What am I?
- My babies look like very small versions of me.
- I love moisture (80-90%), but I also require oxygen.
- For my home, area is most important. I don’t care so much about the height of my ceilings.
- My eggs look like tiny straw-colored lemons
- One pound of my friends and I usually contains 1000 individuals.
- I can significantly reduce levels of pathogens in waste materials, such as biosolids (gross sludge from waste treatment plants).
Did you guess? I am a red wiggler worm, Eisenia fetida. I am used to vermicompost, which is the breakdown of organic wastes using yours truly, worms. Other microorganisms do most of the work, and I eat the microbes and protozoans. When you feed me organic waste, I make compost that can provide essential nutrients, stimulate growth, and help suppress disease in your plants. My home doesn’t smell and as a pet, I’m cheap to feed and don’t make any noise.
A home can be made or bought for me. There are a ton of designs if you surf the ‘net! I’m a surface dweller, so I prefer shallower bins or stacked bins for me to travel up to the food. In my home I like to have bedding such as leaf compost or manure. To feed me, just put your fruit and vegetable scraps in my bin and cover them with bedding. Although my 999 friends and I can eat a pound of food in a day, to keep my bin from getting yucky it might be better if you stick with a quarter to a half a pound per day. I also like coffee grounds, tea bags with the staple removed and adding eggshells can help stimulate my reproduction.
Check back at koofie.com for more vermicomposting information, pictures and products in the future.
