Wednesday 13 June 2012

Compost & Worms & Vermiphobia

I have a friend who hates worms, if like her, you also hate worms, please do not bother to read this post!


Hearing about the wonders of compost heaps really frustrates me. Our garden is so tiny (& paved) that there isn't really anywhere obvious for one to go. So instead we have a wormery hidden away in a corner by the kitchen wall.

Wormery artfully hidden by a bag of potatoes...

Utterly convinced that it would smell terrible, I was extremely sceptical at first. I was wrong, it doesn't smell at all & now I wouldn't be without it.


We feed the worms all the vegetable peelings, old tea bags, coffee grounds, egg shells & shreddings from the paper shredder. The pretty pink tiger worms happily munch their way through the contents, breaking the food remnants down as they chomp their way through the various layers of the wormery...They are quite old-fashioned in their tastes & turn their noses up at onions, garlic, chilli or citrus. (Do worms have noses?)

I regularly drain 'worm tea'  from the base of the wormery & dilute it with 10 parts water to use as plant food.

Every so often I'll empty out the bottom layer & spread it on the garden as fertiliser.

In addition to this we also collect free soil improver from our local recycling centre (as long as we take our own shovel & bags).

11 comments:

BadPenny said...

I now have a compost bin. When I had the chickend I had an open slatted composter & the hens used to jump in it !
I like the idea of a wormery. My soil was soo poor but post hens & compost it is richer & now has worms !

Your pate in previous post looks wonderful.

Knitlass said...

we love our worms too - and wiggly wigglers is in my native Herefordshire (the best English county, IMHO)! So, where's the knitting ;-)

Marigold Jam said...

Brilliant! Isn't nature fantastic? We have 2 compost bins artfully built to look like behives so they con't look too unsightly (made to replace the ugly green plastic ones) but now I think I might like a wormery too although then we'd have to share the veg peelings etc between them!

Iz said...

I do have a compost bin but I'm useless with it - I bung stuff in only when I remember, and then forget to turn it, and we've never actually used what's in the bottom of it and our kitchen waste goes in the Council's green wheelie bin. I like the look of your worms, though! Maybe the responsibility of having living creatures to feed would remind me to make my compost. Do they survive the winters?

tea with hazel said...

i love worms and i get very excited when i'm turning my compost piles and i see writhing masses of them among the decaying material..it's extraordinary really to think how much we benefit from them..

litlove said...

I don't dislike worms the way I dislike, say, spiders, but I couldn't hold a handful as you are so courageously doing! We do have a compost bin, which makes me very happy as I like to see the vegetable peelings put to good use. We have a bit of trouble getting it all to break down right, though, sometimes (and Mr Litlove's mother advises him heartily to wee in it, which as far as I know - and I don't really want to know - he hasn't taken her up on). But it is satisfying to improve the quality of the soil by one's own means!

Thrifty Household said...

They do survive winter. I wrap the wormery in a sheet of bubble wrap to keep the worms warm. They slow down so eat less too...

Mrs. Micawber said...

Well this is fascinating! A great way to recycle food scraps.

(I don't have a worm phobia but I'm not sure I'd like to have them wriggling around on my palm.)

If they do have noses, do they have them at both ends? :)

Calico Kate said...

Don't have a compost bin yet as we've only just moved in and I haven't been in a fit state to sort one out. HATE HATE DETEST having to throw everything in the bin. Feels wholly unnatural! Maybe a wormery is what we need until a proper compost bin can be arranged....will investigate. Thank you for the inspiration Mrs TH!
CKx

Rachel said...

I've only recently discovered that home-made compost isn't nutritious enough for planters - which is all we have - so I'm now a bit perplexed about what to do with the contents of our two compost bins...!

Stitchybritt said...

Amazing! I just read your post tonight after spending the morning looking at worm farms.

We don't have a compost bin because we have guinea pigs (and they eat most of the veggie scraps) but there are a few things they don't eat - potato peels, egg shells, tea leaves. So a worm farm would be perfect!

After checking some out at the garden centre, we were told that the local councils here in Sydney sell them at a very cheap price, or even give them away! So I will be on the phone to the local council in the morning : )

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