How I Made Eve, aka, How to Split a Worm into Two

June 28, 2008 Adam was born. By August, I determined that an Eve was necessary. And so she was made.

Segue:

Holy crap, I've been keeping worms for nearly three years!

Later this month will be the 3rd anniversary;

I know it's not the paper anniversary

so would it be rock or scissors?

 

August 26th, 2008, Eve was born from Adam. I had made it so. Rodney helped. Not that Rodney and I...well, nevermind. Eve came from Adam. Period.

 

Look at the time frame between Adam and Eve. That's just two months. Certainly I could've postponed on making Eve, but at the time I was ultra-concerned that the worms would be suffering if I kept them in such a pile of poop. As I said in the About Me, I didn't know what to do with so much (what I'd now consider not-very-much) of Adam's poop anyway.

 

So let's take a look at what I did to split Adam into Adam and Eve. It'll be fun trip down memory lane for me and, for my current generation of worms, family history.

 

First, I soaked a couple of paper grocery bags in water and transferred them to the newly bottom-holed Eve. Then I soaked some shredded paper, primarily grocery bags, and transferred those to Eve.

Because I bought the coir and hadn't used it to make a bed for Adam, I went ahead and used it to make bedding for Eve; surplus went to Adam. This poorly imaged brick of RoLanka coir was what I started with.

After removing the coir from the plastic encasement and glossy paper label, the brick went into the water left from soaking the above-mentioned paper.

The coir went from totally dry at time zero to semi-soaked exterior in 6 minutes and (after flipping) totally-soaked exterior at 36 minutes.

The coir was totally soaked and started breaking up at about 38 minutes.

I put in a nice layer of the coir on the paper in Eve.

Followed by a nice even layer made up of some of this food.

The food included coffee grounds and filters, puffed rice cereal, lettuce, tomatoes, used paper towels, melon rinds and seeds, carrots and mushrooms.

Adam sidled up next to Eve and gave her half of his wormy contents.

Adam was fed the rest of the food and Eve was topped off with more damp grocery bag strips.

After the remaining coir was spread over Adam, additional dry paper was added to the coir water briefly before being spread over Adam's coir layer.

Cardboard from a thin box a book came in was placed over Adam and Ever before their lids were snapped on.

Voila, a happy couple. 

What the Hell is THAT?

Feeding the five crews Sunday, I was proceeding as usual and when I came to it I fed Number 5.

Note: the crew is laid out pretty randomly and Number 5 was probably the third to be fed, not the last. I need better names for these crews. I have an idea on how to name them, but that's for later discussion, or not.

Anyway, I popped the lid off Number 5 and saw the Papa John's box lid was looking normal. Pulling that off, I saw that things below were normal. No excess moisture, not too dry, no fruit flies, no weird unknown bugs, no mite bloom. Perfectly normal. I do have to say that I wish I hadn't been in what must have been a rush when prepping this bin for Number 5 as the paper is so clumpy. It really should've been a little drier and thus not so clumped before being placed on the first story. It doesn't really matter since the worms are eating it, it's just annoying when I'm digging around in there, turning chunky wads of paper.

So I dug up the left side, put in some of Nate's straight-cut paper to use as napkins before topping with soggy banana peels and strawberry tops.

After I covered the left side, I dug up the right side, added in some of Nate's paper, including the note he'd left on the Target bag designating the bag's contents Worm Food, and put in soggy bananas and pistachio shells as well as some weird thing I couldn't identify. What is that thing?

Rolling on, I covered the right side and topped Number 5 off with additional slightly damp newspaper. I had this paper left from when I prepped second stories for other bins. As much as I'd like to, it's impossible to document every single thing that happens with the bins. Ok, scratch that. It'd be possible, but insanely time consuming, to document every single thing that happens with each of the bins.

Now let's step back a minute. Back to when I fed Number 5's right side. I mentioned a weird thing I'd fed them.

For real.

What the hell is that? What is that thing?

If that thing is gone when I feed Number 5 next, I'll be confident if was an uneaten peeled banana.

If that thing is still in the bin when I feed Number 5 next, I am going to be completely horrified.

Last of Chuck's Grape Bits Get Fed to Number 5, 090910

I first started feeding the worms, specifically Adam, Eve, and The Offspring, Chuck's grapes August 24th. That's what this post was all about, though you wouldn't have been able to guess the date. Unless you'd clicked on a photo from that post and decifered the url.

When I talked about what happened to those grape bits I'd fed to Adam, Eve and The Offspring, I didn't tell you that I'd fed some of the grape bits that day (090510) to Number 4.

Anyway, I had a little bit of Chuck's grape bits left and fed them to Number 5, 090910.


Number 5's left side was fed.

Number 5's right side was fed.

And that's it, Chuck's grape bits, all 10 pounds or so, were fed to each of the five worm bins over a two-and-a-half-week period.

This is exactly what was left.

I did keep, and continue to use, the Bristol Farms bag. It holds my toilet paper and paper towel cardboard tubes until I'm ready to chop 'em up.

Number 4 Gets Chuck's Grape Bits

Now that you know about Number 4, it's time you met face-to-face.

Everyone, meet Number 4.


As I told you previously, I had prepared Numbers 4 and 5 like normal worm bins, but instead of supplying a pound of worms in each, I simply added some worms in from when I was finishing older bins.

This is what it looked like:


All I did was add whatever worms and remaining organics were in an older "finished" bin to the tops of 4 and 5. So you can see 4 had at least some pistachio shells and an avocado pit added to the paper. In there next to the avocado pit is a new growth of some sort.

Digging around, I saw that at least one of the worms was still alive!


