WE ARE SO BAD ABOUT BLOGGING!
But we were inspired yesterday by our lovely friend, Steph Lee, to get back into a regular blogging schedule. Okay, so we’ve never had a regular blogging schedule on this blog to speak of, but we’re going to start. We’ll even write it down on our calendar.
We’re learning a lot of things about web design at work, so we’ll implement some cool new things here soon too.
May is turning out to be way busier than anticipated, but great to see long-lost friends like Steph, Chuck, Bob, Jacob, Jasko, Butz, and Kate!
Also great to catch up with friends who aren’t so long-lost, but who we still love hanging out with (Yay, Karen!)
Our worms are doing well, we think. There was a lot of undigested food in their bin, so we decided to leave them for about a month without even checking on them. So far none have tried to escape, so we think they’re pretty happy.
I don’t even remember if we’ve talked about our worms on here yet. If not, we started a worm composting bin a few months ago. Things were going pretty well until we had a massive infestation of gnats. At first, it was kind of annoying, but we thought we’d just live with it.
Then when it got to the point that these gnats were so overrunning the house that they would fly into our faces in every room, land on my cheek when I was putting on moisturizer, and land in a pan we were cooking in, we decided something needed to be done.
After lots of research and help from the Red Worm Composting site and other online forums, we started freezing all of our compost scraps (to prevent new eggs from coming in), putting fly tape on the top of our bins to kill some of the adults, and putting this natural bacterial larvacide in our bin that kills fungus gnat larva but not worms.
We had been leaving the worm bin outside so our apartment could be gnat free while we waited for the gnats to die. Two weeks later, there were still a lot of gnats in the bin and we were going out of town for the weekend to visit family for Easter. It was supposed to snow that weekend, so we couldn’t leave the worms outside while we were gone. We really didn’t feel like having a host of gnats living inside again, so I told Matt, “It’s do or die time. We have to empty out the whole bin and clean the gnats out, rinse off the worms in case there are any eggs on them, and start over with fresh, clean compost.” Kind of ironic to have clean compost. But that’s what we needed.
Also I had read about others with gnat infestations cleaning out their worm bins, including rinsing their worms off to get rid of any eggs, and their worms turned out fine. So it didn’t feel that weird to me. Just a lot of time and hassle.
It was pretty amazing. We saw baby worms, worm cocoons, and discovered that some of the worms kind of have personalities. Some are pretty crafty and good at finding hiding places. One of them reminded us of PS because it liked to burrow in a piece of corrugated cardboard and wouldn’t come out until we dismantled its hiding place.
So anyway, after hours of cleaning out the worm bin and washing off the worms, their new gnat-free home was set up.
We left for the weekend, came home, and found half of our worms shriveled up and dead on the kitchen floor. They had crawled out of the bin and died in a large circle around the bin. It was pretty tragic.
Turns out we had left their new home too dry, so they escaped looking for the promised land. Unfortunately, their promised land was nowhere to be found, so they just died.
We added some water and some more food and managed to save the rest of our worms who are still thriving today. Whew.
So now we’re paranoid about getting more gnats or flies in the bin after all that work and death. A few weeks ago we found some fruit flies and their pupae in the bin. Fortunately, I don’t think they were able to find enough food to survive (we now cover the compost/food section with a big layer of cardboard to make it more difficult for flies/gnats to breed…seems to be working well so far). We realized that in our paranoia about losing the rest of our worm population, we had overfed them and needed to leave them alone for awhile so they could catch up with the food we had given them. So that’s where we stand now. Happy, eating worms. Hopefully no flies/gnats.
Here are some videos:
A baby worm I found while rinsing off the worms.
Evil pupae! We discovered these a few weeks after cleaning out the worm bin…but pretty sure they the flies weren’t able to multiply. We only found a couple of them and haven’t seen any in several weeks.
Hey There!
I’m trying desperately to save my worms from fungus gnats. Can you provide more details on washing the worms? Did you actually through out all compost and rinse the worms under tap water?
