Thursday, July 3, 2008

Red Wrigglers have Arrived!

A box, smaller than I imaged, was waiting on my porch when I got home on Wednesday evening. Red Wriggler's! Could there really be 2,000 Red Wriggler's in that small box?

Then my next concern was "how long had the box been on the porch?" Were my wormies still alive? I opened the box and pulled back a sheet of newspaper packing. There was a cloth bag, tightly tied by a draw string. The bag was about as big as a quart-size baggy. I carefully opened it and peered in. At first it just looked like a bag of compost. Then I noticed some movement. Yep, the worms were "wriggling."

Also included in the box were some simple directions from Uncle Jim: dig a hole in the middle of the bed and place all of the worms in it. Cover with dirt, then cover with the two pieces of newspaper included in the box. Water to dampen the paper. The directions assured me that the worms would disperse on their own and they live best in colonies - so all 2,000 worms went into the vegetable garden.

This would have been simple, except about the time I was walking out to the garden, it started raining and then a bit later grape-sized hail started falling. Just as I started to prepare a spot to plant the worms, I had to turn and run for cover carefully cradling the bag of worms to safety.

Brian took this picture of me digging in the garden. Such a lovely pose. And no, I don't really have a basset hound hanging off my butt. ;-) Just a little camera trickery and interesting framing by Brian. Did he realize this???

Not wanting to leave the worms in the bag over night, I waited out the hail, then donned a rain jacket and headed back out. I followed Uncle Jim's directions except I didn't need to worry about watering to dampen the paper. I was throughly soaked by the time I got back inside. I was a little concerned that the worms might get too much rain, however my raised bed has about 16" of very loose growing medium so I think they will be alright.

I had considered putting some worms into my compost bins, but in trying to research whether this would work, I couldn't find anything conclusive. My concern was that my bins might be too hot for the worms. And that was my final decision. I did learn a lot about vermiculture. Now I have a hankering to get or make a worm composting container.

It sounds like worms will eat almost anything from eggshells to junk mail. And the worm composter collects liquid produced by the worms as they compost that you can use as liquid fertilizer on your garden and house plants. Pretty cool stuff.

I added a few links to my "Composting" reference where you can find more information about vermiculture (composting with worms). I now have 2000 and four pets - two basset hounds, two cats, and 2000 worms. Oh, and Uncle Jim assures me that after the worms are mature, they will reproduce about every thirty days. Lots of worms!

When I looked out my front window this morning I had a nice surprise. After all the rain of the night before, my day lilies decided to bloom!


I purchased these lovely ladies from the Berry Patch several years ago. Tomorrow we are rising early and starting our Independence Day by heading out to the Berry Patch in hopes of picking some fresh blueberries! On their website they say that they have some nice blueberry bushes for sale. I might just come home with two or three along with a gallon of fresh berries.


Buzz it up

2 comments:

anajz said...

Joy, I hope it was cool enough for your wormmies up your way and your delivery person didn't leave them in the sun. Yikes! Keep us posted on your new adventure.

Liberally Beautiful said...

Hi Anajz!

You caught me. I added a stub post to make sure I got something posted today. Now here I am after mid-night uploading pictures and finishing the story.

Hopefully my opening paragraph worked as a good teaser for the rest of the story!

My wormies are doing good and they are all tucked into the garden bed hopefully making themselves happily at home. I feel like a new mom!

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