Since I didn't see any remaining food in the bin from when I made my first food placement, I decided to give Number 4 some of Chuck's goods: those grape stems and husks. At this point, the grape stems and husks were becoming pretty moldy. I'm sure the worms were chomping at their tiny bits for some of that action! So I dumped a good few tong-fuls in each side of the bin.


And then I buried the grape bits with the paper goods in the bin. We'll see how it goes over for these immature guys.

All of the feeding above happened September 4th.
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Today is Nov. 17th. Time for new news:

While you'd think it'd be about Number 4, it's not. It's new news.

I told you that I'd received a bunch of lemon halves from one of my coworkers. Ali, the crazy Persian who went on a self-inflicted liquid diet for 10 days, yielded a ton of lemons which he left to leak in my cubicle.

The larger of two bags of lemon halves has been sitting outside my front door since Friday. The smaller bag has been in my fridge. Hey, now, I was sick over the weekend and didn't have the strength or memory to bring the outside bag inside. No matter, the worms will like them whatever their condition. I will feed the worms some of these lemon halves this weekend at the latest.

Stay tuned.

And I swear, I'll give an update on Chuck's grape remnants. Poke a needle in my eye if I don't.

My Crew Gets Fed Grape Bits

So I had about 10 pounds of grape husks and stems to feed the worms. The bag sat in my fridge until the weekend, which is feeding time for the crew. I could be feeding them twice a week, but I don't. I'm working up to it. But then again, it's getting on to winter, so they'll be eating more slowly unless I figure out a way to keep them warmer. It'd probably help if I turned on the heater, but I don't know how to work it and thus, haven't used it once in the three years I've lived here. That's a boring story for the future if I'm desperate for blogging material. Not likely.

Check out my crew! The first string are the bins on the floor: Adam, Eve, and The Offspring. Guess which came first!

Note that each worm bin has breathing holes on the sides and the lids; and that each one is sitting in a catch bin. I'm not CraYZzeEE! Leakage-onto-the-floor-prevention is always a good idea.

Everyone, meet Adam.


You can tell Adam from the others because he's got 12, 3, 6 and 9 written on him in Sharpie. That's from back in the beginning when I was a newbie and tried feeding one location one day and another location another day per the recommendation from a website written by someone who doesn't have much to do but keep track of what clock area was last fed. You can also tell it's Adam because he's the Big Cheese. His cardboard paper-covering even says so.

This is what Adam looks like under his moisture-retention-Big-Cheese-cardboard layer.

The bin level is a couple inches below the lower breathing holes, though it's hard to determine that from this view. You just gotta trust.

When I feed my worms, I essentially dig up the left (12:00) side right down to the bottom, piling whatever paper and castings on the right (6:00) side, making a big poopy paper mountain. And yes, it sometimes spills over if I'm hasty. That's why I don't keep or feed the worms in my carpeted living area.

Once the left side is essentially aerated and a "hole" dug, I scoop worm food into it. In this case, I grabbed the food with tongs and tossed it in, tongful by tongful. Grape stems are difficult to scoop.


Once the food is in, a good pound or so, I spread the mountain of bedding over it, then proceed to dig up the right side, making sure to dig up the center of the bin too. It has a tendency to get compacted. Then I dump food in the right side too, another generous pound or so.

At this point, I started picking out the grape stems and throwing them in the garbage. There were a lot and while the worms will eat them eventually, it takes a while. The stems wind up being more of a nuisance for me as they get stuck in my little three-pronged gardening trowel.

Once both sides of Adam were fed, I simply spread the bedding over the entire bin. If the level is still low relative to the smaller, lower, breathing holes, I'll top the bin off with more shredded paper and depending on the weather/season will mist it from my handy-dandy water bottle.

This time, I didn't bother topping off with paper. The level is nice and high, just below the lower set of small breathing holes. Additional water wasn't really necessary as everything was still damp like a sponge and there was still quite a bit of juice in the grape husks.


And that's it, Adam's fed, good to go for a few days or a month. After returning the Big Cheese cardboard and snapping the blue lid back on, I simply shoved Adam back into his corner. He doesn't care if I get pushy.

A majority of the grape bits were fed to Adam, Eve, and The Offspring. That left me with about 1/5-2/5th's of the grape bits I'd started with.

Chuck, the worms thank you for the chow.

Next up: what's left of the grape bits at next feeding.
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In real-time news:

1. I've continued on with my "I'll kick Korean language class ass" and didn't drop last week, though honestly I was seriously considering it.
2. Ken jovially accused me of being a "cruncher", or what I'd call "a dirty hippy", because I'm saving fruit cast-offs in a baggie in one of the kitchen freezers. I must say now that I still bathe regularly and do not, and have never, owned a pair of Birkenstocks. If I wasn't so against toe-exposure by all, I might consider those 'stocks.
3. As for Bill, he's been slacking when it comes to putting his banana peels into the baggie. Loser.
4. Two of my friends at work have been on a Master Cleanse "lemonade/maple syrup diet". While they might be sick in the head for doing the diet, I did receive a plastic grocery bag FULL of lemon-half cast-offs today. There was still enough juice in the previously-squoze halves that while double-grocery-bagged, the halves leaked juice onto the floor of my cubicle. The worms are gonna love it! And they'll be lemony-fresh too. I always like a lemon-scented worm bin.
5. I ran into Kimberly and she asked me what "her" worms need. I told her I'd like some of her shredded paper (shredded being key, I like her shredded paper as it's not cross-cut and doesn't tend to mat). I'm behind on shredded paper anyway, but am much more so what with the sudden influx of lemon halves.