I've got worms!

Another of the jobs I did on the weekend was maintenance on the worm farm. On Friday afternoon, Hanno and Jens moved the old bathtub I have the worm farm in. I found it too difficult to easily get to the worms and the farm was suffering for lack of adequate care. Now the tub is sitting on a bench in the greenhouse, it has a piece of corrugated iron over it to prevent rain soaking the bed and drowning the worms.

I have written about setting up a worm farm here. It's a simple matter to set your own farm up and if you're having trouble with composting - if you don't have enough material for a compost heap or bin, then a worm farm will provide you with valuable organic nutrients for your garden with less raw materials. Once you've built the bedding up for your worms, all you need to provide them with is enough food to keep them alive and breeding. That is generally done with kitchen scraps, garden waste, old newspapers, old cotton or linen clothes. Worms eat most things but they don't like citrus peels or onions. This is a good fact sheet on the value of worm farming.

Worm castings ready to be used in the garden or for making worm cast tea.

On the weekend, I checked out the worm farm thoroughly. We always have reduced numbers of worms in winter but they are quite healthy and when the warm weather hits us, the worm population will double, then double again. I have the farm set up with casts on one side, that I'm constantly taking from, and the breeding and eating worms on the other side. Of course, the worms travel from one side to the other, but I check castings for worms when I take it out and although there generally aren't many there, I usually find one or two.

The layer of straw before watering.

I removed the old bedding the worms are in and placed it on a tarp on the floor. I had collected all my materials and started placing it all in the bathtub after making sure it was moist, but not wet. The new bedding is made up of straw, a small amount of cow manure, some old silverbeet and cabbage leaves and the old bedding. It's all mixed together gently to avoid harming the worms. Then I added a layer of food from the fridge. There was a bowl of thick vegetable and barley soup, and old chopped up boiled egg, a couple of slices of bread and some apple cores and peels. Then I poured over about a litre (quart) of diluted black strap molasses. The worms love this and it provides them with added nutrients. Finally, I placed another layer of straw, an old wet cotton mat and sheets of newspaper. The mat and paper provide the worms with darkness, which they prefer, and keeps the layers underneath moist. Every few days I lightly sprinkle water on the worm farm to keep it moist.

Final layer of matting and newspaper.

All I need to do now is to keep the farm moist and feed the worms a couple of times a week. As the population increases in the coming months, I'll add food more frequently, possible three or four times a week.

Worm farming is a great project, especially for the kids. It's easy to do, safe, and, best of all, it is a productive project that will give you valuable nutrients for your soil.