WORM FARMING
Information provided by the Wollongong Councils Waste Management Education Team.
Worms are wonderful garbage disposers. In ideal situations they can eat equivalent to their body weight of food scraps a day. Worm castings are a rich soil conditioner or plant food.
Setting up a worm farm
· You can use small containers (such as a styrofoam box) with drainage, or purchase a commercially produced worm farm.
· Place a few sheets of moistened newspaper on the base of the tray. Some commercial bins include cardboard for this.
· The worms need bedding to live in. Bedding is easy to make. It is a mixture of shredded newspaper and either composted horse or cow manure, worm castings or coco peat. Add some soil for grit, then add water so that the mixture is as wet as a lightly squeezed spounge (i.e. you can just squeeze drops from it). Some commercial bins include a fibre material for use as bedding.
· Make the layer of bedding 10-15cm deep.
· Add 1000-2000 worms to the surface. There is no need to bury them as they will quickly move away from the light.
· Cover with a damp hessian sack or newspaper and leave for a week. This allows the worms to adapt to their new home.
Adding food scraps
· Begin adding small amounts of food scarps in shallow troughs.
· Only add more food scraps when the worms have worked through the existing scraps. After a number of months, you will be able to increase the amount of food.
· Add small sprinklings of lime if a lot of acidic materials (fruit peelings, etc) are used.
· Shredding food scraps will speed up the worm system.
· Add water if the bedding material becomes drier than a lightly squeezed spounge.
Harvesting worms and castings from a single box
When the entire container has been converted to castings (worm manure) you can harvest the castings and the worms as follows:
· Empty the contents of the container onto a table or other flat surface.
· Leave the material for a few minutes to allow worms to bury away from the surface.
· Scrape away the outside layer of material. This should be mostly free of worms.
· Leave the material again to allow the worms to burrow further.
· Continue scraping the castings away, layer by layer.
At the end you will be left with a ball of worms, ready to use again.