Worm Disasters!

Several weeks ago, Matt and I bought a chicken from the Lauraville farmers' market, and I froze the carcass to make stock.  A couple weeks ago, I used the leftover carrots and celery we had to make some stock with the carcass.  The bad parts of those vegetables, plus the ends of the onions I used, all went into the worm bin... Along with a lot of other food that was already in the compost pale from the week.

This was too much food.

We got fruit flies. (Disaster one.)

It wasn't that big of a deal, we vacuumed the fruit flies up everyday, and put out vinegar traps (a glass with vinegar at the bottom and a piece of paper shaped into a cone so the flies can't find their way out easily).  After a while, we didn't have any fruit flies.  We also stopped feeding the worms during that time so we wouldn't add to the problem.

And we added bedding on top so it would be more difficult for flies to find the food underneath, where they like to lay their eggs.  (Keep in mind that there are holes at the top of the bin, where the tiny flies could come and go as they please.)

Bedding should be damp, but not soaked.  Err on the dry side if unsure.

I probably did a poor job keeping this in mind when I put the bedding down. Two days ago, when we looked in the bin, we found it extremely water-logged. Something that also tipped us off was that we noticed worms trying to escape more often.  Since they first moved in, we hadn't had any escapers until now. (Disaster two.)

This is the bottom bin.
I've never seen it this wet before.

Notice how wet it is in the back left corner.
Also, we should learn to take better photos.

Our solution?

More bedding!  But, this time, we decided to put dry bedding in to soak up the excess liquid.  We put bedding underneath, and bedding on top.  We also washed out the bottom bin, and used all of that "tea" to water our garden.

And we put some bedding on top.

We put bedding on the bottom.

So far, it seems to have done the trick.  No worms have tried to escape for a couple days now, and it doesn't seem quite so damp.  Of course, this is all trial-and-error for Matt and I, so it might not be the end of this.  But, I predict it'll all be back to normal in the next few days.