Worm Farms are a great way to recycle kitchen waste and food scraps into one of the best garden fertilizers available!
It’s very easy to maintain a worm farm, it takes very little time and effort, and you can set up worm farms in the smallest of spaces, such as balconies and courtyards.
Worms farms are in fact worm composting systems, or more correctly, vermicomposting systems, and earthworms are one of the fastest composters there are.
In this article we’ll discuss how worm farms work, how to set up a worm farm and how to take care of it.
You can buy or build a worm farm, and they come in all shapes and sizes to suit all tastes and requirements.
Most worm farms consist of a set of stacked trays with legs, and don’t take up much room at all. They are ideal in size for a small household.
If you’re after a larger capacity worm farming system, one that can process large amounts of food waste, you can make one out of a recycled old bathtub or buy one of the commercial wheelie bin worm farms. These larger worm farms are ideal for places that generate lots of food scraps, such as larger families, schools, cafes, restaurants or workplaces in general.
It’s important to choose a worm farm that will fit in your available space that can cope with the volume of food waste you produce.
It’s important factor to consider the ‘footprint’ – how much space the worm farm takes up on the ground. As you can see in the picture above, my three worm farms occupy a fair bit of space, luckily it’s in an unused corner of the backyard. I started with one worm farm , then added one more to cope with extra kitchen scraps, and then was given one – it wasn’t planned to run three side-by side!
A bathtub worm farm has a capacity of around 200L, and as you’d expect, it occupies the same space as a bathtub, which is a fair bit of space!
A wheelie-bin worm farm can have a capacity of 140L, 240L or 360L and occupies very little space on the ground. It and has the advantage of being moveable because in has wheels. Consider your requirements when purchasing, and you’ll be well rewarded, as worm farms last a very long time and are a great investment for the organic gardener!
Worm farms use earthworms to break down organic matter, such as food scraps, to produce worm castings and the liquid ‘worm wee’, properly termed worm casting leachate.
Kitchen scraps in a worm farm break down very quickly, this is the ‘before’ photo, with a mix of fresh scraps, and others in various degrees of breakdown.
Here’s the ‘after photo’, when the process is completed, all that remains are worm castings. The kitchen scraps are completely broken down, and are now unrecognisable.
All types of earthworms can do the same work, converting organic matter into valuable worm castings, but some breeds do a better job than others, so naturally, we choose the best worms for the job!
The earthworms used in worm farms are in fact compost worms, which are different to the regular earthworms found in garden soil. Compost worm are surface feeders and don’t burrow deep into the soil like garden earthworms do. The various breeds of compost worms, such as Tigers, Reds and Blues, are capable of eating their own body weight in food each day, so a kilogram of worms will consume that much food daily! By comparison garden earthworms only eat around half their body weight each day, so they aren’t as good at composting lots of material really quickly, as it takes them twice as long.
It’s important to keep in mind that compost worms won’t survive in your garden soil. Being surface feeders, they can’t burrow deeply into the ground to the cooler soil in the heat of summer like regular earthworms, so they don’t survive for long. They also need thick layers of composting organic material on top of the soil to feed on, so if there’s no organic matter over your soil that is breaking down, they won’t have any food.
All earthworms are part of an ecological class of organisms called decomposers, they eat rotting organic material and turn it into worm castings. Since they don’t have any teeth, earthworms need to wait till their food start to break down before they can begin to eat it. If their food is chopped up or broken up, it breaks down faster, and the worms can eat it sooner.
Now that we’ve covered basic earthworm theory we can now look at worm farm designs.
Worm farms are usually made from two stacked trays:
The liner that sits at the bottom of the top tray stops the worms from falling through the drain holes into the liquid below and drowning. In commercial worm farms a piece of cardboard or some newspaper works fine as a liner. In homemade worm farms, where the drain holes are bigger, use a piece of shade-cloth or window screening first, then put the cardboard or newspaper down over it.
The worm bedding is where the worms live, it is usually just a damp layer of coconut coir, but you can use other materials such as damp shredded newspaper, or well-aged compost or manure.
