The critter helpers of your worm bin!
Who knew that you would have so many other creatures living and working in your worm bin? Not me, when I first began raising worms. Some that you will see are beetles, pill bugs or so called sow bugs (you know those little fellows, who roll up into a ball when you touch them?), snails, slugs and many spiders. Others that are more discreet are the molds and fungi which will appear about your second or third month into your first bin. They will be either over the top of the bin or around the sides of it. They vary in color to include: yellow, orange, green and even red. To me, they look like flashes of color, over the top of the bin or along the sides. I will add a photo of one of these, so you will not be alarmed by these changes, if you were not expecting them. Another helper in the bin are soldier fly larvae. These look like armored, small tanks, as their entire body looks like it is plated. They are pointed at both ends and are similar in their functions to the grubs you may also find in the bin. Another name for them is blue fly larvae. All of these helpers are taking large pieces of particulate matter and making them smaller in order to fit into the worm’s microscopic worm’s mouth.
I have found snail eggs in the bins, which are about 15 times the size of a worm’s cocoon. They are clear in color and clustered together. The slugs I have discovered in the bins can be of truly dramatic size. They help, not hurt, the entire process. Taken all together, these will work in concert, helping the food wastes you are providing for the worms, breaking it all down faster for your worms to consume. You can think of them as all pre-digesters of that banana peel and apple core you have put into your bin. As you know the worms have no teeth and like birds have their own crop and gizzard to enable them to digest the food waste. I’ll find the photo of the snail eggs for next time around to show you.
Without these organisms the worms would go hungry. All these organisms provide the vital service of the pre-digesting the organic waste which becomes the worm’s food, breaking down large bits of matter into smaller materials.
I have made several attempts to place the photos here for you to see and not had much luck with that. My webmaster is going to look into this and we shall have them here for you next time. I live in hopes of that happening!
I’ll be back in a few days and write abut the digestion and gastrointestinal system of the red wiggler worm.
See you here then!
