Good News, Bad News of Worm Compost Experiment

It’s been a little over three months since we started our worm composting experiment.

We have a “worm apartment building” that is a series of stackable trays. Once a tray is full of both food scraps and worms, another tray is put directly on top, and the wormies can crawl through the perforated bottom to the next level to start processing new food waste.

I have good news and I have bad news. And then I have other good news.

Happy worms

First, the good news. The worms are eating and processing to their hearts’ content. We have just started our third tray and therefore have two trays that are “closed off.” We aren’t adding food to the trays, giving the worms time to process what is in those trays. The photo above shows the current status of Tray 1, which has been closed off for 8 weeks and has another 5 weeks to go before we will call it done (13 weeks or approximately 90 days).

Tiny black flies everywhere

Now the bad news. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but in the middle of August the worm composter began to build up a nuisance of tiny black flies. Okay, we’ll call it a swarm. I’m still not sure what they are. Definitely not fruit flies. And with the worm composter being in our home—in my office closet, to be exact—the swarm was just too much for us to handle, as the flies were everywhere. We had to move the worm composter outside for a while.

Being outside isn’t ideal for worm composters. The system shouldn’t become too hot inside, which isn’t a problem this time of year. However, it shouldn’t be too cold, either. We haven’t determined an action plan for winter worm composting. We shall see.

Eco-Stack composter is so far, so good

Now, to the second batch of good news: Our Eco-Stack composter—the bin we started last October and closed off when we activated the worm composter—is working well, indeed. I admit I have thrown in the occasional weed or empty pot of dirt since officially closing it down, but that doesn’t seem to have disrupted its processing. In fact, somehow something I’ve thrown into it has produced a small colony of worms, which are only adding to the processing system.

Our Eco-Stack compost is essentially finished and ready to be used. And fall is the perfect time to apply compost to the garden. It sits over winter, breaking down even further and releasing its nutrients. All that good compost nutrition will be readily available as we plant up next year’s crops.

But for now we’ll clean out one patch of our garden plot, spread the compost around, and work it into the top few inches of soil. Since we’ll spread it on just one section, we’ll be able to see if the compost addition has any visible benefit to next year’s crops compared to the other patches.