In other news, the replacement worms for the first DOA ones are happy and active as anything and are going to make me some good castings in no time.
In case anyone in Mideurope reads this: wurmwelten.de was the source for the worms, I can recommend
I'm really liking having the worms in a wooden container too.
There seems to be no danger whatsoever of the bin ever going anaerobic due to excess humidity, while it doesn't dry out overly quickly either. In the 3 weeks it's been going, I've misted the bin 2x, and I soak new bedding to ~50% moisture (squeeze method) before adding it.
This was the first feeding, half gone on Oct 26, where the original bedding is still nicely visible:
I added cut-up leaves from the sour stomper on top of a fresh layer of cardboard today, after soaking for a while (I poured the greenish water from the soak back into the sour stomper's soil - a little chlorophylll water on the side can't do any harm
)
Actually I've been thinking of
soaking the bedding and leaving it to sit for a few days in general before adding it in, especially when I mix cardboard and leaves. My initial bedding came alive in the week it waited for the second round of worms to arrive, so if we're letting the feed begin decomposing before we add it, why not the bedding too?
Another thing I've been observing. There's always this panic about
seeds not getting taken care of in the wormbin? But I see them sprouting in there and then disappearing. So it looks like by having seeds in my bedding/feeds, I am actually adding sprouts to the mix, which is a great thing considering their nutritional value!
What makes me even happier is that these wormcasts look like they're going to be nicely
fungal. I collected some castings that had fallen into the drip tray (which is just moist btw, no runoff!) in the hope of perhaps making a tea. I'm saying it's not quite ready yet, since I saw a paramecium and a few ciliates.
BUT! despite having to dilute 10x, as the castings were so thick there was way too much debris at the usual 5x, I saw 6 nematodes and quite a few protozoans at work in there, and at least 1 bit of fungal strand in every field. Here's an impression from a cluster of different kinds of fungi:
Yay! Can't wait to get those into my soil! haha
. 
