a video if I have time to get at it. Meanwhile, I thought some of you might be interested in the subject and would like to start getting some BSF eggs to also start their journey into BSFL composting.

So a little reminder: female Black Soldier Flies are attracted to smelly food and would oviposit (deposit) their eggs on a dry material adjascent to the food. By smelly food, I'm not talking about stinky food like garbage, I'm more talking about food that have a strong smell such as coffee ground for exa...

Should I freeze my food scraps?

Posted in A day in a worm farm on Jan 17, 2017

I'm seeing more and more of this subject popping up in worm farming groups so I thought I would write down my take on this.

So this short post is just to link you to the Advice & Tips section on freezing food scraps for the worms.

Closing the loop with Black Soldier Fly Larvicomposting

Posted in A day in a worm farm, Black Soldier Fly Larvae on Jan 16, 2017

You are probably asking what do Black Solider Fly Larvae have to do with a worm farm. First, they are quite a common critter to be found in a worm bin if you live in a country where the weather can be hot enough for them. And second, they can compost food scraps that worms cannot eat and the frass the produce is excellent worm food.

Having composted all my fruits and veggies scraps, I have decided to now take care of food worms cannot eat such as meat, dairy products, fatty food etc... This is why I started investigating and trialing with Black Soldier Fly Larvicomposting.

What are Black Soldi...