Friday, April 10, 2009

Update on the Worm party

This morning as I passed by the compost bin I saw worms hanging out on the top of the compost exposed!! I was like WTF. Instantly I thought about the chicken guano I put in yesterday evening and just shook my head. Apparently I didn't bring the tequila and instead I brought the Jim Jones Juice.

So I picked up a worm and it was literally mushy almost to the point of melting. I thought, 'Oh gross, worm squish all in my hand." So I threw the worm back in and I dug around the compost with my hand, I couldn't believe how friggin hot my compost was. It was literally smoking when I turned it around and exposed some of it to air. I felt the heat coming out of that thing and I was happy to see how this guano works.

Unfortunately the worms that were caught in the inferno perished; the other worms retreated and either went to the perimeter of the pile or retreated to the new working pile without any Chicken Guano. I added some fresh lawn clippings to my new pile that I am preparing now for 2010. Now the project is to move the compost pile to where the chickens are so they can romp around fresh compost material and then I can later transfer it to my pile ready to use.

2 comments:

Kenneth Moore said...

Oh no! It needs to get pretty hot for a while, to get rid of chicken pathogens that could eventually end up on your veggies, but that means the worms won't be too happy with you (lots of readily-available nutrients in chicken poo, microbes eat it up, but that makes it hot). What kind of worms do you have? Red wigglers are pretty prolific creatures. They'll be back in no time!

ATW said...

Kenneth I have red wigglers they look like snakes, i have some really huge ones. I turned the pile again today and as suspected they retreated to the perimeter of the pile. The poo is interesting because it was dry, much like patties mixed with green material, it looked like dirt, but when it came in contact with the compost pile everything became nuclear. Im not much of a chemistry buff but it seems pretty amazing how this stuff works. Thanks for the info.