Worm Farms: Home made v Shop bought

Hi all, seriously considering buying a worm farm. Have been reading lots about them and feel pretty confident that i could give one the required time and attention. My only dilemma now is whether to attempt to build one or whether to buy one. I was in my local garden centre last weekend and saw a brand new display of worm farms by Tumbleweed, they had the worm cafe and can o worms? Does anyone have any information - good or bad? I think i'd prefer to buy one because i don't really think i've got all the bits and bobs that i'd need to build my own so i may as well get a full kit?

Thanks for your help!

 

whatever you do, don't use the worm juice! (leachate) ... it can sometimes be anaerobic

I buy organic worm humis (vermicompost) in bags .... £10 for 25 litres

very good stuff!

 

Hey *dim*,


Thanks for the info! I've read about the leachate although some people seem to think that it's ok to use with caution making sure it's well diluted. Do you brew worm tea from the worm humus that you buy?



Karen

 

Hi Karen ... I brew actively aerated compost tea and worm humis is one of the main ingredients

£50 gets you started...

a decent aquarium (piston) airpump (45 litres/min)

an aquarium heater

a 5 gallon food grade plastic bucket (such as a home brewer's beer bucket)

2 airstones

add 20 litres of water to the bucket .... set the heater to 20 degrees C and bubble the water overnight to remove the chlorine ... if you use rainwater, you don't need to do this

add 5 cups of worm humis ... 3 heaped tablespoons of unsulphered black strap molasses, 5 cups of normal good garden topsoil

and let it bubble for 24 hrs ... use it undiluted on the plants with a watering can (foilar aswell as soil drench), but use it as soon as possible after switching off the airpump (use within 2 hrs)

I add extras, such as volcanic rock dust, bat guano (bat manure), some seaweed extract, fish hydrolosate, and homemade normal compost etc

it's not somuch a liquid manure, it's a soil innoculant ... I've been having great results so far

I also always add 20% worm humus to the planting hole of new plants ... it's really good rich stuff

 

I think that's key, so your are at a good starting point!

I have never done it, so only speaking from research I did when I did consider it (and then thought, along with my wish to keep Bees too, that I didn't have enough time)

I think the one I was keen on was Can'o'Worms, whichever one it was it was a stack design, where you could remove the bottom one once the worms had finished up there, empty it, and then add it to the top and start filling it with fresh material, so the worms would migrate upwards. But that may be no help at all!

 

There is loads of youtube videos on wormerys, very helpful, it depends on how big you want your worm farm to be and what you want to acheive, do you want worm castings or do you want to sell worms.
I started a wormery late last year and now I have buckets of the things, they breed like rabbits in horse poo and do quite well in plastic dustbins, if you want worm castings you need a shallow wormery so you can scrape the castings off the top periodicaly.

 

I read on several forums that the best compost is made from wormeries that have rabbit poo as a 50% diet for the worms