We Have Compost Cake, Sorry No Tea

I felt bad burying the steaming heap of half broken down scraps out here in the snow. Usually, the scrap collection bin inside goes stinky because of too much water and nitrogen and no air but not this batch. Somehow, this batch had achieved a balance and smelled of sweet spring rain. Oh, well. The tomatoes here in the future will taste it if there's any left.

This large container, with its small air vent, is still mostly full. It's been working on older batches of scraps. When I opened it, I was overwhelmed by that fragrant earthy aroma and an aura of humidity. That smell has a name! It's known as petrichor and it is not clearly understood why humans can smell it. The surface of this worm bin, mainly cardboard, was extremely active with springtails. There was even a small potato plant growing.

This larger bin will be our base of operation where I can flip the contents of the smaller and older prototype worm bin. I have harvested worm castings from it a few times before but only by the spoonful on a small scale. It had become full and heavy with castings but since it was sticky, I did not harvest it sooner and instead added a lot more cardboard.

When I built this crude prototype, I imagined a lot of water being produced, like in the scrap bin, and so it originally had this emergency spigot to release any. I've had this for some time now and I've never had to use that, so I removed it and sealed the hole. It eats slowly, so the wealth of creatures in there drink up the extra water. Extra moisture also gets absorbed easily by an the cardboard. Since it's corrugated, there's plenty of hiding places and surface area to absorb ambient humidity. It probably loses water in the form of evaporation through, what I call, the chimney.

A single air vent can sustain an ecosystem like this. The real trick is allowing proper airflow while preventing any dweebit daring dashwood escape artists. I use car fluid filters as you can see since their mesh is fine and the plastic matches my ragtag look! Gel superglue holds it in place and closes any gaps. Now the other trick is getting the toxic car fluids off. I remember washing the chimney with all kinds of soaps and detergents until it no longer smelled of chemicals when I first got it. That was years ago.
The filter on the bigger container shown first was a bigger problem. I took a long time washing it which kept me from building these worms, a different species given to me, their home sooner. This was the only other filter I had but it was caked with dry grease and smelled of burnt oil. So I washed it with gasoline. Perfect. Clean as a whistle. But now it smelled of gasoline. Maybe this is what I originally did with the first one? A barrage of the most powerful soaps did nothing until a couple of soaks in Goo Gone, my recent hero, started to work like magic. These fine mesh filters are really great and worth the fight. I wish I had more.

With one side of a paper bag cut off, I caught the whole cake of compost cleanly. Maybe only a few springtails jumped across into the other bin. Then I just slipped the paper bag back into the small tub on top of some fresh banana, apple, and avocado. I skimmed all that pure scat from the bottom until I started to notice creatures still living in it.

Apart from the worms and hundreds and hundreds of springtails, there are also slaters, mites, pseudoscorpions, and today I saw a rove beetle half the width of your little finger nail. Their populations should still be intact and can still explode again. It looks more like fall mix than Spring Mix. It's fluffy and airy right now so not much room for more material but I still feel like it could use more fresh scraps.
The box is a lot lighter now. I found a small but very heavy stone inside. The worms will slowly recover. I think they were turning orange from swimming around in their own filth. I filled an 8oz container with all that filth and had extra castings still. It wasn't sticky anymore. I used them right away by topdressing some plants. Why wait? They got the added benefit of living springtails hitching a ride. They are pioneer colonizers. If I had more worms I would have spread some of them out but their population needs to recover. The big bin probably has more worms right now.
Now I can sit back while so those critters get to work. The big bin's lid is not so tight but the worms and everything else must have outcompeted the fruitfly problem. They are gone and the foul sour compost has specialized. The two bins can sit idly in the plant room, with their vents pointed at all the green leaves.