Ian Harrison

I just discovered bed bugs in my bedroom. Seen a dozen or more of the first or second stage, but only one fully grown adult. Hopefully the infestation isn't too bad and this doesn't end up being a two year war.. Wish me luck.. Just ordered some Food grade DE, and I'm working to seal all the cracks in the room. Also having Orkin come out, not so much to treat the issue, because it's very unlikely I let them spray any chemicals in there, but more so to find where they are hiding. I have looked all over the room and can't seem to find any more of them! I know they are somewhat nocturnal but even last night when I was looking I could only find the few that were on top of the sheets, couldn't find them anywhere else in the room.

Do you use anything specific for that top 2 inches of cover material or just whatever "browns" you have laying around?

So I initially had it in the room I rent in this house (didn't want to force worm composting on my roommates), but took it outside recently due to worry about breeding huge numbers of insects in my room. Right now I've got them outside in the alley basically between my house and the neighbor. Two old, three story brick buildings fairly close together so it doesn't get too much direct sun, or rain but I'm still a little worried about it since it has hit 90 degrees F every day the last week. One option would be to move it to my girlfriend's patio which faces north and gets almost no direct sunlight. Just a tiny bit in the morning maybe, it would also be much better protected from rain.

You guys are so right. I was just expecting it to happen and then wondered why it wasn't, but both your answers make a lot of sense. I just checked the moisture and it's at between 75% and ~82% in the top bin, so that seems about right. There are still thousands and thousands of mites though and I haven't put food in it in a week and a half I think. Thoughts on that?

Cool, I assumed most were harmless but the mite population exploded so quickly I was a bit concerned.

Haven't seen any ants or centipedes yet but I'll keep an eye out.

Oh one more thing, I've been adding more and more moisture but I haven't gotten any leachate draining out of the bottom. What might be some possible reasons for this?

Congrats man! Good luck and I look forward to hearing about your journey. And on behalf of humanity thanks for putting all the info online for free Open source ftw

Hey everybody,

So I started vermicomposting about two months ago and things seem to be going pretty well for the most part but I do have a couple questions. A few weeks ago I noticed a bunch of these guys (sorry for the crummy video quality)running around the outside of the container. They seemed to disappear after a little while though. Anyone know what they are? Mostly just curious, but I also seem to be getting way more bug bites than normal and would be interested to find out who the culprit is.

A few weeks after that I noticed a bunch more tiny little bugs running around. Don't have any video of them unfortunately. But they were like little wingless gnats or something, very small. They seem to have gone too. At around this time I noticed that the worms I could see right on the top layer seemed sort of sluggish, and especially the last one in this video maybe sort of dried out??. See here
On that note I hadn't gotten any leachate draining out of the bottom. It seems like there is a decent amount of moisture in there but maybe not enough. I added some water at this point but still haven't gotten any leachate draining out of the spigot at the bottom of my system.

Soon after that I started freezing their food and only feeding once per week as opposed to whenever I had the food scraps. I also blended up this last batch with paper. That last batch happened to be a lot of broccoli stalks and some other things. May have been a bit heavy on the green side (brown was made up of some coffee grounds and shredded brown paper bag). A couple days after this feeding I looked inside and found an explosion of these little insects. I then took the system outside, and checked a day later to find most of them dead. Worms seem to be doing fine, much more active now.


So anyone want to tell me what's goin on here and maybe identify some of these bugs I've got?

Awesome, thanks so much Chris! I just sent friends of trees an email so hopefully they can point me in the right direction!

Looks like it will only allow me to attach 3 files but here are a few pictures. I've already started on some of the preliminary design work.

What specific details are you interested in Scott?

Before I go into too much detail on the property and what we'd like to accomplish with the design am I in the right place? Is this a reasonable way to find an experienced permaculture designer to help with this project?