Vermicomposting Battle Number Three: Making the Mitey Fall
That stern “hungry robin” talk I had with my worms before departing for vacation must have worked. They managed to NOT invite every fruit fly in the neighborhood in for a quick egg lay, but they did seem to make some new friends. The mites. If it looks like someone spilled a container of mustard seeds in your bin…and you are fairly certain no one is in fact sneaking into your bathroom in the middle of the night and spicing your worms…then you have mites. Fortunately for us, we fully expected a full entomological safari to be taking place in the bathroom so a few mites seemed like easy pickens.
So how did we manage to rid the bin of the mites? Ask nicely and I may tell you. A little nicer. Well…you don’t have to be pushy about it. Okay…here is our trick. Conventionally you mix the shredded paper throughout and moisten it. We do this and add a layer of completely dry shredded paper to the the top as well. A little mixed in seems to help with absorbing the worm tea, and the the dry on top helps absorb the condensation because, I may have mentioned,…NY is a tad muggy. This top layer method also helps with the unwanted critters by covering the smell of the food a little better. The bonus of all of this is that the mites, being the snobs they are, seem to like to live in the penthouse of the worm bin, the upper layers of paper. We simply go in once a week and peel away the infected layers. Bye bye elitist arachnids. (Extra bonus…the fruit flies like to lay their eggs in this layer too.) I have read that a melon rind on top will also attract the mites but we don’t really want to attract any newcomers, so we’re sticking with this. Yes…the paper goes in the garbage which isn’t ideal, but it allows us to have a very healthy worm population without the out of control extra gross populations. Just in case you are a mite sympathizer…here is a head shot.
