Ronnie Ugulano

I have a Zojirushi bread maker, and love it. I've had about 4 different bread makers, a Breadman, and one or two very "off brand", but I love my Zo. I'll definitely buy another one at the end of its life.

It makes a horizontal loaf that not only tastes good, but it's pretty, as well. I guess that it costs 50 cents a loaf, and is better than anything I've bought. It also gets rave reviews when I offer bread as a gift.

I kept pet rats for years, and their shavings/paper bedding was routinely dumped onto my worm bin. It helped keep the bin contents fluffy, since there was a steady stream of rat bedding going into it.

The bin seems dense, maybe this is ok, but it seems wrong to me.

When you say "dense", what does that mean? Compacted? Heavy (weight)?

I need to add more cardboard.

What seems to indicate that to you? I'm not criticisizing, just trying to understand.

Worms are often uncomfortable in a new bin. It's unfamiliar. New. And the food is different. Not like the comfy old bin. They go on walkabout to find "home".

First check to see that the bin is not heating up, there's air flow, and make sure the bedding is damp but not soggy. If all these things are OK, take any top off the bin, and turn a light on over the opening. Worms hate light, and they will stay in the bin. Keep a light on over the bin, even at night (especially at night) for a few weeks. After a while, they'll begin to believe that they are home, and stay put.

Ben Zumeta wrote:I get 20lb bags of "wild bird seed" for 8$ and sprout them for my birds and also grew some bird seed from these as well. I do not know how much organic bird seed would be.

My husband used to have a pet canary. "Anthony" loved sprouted seeds, so we did the same, spouting wild bird seed for him. We ended up calling them "Bird Sprouts".

I learned to use a pressure cooker by helping my mom make dinner - in the 1950s. Stews, swiss steak, pot full of potatoes, corned beef hash etc. My mom in turn gave me a (4 qt.)pressure cooker when I was first married (1970) which I still use today.

This was something like my experience, except it was my grandmother that taught me. I don't have the same pressure cooker she gave me, but I can't live without a pressure cooker. I use it far, far more than my slow cooker.

I have to give another shoutout to using stove pellets, aka pressed sawdust. Less than $10 for a 40lb bag, and the sawdust kills urine smell! We used it for our cat for several years, it was da bomb!

Soil can be thought of as a buffering agent for compost,

This is true even when worm composting. Sometimes you can put too much food in there for the worms to eat and the bin will get unbalanced. One of the things that will help in these situations is to add some soil, or even plain dirt. Dirt will bring in with it bazillions of bacteria that will get right to work trying to clean it up so the worms aren't run out of their own bin by too much of a good thing.

Yeah, you might have to remove some food, add some bedding (coir, sawdust, paper, leaves, what-have-you), but dirt is often part of a good recipe to correct an unbalanced bin.

Ten Acres Enough by Edmund Morris

Thanks for mentioning this book title. I found it at Gutenberg Press as an ebook!

If there's no worms in the manure does that indicate that it's not as good a soil improver as manure that has worms in it.

There are a few reasons why there are no worms in the manure. One reason is that there are no worms in the soil to move into the manure. Another is that the worms are on their way, they can tell there's a food source there, but they haven't gotten there yet. A third reason is that the animal that the manure comes from has been on antibiotics/dewormers and so the manure is actually rejected by the worms as unfit. They might circle around later, once there's enough bacteria to make up for how it started, but for now, it's inhospitable to the worms, and they are uninterested.