SCHWOIT

Today I performed the horrid task of removing maggots from the worm farm. As mentioned in my Disaster in the Worm Farm post these horrid creatures invaded over Christmas and quickly became the dominant critter in the worm farm. As per the advice of a number of sites I placed milk soaked bread in the farm. This produced limited success. I though will try it again next week to hopefully remove the remaining pests.

I was thus expecting to turf an incredible amount of material, if not the lot. I was thus pleasantly surprised to see that the worms were launching a fight back. There seemed to be an abundance of worms, so I suspect they have managed to breed over Christmas which is great news. The worms had in fact almost taken over the top and bottom layers, thus banishing the majority of the maggots within the second layer.

The second layer stunk to high heaven, thankfully my nose was blocked and I could only get a hint of the stench. and was by far the most empty. This is due in no small part to the maggots physiology that is simply made to chomp through materials. Unfortunately, their produce is pretty useless in it own right, although the worms process that further. At any rate I spent an hour or so going through the semi-decayed materials and removing any maggots, or suspect materials (including a tetra pack that some put in there). I believe I have removed 80-85% of the infestation. Which is great news.

I have also reorganised the layers so that the bulk of the processed soil is once again on the bottom layer. The second layer has a considerable food source on offer and the top layer has some scatterings. I will be slowing the feeding down until I am confident the worms have managed to win the war against the horrible maggots.

I am though much more confident that the worms will endure and commence producing large volumes of compost and worm juice soon. I am in need of more worm tea as I have today exhausted my bottled supply. I felt it best to fertilise and water everything today due to the warmth of both yesterday and today. The spinach had wilted significantly during the day, however after the watering and fertilising is looking fantastic once more.

On the water front I am essentially out of rain water. The great weather of 2 to 3 weeks ago has ceased. I am hopeful though it shall return shortly. I thus have had to resort to mains supply today to water the plants. I am still watering from a watering can though to ensure that I do not overwater due to a never ending supply of water.

I will keep you up to date on how the worm farm tracks over the next week or so. I am confident that I have largely restored the balance to the ecosystem, however the war is not over. Not yet. I will also be posting a blog in the coming days of a fantastic fly control system that is available from the big kids toy shop that is both economic and environmentally friendly.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Cat and Pest Control, Gardening, Worm Farm/Vermiculture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.