the worms crawl in and out your snout!

Worm Composting -- Part One

finally!  done and dusted!  we have the worm farm and we have the worms! 

bought a worm farm and a box of worms today.  you'd be surprised (NOT) that it was the boys who really wanted to help with putting the farm together and not our daughter.  don't get me wrong .... she likes a good mess just as much as the next person .... but for some reason this just didn't seem to fit the "i'm interested" bill for her today.

the goal with this little worm farm is to have worm tea and worm castings for the garden.  should be absolute and divine for the worms!  it's winter .... so expect that production will be a bit low .... but hopefullly we'll start to see the pay off as the castings grow and mulitply.  the second phase will be to have our composting piles down the far side of the house and composting worms and bacteria in that .... which will be yummy and lovely soil creation from our garbage .... yeah!  we are closing that loop.

dear hubby was laughing at me a bit .... i was trying with full vigor to get all the worms out of the box and into the farm ....my comment being that we have bought them and they work for us now ... don't we owe it to them to try and give them all the opportunity possible?  okay ...okay .... so maybe going a bit overboard there .... i know.  but the concept is that we have invested in these little critters to begin our journey to sustainability ... should we try and make the most of it?

okay .... so what are the basic steps in creating a worm farm?  gotta tell you ... it's easy as!

1.  buy a worm farm from Aldi (i like them and will always give them a plug!)
2. buy your worms .... you can get these from any major hardware store in their garden centre or from a reputable worm farmer (now there's a profession for you!)
3. assemble .... takes a little bit of ingenuity and persistance .... but eventually, if you think long enuf it all starts to make sense (i'm only joking, btw)
4. expand the coconut husks in water ... these will form the first layer for the worm to get cozy in
5. layer the coconut husks on the bottom of the tray
6. dump the worms out on top and level it out (the boys loved this part!)
7. get as many of the itsy bitsty worms off the plastic storage as you are motivated to do (i went overboard)
8. feed them (sorry chooks ... food is gonna go to the worms for a while)
9. and then put a hessian bag covering on them to keep it dark and moist.

and now we wait .... hopefully not too long for worm tea to feed to the winter beds to get them going well ... but we'll take it as it comes!

Interesting resources.

Worm Farming Secrets Revealed

E-How Worm Farming Secrets

Worm Farming -- composting ideas