Thanks for posting the videos – I came across some weird brownish things that I eventually brushed off as some kind of seed, now I know they were the pupae that turned into a fungus gnat takeover. Showed up shortly after I potted new herbs in the kitchen.
Are you guys still worm compsting?
[Reply]
Comment by Rosa — June 22, 2011 @ 1:03 pm
Hi Rosa,
We did actually throw out all of the old compost when we cleaned out the bin. Once the fungus gnats get going, they breed like crazy. So the whole bin was full of eggs, larva, and gnats. We tried all sorts of solutions first, including using those fly tape rolls and pinning them under the lid of our worm bin so the adults would die. We even bought this bacteria solution from an online garden store that is supposed to eat gnat larva without harming the worms. The stuff smelled horrible – our whole bin smelled like rancid water after we put it in. It didn’t harm the worms at all, but it was not pleasant to have in the house. We also covered the bin with mosquito netting (actually no-see-um netting, which is even finer than mosquito netting) so we could at least keep the gnats from escaping into our apartment. Every time we had to feed the worms, we would have quite a time trying to get the bin outside without releasing all the gnats that were trapped inside the netting, so we could feed the worms outside, just to bring the whole contraption in again.
After trying all of that, we finally decided to start over with a clean bin. We dumped all of the compost out on our porch outside and sorted through to save as many worms and cocoons as possible. (The cocoons look sort of like round popcorn kernels. They are darker and rounder than the pupae I showed in the video on this post.) We put the worms in a large bowl and then gave the gnat-infested compost to friends who have an outdoor compost system and don’t mind having the extra critters in it.
We took the worms inside and hand-rinsed them one at a time under tap water. I’m sure it was traumatic for them. They did not like it at all, and unfortunately I lost a couple of them down the drain.
But after the rinsing was over, they didn’t seem any worse for the wear.
We cleaned out our Rubbermaid tub in the bathtub and then filled it with fresh bedding and some new food. Like I mentioned in this post, it was not a good idea for us to do this right before leaving town for the weekend, because we hadn’t put enough water in the bin, and the worms had dried out really badly by the time we came home a couple of days later. We had to add more food and water to the bin to get the habitat wet enough for them. But after that, they were fine and the survivors multiplied back to the original population pretty quickly.
A few weeks after I discovered more pupae (the ones in the video), I decided we would switch to a Worm Inn. Best decision ever! We have had the worms in their Worm Inn for over a year now and NEVER had problems with pupae, gnats, or fruit flies since. They seem quite happy in the Worm Inn and it makes really nice compost. It was the best investment we have made in this whole worm composting process. See our post about the Worm Inn for details: http://mattandangelblog.com/2010/06/yet-another-worm-update/
[Reply]
Comment by Angel — June 22, 2011 @ 2:06 pm
Thanks for your comprehensive post! I’m glad that even if I have to start over there’s hope for saving a good number of the worms.
I too have tried various things – frankly I’m exhausted – and while the population is way down it seems I can’t eradicate them! I am now trying the biological solution – BTi and I can’t imagine it’s going to penetrate the entire bin properly.
I’m going to take another look at the Worm Inns.
Thanks again!
Rosa
[Reply]
Comment by Rosa — June 22, 2011 @ 9:43 pm
Hello again!
I’ve realized what I have are not fruit flies OR fungus gnats. I have these tiny oval black bugs that crawl/hop/fly out of the bins and head for the window. I also had what I thought were rove beetles but maybe these tiny things just mature into the ‘rove bettles’, but since vacuuming perhaps none have had a chance to grow…. I’m at a loss…
Did you come across any sites or forums that might help me ID the critters?
Thanks!!!
Rosa
[Reply]
Comment by Rosa — June 24, 2011 @ 10:16 am
FYI: I think they are in fact a fungus gnat – it turns out I’ve had two different varieties!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciaridae
[Reply]
Comment by Rosa — June 24, 2011 @ 11:31 am