Also, might be starting a black soldier fly bin here 🤣 perfect for my chickens!

Wanna go full out organic? Daylilys may be the best flower to grow. In the basket are yesterday's spent blooms, the worms LOVE LOVE LOVE em!!! They're partially broken down(slimy and wet) and its basically instantly available food to them thats very nutritious. The stack of sticks are the dried bloom stalks from daylilys. About 2 weeks after blooming the stalks dry up and can be pulled out easily, chopped up(must be quite small and fine, they are fibrous and woody) and are a great carbon source for making precompost (research says anyways). I will finish drying them in the sun then chop em in a barrel with the wead eater to get them as small as possible. The daylilys also grow green blades that can be chopped fresh(again small and fine) to make a good nitrogen source(I'm skipping this part, they are best harvested in spring when smaller and fresh), I will be using an organic seed meal nitrogen source when I make this precompost. Will continue to post details on this experiment in the future. 😁🪱💩😁

Once Pre compost is done and ready for the worms how long can it stand before adding worms

And a head scratcher. Do these dang things EVER cool down and stay down? On the 2nd and 3rd wave, do they take forever to cool down? I fluffed one that I thiught was done because there were some anaerobic spots on the bottom, put some dry cardboard on the bottom to keep that from happening. Closed it up and it's at 107.6⁰ this morning! My other one was still about 97 but dropping, fluffed it to make sure there wasn't any anaerobic spots as well and it's at 102⁰! This biota is out of control! Question. Does it make sense to put a small layer of dry cardboard shred on the bottom all the time to soak up excess moisture and stave off anaerobic activity? Getting the moisture perfect isn't always easy. Has anyone tried that? Seems like that biota soaked shredded would be a good start for the next batch. Now for the experiment. I put 17 units of dry cardboard, 17 units of finely ground SMS and 14 units of Starbuck's finest, 4 handfulls of pre-compost from the 2 crazy bins and mixed it up. I didn't have any veggie slop, so wanted to see if the coffee, pre-compost and SMS had enough biota to make things happen. It's up to 85⁰ today - about 10⁰. So maybe. I'm going to start recording my mixes and see what gets the best biota response and then the best worm response - meaning cocoon and casting production.

I want to use SMS. I want the fungal microbes in with the rest so I have more complete and varied castings. But I've noticed a couple things. 1) When I hand broke the blocks up into small chunks, they tend to compress. The worms end up on the bottom of the bin and the moisture control is dicey. 2) There seemed to be very little casting production. 3) It tends to soak up water and make moisture control an issue. I had already decided not to use an SMS only bedding that I was going to run as an experiment due to these issues. Then I saw a reel from the Aussie Worm Cartel and he says his pre-composted SMS makes the worms go coo-coo for Coco Puffs! So now, I'm going to experiment with pre-composting it. Right now I'm doing it with shredded cardboard and coffee grounds. BUT - I'm using my poultry chopper to make it into a very fine mix. This time I added water to it after I mixed the ingredients. Next I'll try soaking the SMS before hand and then drying it down to a proper moisture level. After that, I'm going to see if there's a way to pre-compost just SMS without the cardboard. So I'm not done with it, just have to find the right mix and use for it. Anyone else have differing or similar experiences?