Adding a Big Feeding of Coffee Grounds: Weekly Worm Farm Check In Sept 25, 2024

Welcome back to the weekly Warren Farm check-in, my name is Steve Churchill and I'm the owner of the Urban Warren Company. It's been a bit more over a week since we released our last video, and that's because I've been cheating on you. In the last video I made a decision not to do a feeding. The smells and the free flies from the previous feeding hadn't subsided to the point where I was comfortable adding more food waste. Well a couple days went by, I went back and checked the bin and things looked fine. The food waste was mostly worked through and the smells and and I didn't want to do a video of me just adding food waste and betting to the bin and calling it a day. So a few days after I shot the last video I decided to feed the bin kind of an interesting mix. We got the standard Churchill food waste like apple cores, bananas, lettuce trimmings, asparagus cuttings, and I also found some moldy raspberries and some old sweet potatoes that my wife was going to throw away. Starch like sweet potatoes are an interesting addition because they're a very dense source of sugars and they've got a bit more protein than most food waste that So I expect that there might be a little mold growing on these potatoes this week. Now unlike the last feeding, we're going to go back to the regular practice of adding bedding to the food waste and instead of adding coco coir or pit moss this week, we're just going to use paper that's been run through a 12 sheet crosscut shredder and an egg carton which I took a few minutes to shred by hand. Egg cartons are great bedding. They're soft, they break down more readily than paper. I really like it. Now I'm not a guy that likes distinct layers of food waste and bedding, so we mixed this stuff all together in a mortar tray and added it to the bin. I waited a few days, then went on a three day trip to my job to Denver and San Diego and got home last night. And so here we are. And here's what I expect to see today. Moisture is going to be just fine and maybe a bit on the dry side. We might see some worms crawling up the sides of the bin if the food waste releases enough moisture to condense on the walls. I doubt we're going to see any fruit flies either. And I bet we don't see much sign of the raspberries or apple cores because they break down very quickly. But I'm sure we're still going to see some sweet potatoes and probably the more fibrous asparagus cuttings and things like that. All right, enough of me talking. Let's open up this thing and get started. All right, so here we go. Let's uncover this bad boy. Like we always do, we're going to talk about moisture and the temperature. All right, in the Philadelphia area, it's right around 70 degrees. It's 67 degrees here in the barn. It's actually 77 percent humidity. We're getting some rain today, which is nice. So that's been welcome after a summer like we've had. And the temperatures in the bin, let's see, they're right around 68 degrees themselves. So everything's pretty stable there. Liking what I'm seeing. Let's go ahead and see what's going on over the surface. So I actually saw a few worms escaped underneath the surface here. Things are pretty good. I'm seeing some things that I was expecting. I was expecting to see a little bit of condensation along the walls here. Looks like we don't have that, but that's OK. I mean, we got we got pretty good moisture that's that's in the bin. So I tell you what, let's go ahead and see if we can find a little sample of some stuff to to squeeze. And I think it's going to be again on the drier sides. We're going to give all this stuff a bit of a squeeze. And I am it's going to be hard to see you on the camera, but I can see a little bit of stuff that wants to come out between my knuckles. Stuff sticks together pretty well. So I know that the moisture is pretty good. But but yeah, we're probably a little bit on the low end of the moisture. So this is interesting. So we've got the sweet potato here that's got some mold growing on it. This is one of the things I was expecting to see. Mold's a decomposer. This is no big deal. There are some bad molds. I don't think the kind of molds you're going to find that are growing on sweet potatoes on a worm farm are going to be really that bad. Got a little volunteer here. I think this might have been either a cucumber or a carrot. A lot of people worry, hey, I've got these sprouts that are growing up in my in my worm farm. Should I pull them out? It really doesn't matter. You know, we got another one. Got another one here. It really doesn't matter. You can keep them in there. You can pull them out. They're going to be worm food anyway. Got a bit more bit more of that moldy food waste here. These these guys are breaking down, just like I said. I love egg cartons for bedding. They're a great source of carbon. So let's see if we can dig down here. See if we can find any populations of worms. And I do see plenty of worms. One of the things that's hard is when you've got such a, you know, an interesting mix of all sorts of different things. It's sometimes hard to pick out the worms from here. Got one right here. So you got another one. Try to find some. I got some babies down here. Let's see. There's going to be a little guy right here. So it's always encouraging to see that these are, you know, a lot of times that you'll see really scrawny worms in a worm farm. It's because you've got really scrawny adults. People say, oh, my worms turn back into babies. Well, this isn't like Benjamin Button or whatever, where these worms are aging in reverse. They are just getting really, really scrawny. That's not necessarily the case here. I see some worms that are of decent size, and then I see some juveniles. So here's a decent pocket right here. This is all good to me. These worms are still going to be a little bit smaller than what you would get from a worm breeder. That's because they try to fatten them up as much as they can before they send them to you. But as I dig through this bin, I'm actually seeing what looks to be an increasing population. I haven't run across any cocoons yet. Oh, I just saw one, and then I covered it back up. Doggone it. Let's see if we can grab some stuff here. Let's see what this stuff looks like. You can tell this stuff's really breaking down very nicely for us. Got some juvenile worms right there. So this stuff looks pretty good. I'm happy with how things are going. I'm not smelling any fruit flies or anything like that. I'm sorry, I'm not smelling any bad odors or seeing any fruit flies, which is good. And there's a little cocoon right here. Oh, where'd it go? There we go. Right there, right at the end of my finger. Looks like it is still on the lighter side. So cocoons, when they're first formed, are lighter, and then they get darker as the worms inside them start to grow out. So anyway, I like what I'm seeing here. I think what I'm going to do this week, I've got a whole lot of coffee grounds. I'm going to add them to this bin. I'm not going to be adding any bedding. One of the things with coffee grounds is even though they're kind of wet going into the bin, they actually tend to suck water up a little bit. So a lot of coffee grounds can tend to dry out a worm bin. Unlike something that you might put in like an apple core, which doesn't necessarily feel wet, but it releases a lot of water, coffee grounds do not release water as they break down. So anyway, I've got a nice scoop of coffee grounds here. I do have the filters. Of course, this stuff looks like worm castings, doesn't it? So I'm going to flatten this out on top. We're going to add some coffee grounds to the top, and I'm going to spray this down. This will be interesting to see what happens, because this is a good dose of nitrogen. I'm not worried about it heating the bin up or anything like that. Next, we're going to add some filters as well, right along the top. I have sort of plastered the top of this with a whole lot of coffee grounds, so it'll be interesting to see how the worms react. I think they'll be fine, but who knows? Maybe we'll see some up on the walls trying to escape. All right guys, I think that's it. Let's close this thing up and we will see you next week. All right, I hope you enjoyed that. I think things are looking really good in this bin. The food waste is breaking down really nicely, the food flies and the odors are gone, and the worms look pretty fat. You actually saw a few cocoons, and I think the population is starting to ramp up for us. That feeding of coffee grounds and filters with a little bit of water shouldn't be an issue either, so I'm really interested to see what's going to go on the next time we check this bin. All right, if you're new to the channel or new to vermicomposting, I want to send you the Worm Farm Startup Guide. It's a handy PDF that's going to help you start up a worm farm like this one. Just click this little link above my left shoulder, and it's going to take you down to the video description where you're going to click a little link where you can sign up to get that guide immediately. YouTube is making this a little more difficult for us these days. All right, thanks for watching everybody. We're going to see you next week.