the end of May will be the one year anniversary (hm, sounds like marriage... :) ) of the project. the worms have been chomping away and making all sorts of little worms. probably a few thousand worms total now, but i have not counted. next time i turn out an entire bin i will do a count as it will be interesting to see how many of what kind i can find. at 14 bins i can keep up with whatever cooking scraps we can generate.
as winter went into spring i was worried they weren't getting enough to eat since we'd both been sick and there wasn't much cooking going on. while i was contemplating buying bunny food, looking out the window at the spiral garden, it came to me that i would soon be weeding it so i held off and saved the money for seeds instead.
the cheese cloth layers weren't keeping the fungus gnats from getting in and out of the bins. i took advantage of the cold rainy days to seam rip them and replace the fabric with a finer meshed material (curtains for you fungus gnats!). that is working well.
i'm gradually shifting the contents of some bins towards even more organics (much lighter than clay that is for sure!). from the spiral garden the alfalfa, trefoil, mixed clovers and other seed free weeds have been very welcome added feed (it goes quickly). the alfalfa is over a foot tall already and some of the early planted trefoil is high enough to thin a little. i leave a fair bit in place to eventually feed the worms and further the process of improving that clay. most i need to leave alone -- we do want the flowers and seeds too.
weeding, planting, many projects, the big wheel keeps on turning. now i have to start getting some of these worm crumbs and baby worms back out to the gardens that really need some help. i plan on putting a nice deep trench down the middle of the rows so the worms will have some familiar soil to venture out from and that will help keep them cool in the hotter and dryer weather. then top them with some mulch and some small pieces of cardboard or cardstock and then even more organic stuff on top of that to keep the lid on (and moisture in and hopefully the birds out). a worm refugium. no moles around (shhh! :) ).
we shall see how this goes. the adventures continue... :)
songbird