I only ask because I have no experience with BSF, other than seeing a homemade contraption at a farm where a friend was working, the smell was interesting.... I am absolutely horrible with field guides and I lack the whole skill associated with looking at a picture and, confidently, identifying something else as what's in that picture. ^looked really close to Mike's, closer than the others I had seen, so I was thinking it could be BSF. After hearing how many eggs the female drops, though, and looking more closely at the pictures, I'm back to not having the foggiest of clues. Do the experiment, and let us know, MM.
I went through the compost that I removed from the bin and put in a plastic 35 gallon garbage can and only saw about 4 or five digging through the compost. Unfortunately every one I found was not moving.
Those are black soldier fly larva. They are good composters and when they turn into flies it's ok because they don't sting or bite. Fornicate with women, acquire finances.
Some people hang rotten meat over their fish tanks in their aquaponics setups. The larvae fall into the fish tank and feed the fish. I would love to do this myself, but it doesn't work so well indoors because of the smell and the flies.
GtG - now that's what I'm talking about. It gets even better if you can feed it to your worms (if you have worms). If not, it's still better than what you find in most of the bagged material.
Hey Pak, I do have a little worm bin going. I am going to screen all this, then amend it with all the meals and rock dust. Then put it in a big smart pot and let my worms go in it for a couple months.
My compost piles are finally starting to look like compost! I guess pine needles do break down eventually lol. Both of the piles on the right have lots of them. The one on the left is my Luebke pile.. no pine needles. Started out as mostly native grass, wildflowers and shredded wood.. hard to recognize most of it. I can still see some shreds of coffee filter in it here and there. The chopped comfrey leaves I mixed in a couple weeks ago are all but gone TJ
Good job TJ. Now that autumn is here it's time to start collecting leaves for the next heap; you'll be glad you did in a couple of years... Lol J
I was thinking I might make an ad on craigslist for leaves lol. Unfortunately, I don't have any deciduous trees on my property. Hoping to plant some aspens next year, though. I did just find a nice ad on craigslist which I plan to hit up this week maybe even today lol We have a large amount of horse manure available. I have put them into three piles for easy moving. These are first come first serve. We cannot hold them for anyone. The manure is from horses who are pasture fed or eat organic hay. TJ
Dude, I love aspens. Watch out, though, my sister said they spread like bamboo. I can't get over their bright yellow, right now.