The food scraps are kitchen scraps and other materials that the worms can eat – we’ll go into detail of what you can and can’t feed your worm later on in this article.
The cover which is also called a ‘worm blanket’ is an old hessian sack or a whole newspaper, it helps create a dark, cool and moist habitat by providing a cover over the bedding and their food, which encourages them to move into the food and eat it. The cover will eventually break down after a few weeks as it is biodegradable.
This is the basic worm farm design, but there are some variations. Many worm farm that you buy will have two or more top trays, the idea being that when the top tray fills up with worm castings, you can just add another tray to the top of it, and start putting kitchen scraps in the upper tray, and the worms will move up to the food. That also lets you remove the lower tray of completed castings to use in the garden while the worms are busy eating in the new tray.
Lets have a look at another worm farm design and see how it also works.
Large scale worms farms made from recycled bath tubs don’t have multiple trays, just a single level.
The bathtub is supported off the ground on bricks or it sits in a wooden stand or frame, and a bucket is placed below the drain hole to collect the liquid. The drain hole is covered with mesh or screen so only the liquid comes out.
The bottom of the bathtub is filled with coarse gravel for drainage, then the bath is lined with shade cloth above the gravel and then filled with bedding material. The rest of the layers are just like any other worm farm.
Since bathtubs don’t come with lids, a timber sheet or wooden cover is used to protect the worms and keep them shaded.
When setting up a worm farm it is important to choose the right location. Worms like a cool environment, so if you locate the worm farm in a shady spot outdoors where it will not overheat from exposure to direct sun, your worms will be happy.
You can place the worm farm on a shady side of a fence, at the side of the house where there isn’t much sun, under a tree, or even inside a shed or garage as long as it doesn’t get really hot in there during the summer. A protected spot on a balcony will work just fine too.
It’s also important to set up the worm farm in a location where you can easily get to it, so it’s ideal to locate it close to your kitchen, which will be the source of kitchen scraps for your worm farm. If you can’t easily access your worm farm you’re less likely to use it.
TIP: Keep a small bucket or container with a lid in the kitchen to throw your food scraps into, and empty it into the worm farm when you’re done. Lining with a piece of newspaper helps keep the container clean and the newspaper will be broken down in the worm farm with the food scraps.
To set up the worm farm, it’s quite simple, especially if it’s one you purchase, as they all come with instructions which are similar to those you’ll find below.
Here are the seven basic steps to getting a worm farm stated:
Firstly, what you feed your worms is important. There are some things that worms won’t eat, and there are other things that are just simply unhygienic to put into a worm farm.
Remember that a worm farm is a vermicomposting system, it is used mainly for food scraps, which break down very quickly. Woody garden prunings and green waste are slow to break down and are better placed in a regular compost bin instead.
Let’s have a look at what you can and can’t put in your worm farm:
Secondly, how you feed your worms is also very important.
Place the food on the bedding, beneath the cover, also known as the ‘worm blanket’, which is just a damp old hessian sack or a whole newspaper, fold it to fit if necessary.
When you first set up your worm farm, add a small amount of food, and as the worms begin to feed in a few days, then add more. Don’t overfeed your worms as the food will remain uneaten, and will begin to rot, which doesn’t create a healthy habitat for your worms.
When feeding the worms in the worm farm, don’t cover the whole surface with food, place the food to one side only, and try to cover half of one side at the most. Just in case the worms don’t like what you’ve just put in there, they can go to the other side of the worm farm where there’s no food. If you cover it completely they’ll have nowhere to escape to if they don’t react well to your latest food offering. Once that half covered with food is eaten, add more food to the other side, and alternate sides, so there’s always a food free side for them to move to if they need to.
The worms in the worm farm will breed and the population of worms will grow. As they multiply they will eat food faster, and you’ll be able to add more food. The number of worm will eventually self-regulate to match the size of the worm farm and the food available, so after a while you’ll know how much food they can process.
Worm farms all have a tap or outlet to collect the liquid that seeps out from the worm farm, this liquid is often called ‘worm wee’ or ‘worm pee’ but the correct name is worm casting leachate.
