Worms.

Worms are an awesome and simple way to recycle household food scraps into valuable fertilizer and compost. These little fellows are working so hard converting ours that they are, literally, fogging up my camera lens!

I had an old farm that I dug out of the shed and gave a good wash. I ‘sterilized’ it by giving it a wipe down with Sodium Metabisulphate (the stuff home brewers use to sterilize their equipment).

To stop the worms drowning in summer when they dive to the bottom to avoid the heat, I filled the lowest layer with vermiculite. My guess is that that will allow drainage but still give the worns a way to climb back up.

On the advice of a ‘Uncle Rob’, the local worm supplier, I filled the first layer with coir fibre. To this I added 1000+ worms (purchased from Uncle Rob, of course).

I had prepared a half a bucketful of food scraps a couple of days earlier (to soften things up) and added this.

One last thing was a teasooon of dolomite spread over the food scraps. This ‘sweetens’ things by making the pH more appropriate for the worms.

Oh yeah…before I forget, I leave the tap open to allow drainage and collect the super worm liquid gold.

Thats it! Casa De Vermis, a food conversion factory in action.

The other day I found another farm in a 2nd hand shop. That’s sitting there waiting for action.

I’ll do another post when things are really wriggling along.