Although I probably would have gone with the wait-and-see approach, Mark opted to spend an extra $20 on some black-soldier-fly eggs to get our bin off to a faster start.  This was probably a good idea since summer is already waning and we'd like to get some data on the composting experiment before winter.

Meanwhile, an expert over at Bugguide.net provided some information on the yellow soldier flies that I posted about yesterday.  Fly expert Martin Hauser noted: " While [the black soldier fly] eats literally everything (it is used in organic waste disposal), [the yellow soldier fly] develops also in my compost pile, but they clearly prefer rotten fruit."  It sounds like if we had enough excess squash and other semi-sweet morsels, we could expand our bin's capacity with this second species too.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if yellow soldier flies end up laying eggs in many black-soldier-fly bins undetected.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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