To collect the leachate:
Even if your worm farm has a tap, you can permanently leave the tap open and place a bucket under the tap, this will prevent flooding! This is how I prefer to do it, and in the picture above you can see how the liquid fills the bucket after a light rain.
To use the leachate, always dilute it with water first before you use it on your garden, as it may be too strong to use directly. Always dilute it 10:1 with water, that means one part leachate to ten parts of water. When it is diluted it will be the colour of weak tea.
It’s important to keep in mind that the leachate is it is not a fertilizer like worm castings, it’s more of a soil conditioner that improves the health of the soil as it’s full of minerals and beneficial microorganisms. Think of it more as a vitamin tonic for the plants and the soil, rather than a food. Since it’s rich in beneficial beneficial microorganisms, you should always dilute it with rainwater, because tap water is chlorinated and will kill all the good bacteria in there!
The worm castings, or vermicompost, is ready to collect when the bedding material and the food in it has broken down well and all that remains is a dark, rich, fine, moist substance, in which you can no longer see the food scraps.
A good time to collect the castings is in spring and autumn, because this is a good time to fertilize your garden.
The trickiest part of collecting worm castings is separating the worms from the castings! You want to keep your worms in the worm farm. There are a few techniques for harvesting worm castings which allow you to separate the worms out which we will look at in detail below.
If you have a worm farm which uses stacked trays, you can wait for a day when it looks like it is about to rain. On rainy days the barometric pressure in the atmosphere drops, and the worms sense this, so they rise to the top to avoid drowning when the rain comes down. This is a natural survival instinct that for when the rain floods their burrows and tunnels in the ground.
When they worms come to the top, they will all leave the lower tray, and will gather in the top tray or inside of the lid. When they all come up, you can quickly lift out the lower tray and put it aside for later use. Don’t leave it out in the rain though, as it will become overly waterlogged, and lots of beneficial bacteria will get washed out, put it undercover somewhere and use it in the garden as soon as possible after the rain has passed.
With worm farms that have a door at the bottom to harvest castings, simply harvest the castings and put them in a bucket for later use, but don’t leave them sitting in the bucket for an extended period of time, as there’s no drainage and any moisture at the bottom may become stagnant water.
So what happens if it isn’t going to rain anytime soon and you need castings? Well, there are other habits that worms have which we can take advantage of – worms dislike light, so make sure you don’t expose them to direct sunlight when caring for them, they sunburn easily!
To separate the castings from the worms, gather your castings, which will contain worms, put on some rubber gloves, and place a pile of castings on a low flat container or board, and shape it into a pyramid shape. Do this in a shady spot outdoors.
The worms will not stay in the narrow pointed tip, and will burrow downwards to escape the light. Scoop off the tip of the worm casting pyramid, and put that into a bucket. Then reshape the pile into a pyramid with a new tip, and harvest the worm-free castings again. As you keep on doing this, the pyramid will get smaller and smaller, and the worms will keep moving to the bottom. When you have a small, low, flat pile full of worms, put it back in the worm farm.
We can take advantage of yet another of the worms natural instincts to facilitate the harvesting of castings. When their bedding turns to castings, they will be basically living in their own waste, which is not their preferred environment. They have a preference for fresh bedding material with a supply of food.
If you push the castings to one side of the worm farm to make a space to lay down fresh bedding material, put fresh bedding in in that space, and only lay food on the fresh bedding side, the worms will move over to the area with fresh bedding and food, and will move away from the side which contains only their waste (castings) and no food. Once all the food is finished in the castings, they will decide to move out to the nicer side, and you can then collect the castings! This technique works well in long, wide worm farms such as bathtub worm farms.
In the process of harvesting worm castings, you’ll find earthworm eggs or cocoons. They’re easy to identify, they’re small amber or yellow eggs about 3mm (1/8”) in size which look like little beads but when you have a closer look at them they’re shaped like tiny lemons. Pick these out when you come across them and return them back into the worm farm.
Try to use the castings fairly soon after you’ve collected them, don’t let them sit around for a very long time, and don’t let them dry out, as they’ll lose their beneficial value.
Now that you’ve collected your castings, there are many ways that you can use them.
