Wormie, wormie Wednesday (2 days late)

(Avoid this one if worms gross you out.)

So a week ago I killed off nearly all of my adult worms but noticed a plethora of babies.  Some mature worms are back, either matured juveniles or ones I couldn't find last week (it's easy for them to hide).

I also realized last week that I had a tray of compost ready to harvest and another almost ready.  (The worms live in a stack of trays with mesh bottoms. I've had 2 trays until now.  They move between the bins and you're supposed to keep the food in the top bin unless you read different people's opinions in which often the bottom is recommended.  Frankly I did not like using the top bin to feed because even when covered the food was too close to the surface and it resulted in fruit flies.  Not many, but one is too many.  At the moment because I did not want the babies to have to try to crawl up what is a huge distance to them yet a tiny distance to grown worms, plus I really, really don't want to have fruit flies, but the bottom bin is also dangerous for the babies as they can fall through into the death pit (where the water drains).  I also thought the middle was logical since both bins are about ready to harvest and that made a short journey.

I put this all together over the weekend.  Tonight I checked it out.  Not only do I have some adults, my original 1000 worms are probably closer to 2500-3000 now.  I have a LOT of babies.  And they are growing and doing what they should and heading for the new food.  For some reason the babies tend to exist in these tangles and  there were about 100 of them all clumped up on the new food, as well as hundreds more on the remaining food upstairs and throughout the compost.  I rescued a few from the roof (they're really fine there unless I knock them off accidentally and squish them) and I found the tiniest one I've seen yet, barely even visible and looked tiny on my fingernail.

After I get paid and can afford to buy food (sort of what with gas prices it's about all i buy) I will put some melon in the top tray which will attract more babies and then they will move down a bin with my help and hopefully in a couple weeks I'll feel that tray is pretty empty and ready to have a final search party before being put aside for compost.

The thing is working.  And I don't care what kind of ridiculous brain activity makes this the one "hobby" I can enjoy right now, it's fun.