Added: apple peelings, banana skins, teabags, potato peelings, butternut squash

Following the harvest of the worm bin the resulting product, vermicompost has now been put to good use with the sowing of new food namely, aubergines (early long purple 2 variety), wild flowers, onions, lettuce (red salad bowl variety), perpetual spinach (leaf beet variety), horse radish (scarlet globe variety), coriander, chives, mixed leaf lettuce, basil and thyme.

We found some old draws which we made drainage holes in and then filled with mixtures of Levington multi-purpose compost, vermicompost and recycled green waste from Lewisham Borough Council's parks dept.

Harvest time!

Today saw the first harvest of the worm bin. crowds gathered (andy) to see this momentous event unfold in front of there very eyes.

A head count or rather weight estimate of the worms revealed that the population has more than doubled to over a 1000 worms now. Whilst sorting the vermicompost and worms I came across many eggs which I saved and also quite a few centipedes, needless to say they didn't survive the cull.

the last image before harvesting

sorting through the worm bin

I found lots of these stalks which are from the end of bananas and found that the younger worms absolutely love them. i had assumed that they wouldn't like them too much because they're so hard when they go in the worm bin but when they're like this you can understand why they love them because of all the fibrous material contained within it.

I decided to re-organise the worm bin so that they're was hardly any soil in it and that it was comprised of newspaper and cardboarding shreddings and food. This way I will get a more accurate calculation of just how much vermicompost they can produce. The vermicompost from the worm bin that has been harvested will now be used to grow more food (see next update!)

added: potato peelings, teabags, mixed greens, parsley

added today: new paper shreddings, pototo peelings, teabags, carrot peelings, mango skins, onion skins