Silkworms:
QUICK FACTS:

Life Span - Yearly cycle of about 80 days Care - Low Maintenance Food - Mulberry leaves Housing - Cardboard shoe box or plastic container, with holes for air.

GENERAL INFO:
About 2,640 B.C., so the story goes, a Chinese empress, Si-Ling-Chi, was watching the glistening amber cocoons that little worms were spinning in the mulberry trees in the palace gardens. She unwound one of the threads on a cocoon and found that it was one, very long strand of shiny material. Fascinated, she pulled strands from several cocoons through her ring to form a thicker thread. Eventually, with the help of her ladies of the court, she spun the threads into a beautiful piece of cloth to make a robe for the emperor, Huang-Ti. This magnificent material, silk, became known at the "cloth of kings".  For thousand of years on the royal family of China had silk. The Chinese kept the secret of how silk was made for 2500 years. The material was sold to the rulers of the West, but the source of the shiny thread that made the material was not revealed. The penalty in China for telling that the silk came from the cocoons of the little silkworms was death! Legend has it that the Japanese carried off four Chinese maidens, who knew the secret of silk, along with mulberry shoots and silk moth eggs. Today Japan is the leading producer of silk! Another story is that a Chinese princess married an Indian prince. She carried silkworm eggs and mulberry shoots in her elaborate headdress and the secret of raising silkworms in her head, thus spreading the culture of silk to India. Finally, two poor monks told Emperor Justinian of Constantinople that they had learned the secret of silk. Justinian send them back to China to get some eggs and mulberry shoots for him. They returned many years later with the eggs and shoots hidden inside their hollowed-out walking sticks. Since Justinian was the emperor of Constantinople, a crossroads city, the secret soon spread throughout Europe.

The life cycle of a silkworm takes around 80 days. Eggs hatch in about 6-20 days. Caterpillars eat for about 26 days before spinning silk. It takes about 3 days to fully spin a cocoon and turn into a pupa. The moth emerges from the cocoon after about 21 days. The moth lays eggs about two days  after emerging from the cocoon. As moths, they do not eat or fly. They will usually mate, lay eggs and die within a week. Fertile eggs turn from yellow to gray or purple in a week or so. If the eggs don't hatch within 3 weeks, they usually will not hatch until the following year.

What is left after the worms have eaten the food scraps and paper is called "castings". You need to harvest the worms' castings every 2 to 3 months which is probably not the nicest job but the castings become toxic to the worms over a period of time if not removed. Start by not feeding your worms for two weeks. Then pile all the crumbly, dark worm-castings in one half of your bin, and place fresh bedding together with undigested paper, etc. in the other half. Resume feeding your worms, but add all food to the fresh bedding. Within two weeks worms will migrate to the new food and finished castings can be removed almost worm-free!

SETTING UP THE CONTAINER:

Build a bin out of wood or use a plastic storage container and adopt it for composting. The bin should be at least 12” deep, around 16” wide and 19” long, have a tight lid and holes on the bottom and sides for drainage and ventilation. Keep your bin where it won't freeze or overheat. They can be outdoors in Summer but inside in Winter. Don't put them near a heater. Worms like to live under lots of moist paper or leaves, which helps them stay cool and moist, giving them fibre to eat. Use regular newsprint black or colour ink paper, but no glossy inserts, and shred it to make 3cm wide strips. Moisten the paper by soaking it in a bucket filled with water. Squeeze out the paper so it is not dripping wet, and fluff to fill the bin 3/4 of the way – that is 23cm of fluffy, moist newspaper. Now, you can add red wiggler worms. Put them on top of the bedding and watch them disappear, as they will naturally disperse into their new home. Bury the food scraps under the paper, keeping 10 to 15cm of paper on top of it.

PRO & CONS:

Worms may need to be replenished to keep the compost bin going but are usually self regulating in keeping numbers down. The container may become a little smelly if it is too wet, has too much food or not enough ventilation. If the worms are dying or trying to escape it may be too dry or wet or not enough food. It is a useful way to look after the environment by turning garbage into compost. Don't get the container too wet as this may kill the worms. Worms can be removed and put in an outdoor compost heap. Worm farms are a method of composting in a unit or apartment. You need to harvest worm castings every 2 to 3 months to keep the worms healthy. This is an extremely good fertiliser.

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