Wormery

Apologies if this has been done before, but they've just been wibbling on about these on Radio 5.

How does one work, how big is it, where can I get one, what is the best type and how much should I expect to pay?

Oh, and feel free to point out anything blindingly obvious that I haven't thought of.

 

My two nearest local authorities are both selling them off with a heavy discount to try to reduce the amount of good stuff being landfilled. It might be worth you checking out your own authority web site to see if they are giving away any freebies or advice.

 

Skiver, I've been having a look at setting up a wormery as well. A search on google for "wormery" (in the uk) will find you approx 8500 pages ! However, the one that caught my eye, being a thrifty scotsman was the Wormery On A Budget. OK so you will have to buy worms in addition to making the wormery but using the design shown it us cheaper, will prob give you more volume and is expandable.

I wonder just how many crates you could safely stack

 

I'm really interested in starting a wormery, but I'm concerned that I don't have enough of the right kind of waste. The majority of the waste I would produce would be teabags! (And I'm not entirely sure that I can even feed the worms that!)
Any advice would be very gratefully received!

 

Gosh lynne you must drink a lot of tea and not eat! The worms do like tea bags and anything like bread, food leftovers, vegetable peelings and the like. You can even put in cooked meat but the worms don't eat bones so they will be left. :D

 

I have two wormeries one I got from wiggly wigglers and one I made msyelf from an old wheelie bin making drainage holes in it just at the bottom and on the lid for air.

tea bags are fine the compost might not be so great as if it weremore varied but they like teabags enough. They apparently dont like onions garlic or citrus fruit - and not too much stuff that would make it very hot like too much grass clippings - althought there is a site I looked at where somone said he let them eat everything and they did.

Apparently they come up to the top of the bin when they are unhappy bawout their environment or when they are new - to explore their environment.

I used to get very very anxious about mine about whether they were unhappy or all dead adn a every one I know who keeps a worm composting system gets quite attcached to them - they like sugar and apparently it makes them breed I say apparently as I really dont know. I have had mine over five winters now although early on Ilost two binsfull of worms as htey had soem shelf thing in the bin and juts kept going down into the water and drowning. This is why I made my own and ditched the drainage shelf too I filled the bottom with stones reckoning that that is more like their normal environment so they woudl have a chance of retreati8ng when they a#ecounered hte water inthe bottom, then put in a bedding layer of shredded newspaper and peat then when you start no more than a 2inch layer of composting material - you can gradually add more as more worms are born and as they get used to their environment. They can only suck so have to wait for stuff to decompose so stuff that rots quickly is really good.

I get more excited now about hte worms surviving than I do about the compost although tthat is great - Ilive in a low frost are a by hte sea and although the worms are not hardy, they are tiger worms - the ones htat got tipped out wiht the compost seem to have survived too. I think they are hardier than they think they are.

 

Aah I iddnt answer all the question - they live in a bedding area and as the compost above them rots down and they eat it, they make it into more living space so that the bin gets fuller and fuller with compost and rises to the top eventually you have a binful and can scoop out the top layer complete with the worms and start again repacing them at the bottom. Because they breed you may have to give some away or start a new bin, or let them in the garden where they might survive. They dont like light so if oyu want them to get back down into the bin oyu leave the top open and they retreat to the darkness they dont like the acid on our hands so wear gloves or poke around with a stick to see if they are still alive.

 

I've recently bought a shredder for all our confidential docs, and I understand you can use that in a wormery too. I rather like the can o worms one but it's very expensive. I might ask for one for my birthday!