Basically, you can use worm castings the same way you would use any slow-release organic fertilizer, it’s that simple!
* Note – How to make worm casting tea (or compost tea) is a process that would take a short article to describe so I haven’t included the instructions in this article!
Worm farms are quite problem-free and easy to look after, but there are a few things to keep in mind that will make caring for your worm farm much easier. Here’s a few of the biggest problems you might face and some simple solutions.
Unless your worm farms is undercover, it will get rained upon, and some rainwater will get in, depending on the design. This is a benefit in my mind as it flushes out the castings and makes a good supply of worm casting leachate (worm wee) that you can use in your garden.
If your worm farm has a tap, and the tap is closed, then your worm farm may get flooded!
The simple solution is to leave the tap permanently open and place a small bucket underneath as shown below. This will also prevent the tap getting blocked too.
If you do need to leave the tap shut, you can save any worms from drowning if they fall into the liquid in the bottom by giving them and ‘island’ they can climb onto. Just place an upside-down terracotta pot into the bottom of the worm farm where the liquid collects. The terracotta pot is heavy enough so it won’t float and move around, and the surface is not slippery like plastic, which will allow the worms to climb the sloped sides as shown below.
Also, remember to open the tap and collect the liquid from your worm farm once a week, and if your worm farm is exposed to the rain, collect the liquid immediately after it rains too.
The fastest way to lose all the worms in a worm farm at once is to accidentally let them get cooked in hot weather!
We’ve already discussed the location of the worm farm earlier in this article, it should be in a protected, shaded location away from direct sun. Sometimes, even the shadiest location might get direct sun exposure during summer, because the sun is directly overhead, or because the hot west afternoon sun comes in from the side as the sun lowers in the evening.
Worm farms can overheat simply due to the high temperature of a hot summer’s day, because the air outside is hot, and they’re in an enclosed container. To alleviate this problem, prop the lid the worm farm open a bit to let air circulate through and to release any hot air that may be building up under the lid. You can simply lie a stick across the top of the worm farm and place the lid over it so there’s a gap between the top edge of the worm farm and the lid.
On really hot days, you may need to cool down the worm farm by watering it with a watering can and rainwater. Make sure there’s some form of cover material (the ‘worm blanket’) in place such as newspaper over the bedding and food, to keep the worm’s environment dark and moist.
Open the tap to prevent flooding and place a bucket underneath to collect the liquid. Water with a watering can making sure you evenly dampen the whole surface. DO NOT use tap water if you can , it is contains chlorine, which will kill a lot of the beneficial bacteria on your worm farm! After wetting down the bedding and cover material, the water will slowly evaporate to create a form of evaporative cooling which will help the worms cool down.
The best way to protect worm farms from direct hot sun is to cover them with a screen of some sort that is light coloured and will reflect the sun, with sufficient air-space underneath it so it doesn’t trap the hot air over the worm farms and cause them to overheat. You can remove the screen in the cooler seasons, and put in in place during the warmer seasons.
I’ve found that cheap reflective plastic tarpaulin sheets, suspended high above the worm farms to allow air to flow underneath, work extremely well. You can tie the bottom of the tarp to a brick or other heavy object to stop it flapping around in the wind.
Pictured below are my worm farms (and a compost bin on the far left) sheltered behind a fence.
It’s natural to have a few other insects in your worm farm, but some are unwelcome guests!
Ants do not belong on your worm farm, and it may be because it’s too dry in your worm farm, as ant’s don’t like moist environments.
To discourage ants, dampen down the worm farm with a watering can full of rainwater, and to stop them getting in there, create a barrier, an ‘ant moat’ by sitting the legs of your worm farm (if it has legs) in tray of water as pictured below.
The water will evaporate on hot days so remember to keep it topped up. I’ve seen suggestions of using taller narrow containers filled with oil which won’t evaporate but in my mind that will create a disgusting mess as dirt gets blown in by the wind. I reckon water is a much tidier solution!
Smearing a band of Vaseline around the legs of a worm farm is another suggested solution but it’s likely to melt in hot climates.
