About six months ago, I set up two composting tumblers, one which I populated with red wrigglers and one which I did not. I was experimenting to see if the stories were true about worms eating up your garbage and producing “black gold” for your garden. Needless to say, I put equal amounts of green and brown materials in each. (It wouldn’t be a proper experiment without consistency between control groups, now would it?) And finally, I put my newly purchased red wrigglers into one tumbler.
Over time, I was pleasantly surprised to watch my “reddies” reduce my garbage, clippings and leaves into some nicely smelling, nom nom garden food. They consistently grew in size so I figured I was feeding them appropriately. And, I’ve continued to leave the one tumbler without worms just to see how slowly the process works – it’s slow.
Anyhow, a couple weeks ago, I was turning both composters and then checked in on my “reddies” to see how they were doing. As is normal for me, I reached down for a handful of nom nom goodness for a quick see and smell. (There is nothing like the smell of really healthy compost – after it’s done of course…) When I began breaking apart the clumps, lo and behold, I discovered I was a daddy! I could not count how many little “reddies” were in my hand there were so many.
I kept digging through various parts of my tumbler, only to find more and more baby worms. I’ve read that red wrigglers were prolific breeders, but I wouldn’t have imagined I would have gotten this many out of the single pound of worms I purchased. I highly recommend getting some for your compost pile!
Because I have so many worms now, and since I have observed the effects of composting without them eating away, I’ve moved several batches of them into my other tumbler and loaded it up appropriately to hopefully duplicate my fortune. FUN!
