Jan 18, 2008

Home-made Worm Farm

Well, I've finally lived up to my blogger-name :) I was home-handymumming it up yesterday as Miss3 and I made a Worm Farm. Very exciting indeed. ("Wow! Does Daddy get to be the farmer?!")

I have been planning to use a laundry tub that we removed from our laundry when we moved in (it was too big to let our washing machine in) as a worm farm for some time. I just needed to get around to it - so with it being kindy holidays and all that, the time had come.

First, I set the tub up between two saw-horses that were generously left behind by the previous owners of our house (along with a big pile of other stuff).

Then Miss3 and I researched Worm Farms on the internet and found this good one {link repaired Dec 08} from a place in Christchurch who sells farms and worms. We found out what bedding we needed and what food we needed, and also that we'd need to make some sort of lid for our sink so the worms wouldn't drown in inclement weather. We also found out we could buy worms from our local Nichols garden centre.

So off we went to buy worms, and we bought sand for the sand-pit while we were there. And when we got home we made the lid - from some scrap wood in the garage.
Leftover paper pulp from our paper-making day on Monday went into the tub, along with a couple of handfuls of dirt and some food scraps from our compost bin

This was a bit soggy, so in went some straw to soak up the excess sog, and then the worms!

Cover the lot with some damp cardboard,


and voila! Our worm farm is in operation. Forgot to take a photo of it with the lid on, but it just looks like the first photo, but covered with wood :-)
According to that Christchurch site we found, they'll eat about a litre of food scraps a week, and will gradually increase consumption as the population expands. It will be about a year before the farm is 'established' and we can harvest vermicast, but in the mean time I'll be able to dispose of all sorts of paper waste in there that currently isn't recyclable. yippee.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very creative!
I personally think the best worm bins are those made from existing containers you have sitting around. Your idea is great!

Best of luck with the new worm farm.

Bentley

home handymum said...

Thanks! I'm pretty excited about it myself :) I keep showing it off to everyone who comes around. I've known about worm farming for ages and been wanting to set one up for nearly as long, so when someone asked me the other day, "So, WHY are you doing this?" I was quite at a loss to answer her - the reasons seemed too obvious and numerous that I just couldn't think of an answer.

Like your site, btw, thanks for dropping by!

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