Ants aren’t a problem unless you overload your worm farm with lots of sugary food, and if the food has been there long enough to attract ant’s there’s a chance you may putting in much more food than the worms can eat. Remember to chop up the food so breaks down faster!
Vinegar flies are those tiny flies that fly up into your face when you lift the lid on a compost bin or worm farm. They are attracted to rotting food, especially fruit, as are fruit flies, so the best way to prevent them breeding is to cover the food scraps beneath a damp newspaper (remember that all important ‘worm blanket’ cover over your bedding!)
Other insects such as millipedes are not a problem, they are decomposers and feed on rotting organic matter, returning the nutrients to the soil. Slaters, also known as wood lice, pillbugs, roly-polys or butcher boys are also beneficial decomposers and are in fact land-based crustaceans! Soldier fly larvae, which look like giant silver-grey maggots are also beneficial, though they look a bit creepy. Springtails are unmistakable little insects which hop around on the surface when you lift the lid, they are also beneficial, they’re all part of the decomposer community too, a natural part of the Earth ecosystems recycling processes.
If you see tiny white worms in your worm farm, they are not baby earthworms, these worms are entrachyadids, they are not harmful but do indicate that your worm farm has become a bit too acidic. Correct the acidity by sprinkling a small amount of garden lime, dolomite or wood ash (which are all alkaline) in your worm farm every few weeks.
A healthy worm farm will have little to no smell, perhaps a faint but pleasant earthy smell just like healthy soil or a forest floor. If it has a sharp vinegar smell it may be too acidic, add crushed eggshells, garden lime, dolomite or wood ash to correct the problem.
If it smells quite offensive, it is an indicator that the system has become quite anaerobic from too much uneaten food. To fix this problem, stop adding any more food, add a sprinkling of garden lime, dolomite or wood ash, and lightly stir up the existing food scraps to aerate them on a regular basis. Once the smell disappears, then begin feeding the worms again.
As you can see, it’s quite straightforward to run a worm farm, it doesn’t take much effort to keep your worms happy.
Your worm farm will give you a free supply of valuable castings and leachate for your garden, which your plants will absolutely love!.
Time to get worm farming!
If you’d like to learn more about worm farming, please check out the following articles:
How to Make and Use Seed Bombs: A Complete Guide for Green Guerrillas
Grow Indoor Plants in Water: The Complete Houseplant Hydroponic Gardening Guide
Understanding the Impact of ‘Wet Feet’ on Plants: Causes, Symptoms, and Effective Management StrategiesYes, they would definitely eat them! Don�t overfeed them though, fish have very small stomachs and don�t eat that much. Any uneaten food will rot at the bottom, which is a bad thing!
tj says:My five inch goldfish will eat two or three one and a half inch worms each day until it gets fed up and will take a very much smaller sized caterpillar, the worms sink immediately so I have to get the fish’s attention before putting them in the water, caterpillars are difficult to sink so I don’t bother with them too much. Fish eat anything they can swallow, when I was a child we had a good fish for fifteen years in a small tank on a windowsill, for fun I would occasionally dig up a worm, hard work in our little stoney back yard, I don’t think it ever saw fish food, must have survived on February falling in the tank! More than once we came home to find a local cat had scooped it out, we tossed it back in and never gave it a second thought! Poor thing, occasionally we children would enthusiastically (misguidedly) try to introduce a companion, usually tiny cat fish or terrapins, it murdered all of them, most likely because it was a small tank with limited food supply.
Dr P Nitya Jeeva Prada says: Highly informative paper. Thank you �lodie Mercier says: I like that you can grow your fishing bait AND quality compost that way really! Dan says:I have to keep part of my worm farm indoors in winter because it is too cold for them to survive where I live. I have plastics boxes indoors and I just empty half of them in my outdoor compost boxes in the spring and keep the rest to multiply the following year. I usually add a fine layer of sand in my bins to help the worms digest the food. Worms have a gizzard and the sand helps them grind their food to digest better.
