I thought I had killed my worms. Not murder you know, but maybe involuntary wormslaughter.
My garage is just way cold!
Not my fault, but 1. the worm bin is just too heavy to drag indoors, and 2. because I had added a bit of real garden soil to it to enhance it's microbness, there are probably some insects that I don't want in the house in there as well as my worms. So I didn't bring the bin indoors and didn't maybe expect the worms to live.
How cold is it? Well, the ice cubes that I dump on my overwintering containers of semi-hardy perennials in the garage to 'slow water' them (probably also involuntary plantslaughtered by the low temps) won't thaw. That's a bad sign. If I left a glass of water out there I bet it would be frozen by suppertime.
I've been convinced the worms were frozen, and I even thought up the old lightbulb in the box solution like we did to keep our doghouse warm back in the olden days when we were dog people.
So I go out to dig down in the box today, just to be sure, and the worms are O-TAY!
Yipee! Who knew! Beats me how such a watery pink little moist thing could keep from freezing solid, but there you are!
The main veggie peels and ends I've been composting lately in the compost bin are things you don't necessarily want in your worm bin: onion and garlic skins, cabbage leaves, grapefruit and lemon peels, the odd houseplant leaf. Herb takes his apples to work.
I'll have to peel some carrots and potatoes and give the guys a treat!
2 comments:
My garage stays at about 4 degrees Celsius (39 F) for the winter months and my worms are doing fine. I think compost generates a bit if its own heat. However, my worms also haven't consumed anything in months - they just seem to sit still and do nothing, so the kitchen scraps are being thrown in a heap outside! The worms should perk up soon though.
Thanks for the comment, Gardenista,
Ooooh, 39 degrees! My poor worms would think they were on Spring Break! I think you're right about the slow down in their feeding on the scraps at cold temps. Which is probably a good thing in my case as I though they were frozen after those 2 degree nights and hadn't done any feeding.
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