Vermiculture, Crop Failure



One of the things that I love about the balconies of my apartment is that I have compost bins on them. It took a really long time to find appropriate worms for them, however. I had asked at probably a dozen nurseries and florists, until I asked at a florist near my apartment, and she said that they had some in the compost at her house. In short: a few days and some worm-decorated cupcakes later, I had my own compost worms! (The nice red kind, that I believe they call California redworms, but I might be remembering incorrectly.)

Anyhow, that was months ago, and at some points in the meantime, I've been pretty concerned about the worm population (or seeming lack thereof) in the compost bins. Now, however, there are so many! They are very densely spread throughout one of the bins in particular, such that each trowelful turns up at least two of them.

This makes me happy to no end.

Also, I may have mentioned (way back when) that I was really excited about some tulip bulbs that I had bought. And, later on, I was thrilled with some chives that I had planted.

Did I mention that I went to CA for three weeks? And that, during those three weeks, the plants didn't really get watered? (Sigh.) To make a long story short, all of the plants on the balconies except those that would probably be thought of as weeds (spider plants, weird-looking spikey-curly succulents, gerania) either died or are very sad. And I was so excited about the tulips, and one of them was looking really healthy (the stalk, anyways; it hadn't bloomed yet) and two were looking alright, and only one or two of them looked DOA before I left.

And so now I am re-planting some chives, and I guess I'm done mourning the dead basil (except, of course, every time I want to use just a leaf or two of basil), and thinking twice about the prettiness of the weird succulents that, literally, tripled in size while I was gone.



But I still have my worms.