Angelo (admin) says: Thanks Dan, that’s a great tip for people in colder climates! Heather Sloan says: what should I do in the winter? Heather Sloan says: Sorry,No need to move them inside, no need to really move them at all. My worm farms are permanently outside, just leave the tap open and put a bucket underneath so when it rains the worm farms don’t flood and you collect all the fresh worm casting liquid.
Admin says:For the suggested 500-1000 worms started with, approximately what quantity of leachate can be gotten in a week?
Or can one sprinkle some amount of rain water on the blamket to ‘wash off’ the leachate into the lower bin for collection?
Also in dry seasons, what water source can be used considering that there wont be rain water?
It takes a few weeks for the worms to get established in their new home and start eating the food scraps.
Yes you can sprinkle water slowly and gently using a watering can, like you do on a hot summer day to cool the worm farm, to get more leachate.
When it rains, the rainwater flows through my worm farms, which is why I keep the taps open with buckets underneath, and I get around 4 litres of leachate from each worm farm after a heavy rain.
If you don’t have rain water, use water that has been left to sit outside in a container open to the air for a few days as this may reduce the chlorine content in some cases.
Thanks this has been the most informative page I’ve read on a long time. I have kept 2 worm farms for 4 years and have picked up many useful tips.
Admin says: Was wondering how and where I can get these special earth worms. Any ideas? Angelo (admin) says:You should be able to purchase compost worms from your local garden centre or from retail outlets that sell worm farms. In the unlikely event that you can’t source them you can use regular earthworms from your garden, but they’re only as half as efficient as compost worms as stated in the article.
Katie says:Hi! How do you prep the next tray you will add on top? I’m almost up to this on my current worm farm. The base was horse manure, shredded paper and food… do I repeat that for consequent trays? Thanks!
Angelo (admin) says:Hi Katie, you don’t have to prepare the empty tray that goes on top of the full one on your worm farm, the tray below gives the worms a warm comfortable home, just add food to the top tray in the usual manner.
Al says:Hey cool worms. To expand my farm I gather I would have to split the worms and put some into a new plot .How often would I be doing this ? And would they survive in temps of 40 C . Anyhow time for a worm tea , cheers.
Angelo (admin) says:The population of the worms adjusts to the amount of food they have. You only need to split off some of the worm population and add then to a new worm farm when you have an empty worm farm to fill! My worm farms have survived temperatures of 40-45 degrees C for several days just fine during a heatwave, just follow the instructions in the article on how to keep your worms cool and they will survive the hottest of summers.
Chris says:Our worm farm has stopped producing ‘ tea’ we consistently feed the worms and have done for over 2 years. In the last couple of months the worm wee has slowed to next to nothing.what could be a contributing factor ?
Cheers
That’s not much information to work with, any more details? Water in = water out. My guess is that you probably aren’t putting enough moist materials in there, and the worm farm is also undercover where no rain fall on it.
Fran McKenna says:Hi Angelo.
Thank you for your excellent website. I was wondering how often you can apply the diluted worm wee to the plants?
Kind regards. Fran
As we can never be sure of the composition of the worm wee, to much of anything is rarely a good idea, so I use it in different parts of the garden every time to add beneficial microbes to the soil in all parts of the garden. Even with three worm farms and with dilution with rainwater so it’s the colour of weak tea, I don’t get enough to repeat water any spot. If it’s diluted enough you can use it more often, but it’s hard to put an exact figure, I wouldn’t apply it to the same location more than once a week personally, but that’s just me being cautious.
kawaglyhm says:What is the coldest winter temperatures that a worm farm can tolerate? We live in Michigan and get below zero temps in January and February. Thanks for the great information!
Angelo (admin) says:Some varieties of compost worms are more sensitive to cold than others, but freezing temperatures will kill them, and depending on the breed of compost worm, their eggs as well. In areas where severe frosts are encountered, a simple solution is to place your worm farms somewhere warmer than outside – in a garage or basement, even indoors. Small worm farms are portable, and homemade worm farms constructed from Styrofoam (polystyrene) boxes work well to maintain the temperature. The wisdom of having smaller portable worm farms that are easy to move around and relocate in areas where severe frosts are encountered should be evident. Be aware that in the cold of winter the worms will not eat much, and in very low temperatures they just won’t eat at all, so don’t add any additional food because it will simply just rot.
