fruit flies be gone. . .

our challenge this past week was the capture of a rather large number of fruit flies competing with our worms for their dinner of strawberries and watermelon scraps. the kids and i constructed 8 traps using apple cider vinegar and strawberry tops for bait. the kids were enthralled with the growing number of fruit flies in our funnelled plastic cups.
on thursday we moved the bin to a storage area on campus to fully rid the child care center of the flying pests over the weekend. in mid transport i took the lid off the bin and released as many flies as i could. i also set a jar trap on the bin over the weekend and held off feeding the worms until today - monday.
when i went to feed them mango scraps today - i know, i know, but they love fruit! - the jar trap was full of fruit flies. i buried the scraps a little deeper per rick from salano farms' suggestion. the child care center is clean so i'm going to leave the worms in the air conditioned storage area this week, with traps.
next week i'm going to let the kids harvest some compost. while flipping the newspaper shreds, again per rick's suggestion, i noticed that we have a substantial amount of compost already! serious black gold. quite exciting. worm poop. castings. woo hoo! :)
and i did get the internship at ken singh farms, another yay. i'm very grateful - the gardens are just amazing. i dropped by their farmer's market this past saturday and came home with beets, basil, heirloom tomatoes, a gorgeous cucumber, and an equally lovely melon.
i'll post fotos of singh gardens as well as the harvest in my next blog.

update

let's catch up. the post holiday inspection on tuesday, july 6th revealed a tremendous increase in bin moisture levels - it was soaked! i added a top layer of shredded newspaper and dried off the dripping lid. this was also a feeding day so strawberry and watermelon scraps were added. i've written to rick at salado farms to see if my suspicions are correct that the breakdown of organic matter releases moisture. this additional humidity coupled with the primarily fruit diet has led to an onslaught of fruit flies. tomorrow i'll plant a homemade trap of apple cider vinegar & a small piece of rotting fruit in the bottom of a glass jar with a one way paper cone / funnel taped inside about an inch above the liquid, we'll see how that works. today's visit showed our big fat worms actively feeding on last week's fruit salad, as well as a sprout of some kind where our mushroom once lived. humidity is still high, but controlled and no stinky bin. they still have plenty to eat so i haven't restocked their food supply as yet. tomorrow's post - i'm a volunteer intern, somewhere!

babies, mushrooms, & poop - oh my!

thank you kris, for both reading my blog and being enthused - it really is a fun project.

and we do have babies! how exciting. we also have a mushroom popping up on the side.
this growth confirms that the bin climate is maintaining nice moisture levels.
still no stinky bin after 2 feedings. that makes me so happy.
our worms are active - obviously : ) - and we're beginning to see castings, aka poop!
and that, my friends, is the point. yeehaw!

i'll be checking in today and picking up the week's composting scraps.
i look forward to beginning the composting of cafeteria scraps, hopefully next week.
i'll keep you posted. look for photos of the babies and our mushroom on my next post.