Lonnie Collier says:?? This has been very informative, I am about to start my first worm bed . ??
Thank you so very much !
Hello Angelo,
I am having trouble with my worm farm and I am not sure what I am doing wrong.
The worm farm I have is the one with several layers and it has been in operation for about one and a half years. Lately I have been having trouble but before that all was going well.
Recently I found a whole lot of the worms on the floor where I keep the farm in the garage. I took all the worms and remaining bedding and separated the worms from the poo, replaced the bedding with fresh coir and started again. Also at that time the leachate developed a layer of mould on it and it smelt unpleasant.
All went well for a couple of weeks and tonight I found a lot of worms in the leacheate. They had got there through the tap. When I lifted the top layer there were lots of worms in the base where there is a raised section in the middle for the worms to move to to avoid drowning. I felt very sorry to see that. I cleared the bottom layer of worms and put them back into the tray where the food is. I did notice a small amount of little bubbles on the worm clumps and wondered if this was mucous perhaps? I have also observed some clumps of tiny little light brown insects gathered on the vent holes in the lid and wondered what they were? I only put the food on one side just in case they don’t like it. When I lifted the blanket there were still a lot of worms feeding on the food.
I have never used another layer in my farm as I was not sure how to do this. Do you put it on the top with a base of paper and more coir? When do I know when is the right time to give the farm another layer?
Also with the food you have to feed them only after the food given is consumed. I have been collection and freezing the food and then give it to them say every 2 weeks. Is it better to put the fresh food there daily and not to freeze it?
How often should I place water on the farm? I haven’t been doing this on a regular basis.
I have read the instructions a few times and still don’t feel confident about managing the worm farm.
I would greatly appreciate your suggestions.
Kind regards,
Fran
Hi, great article!
For those worried about low temperatures, my wormery is located in an unheated, 1/2″ tongue and groove uninsulated shed invfront of its window and we often get temperature of below -10c/12f in winter, and the weather is cool and damp in most summers too. I have a dry newspaper on top of the worm bin, it is off the ground, and I keep it on the dry side when the weather turns cold. There is significantly less worms, and therefore worm activity, when cold but the centre of their container (much like the ground outside) seems to stay unfrozen at depth.
Another thing, if you want compost worms (mine are deep red brandings I believe) there is no need to buy them, simply lay some thick mulch down outside (leaf mold, or partially composted leaves, or some covered veg food scraps) and they majical appear. I have even done this on a concrete slab! You start off with ten, and in next to no time, assuming they like the conditions you provide, you will have populated your wormery.
Interestingly, I constantly throw food scraps into a large wheelie bin (because it’s conveniently placed outside my back door) and it gets pongy, wet, it smells putrid, throughout the warmer months worms climb the vertical compost walls, no doubt trying to escape the putrid and hot environment, and are to be found in handfulls around the inside rim of the lid, on opening the lid they obligingly drop into my hands to be relocated to the wormery, or thrown back into the wheelie bin with a little potting compost to keep from wanting to escape again – I have been known to throw some wood ash or lime in, but don’t usually bother too much about them.
Eventually I line a bean trench with the contents (just to get rid of it!) and put any worms I find into the next wheelie bin.
The cold and poor conditions obviously inhibit the activity of individual worms but even if a colony seems to completely disappear they will spring up again as if from no where and will soon enough be chomping away on the decay. Seriously, I moved some frozen solid (all winter) material from a wheelie bin into a clean container and started “feeding” it with scraps, after a while the little blighters appeared and built up again to significant numbers over the summer, suggesting to me that they smell dinner from afar and migrate, or that the odd veg scrap harboured worm eggs, or that they are quite cold tolerant.
Any hoo, I only made the “wormery” in the shed because bought in seed compost is getting worse with the municipal recycled products and the inevitable contamination, and I wanted my own seed compost, however, the wormery product, though it looks good was not very successful for seed germination or growing on, even when mixed with peat. Does anyone have any suggestions of what to use the worm casts for other than as a mulch?
