Experience of wormeries?

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if anyone has any experience of the "wormbox" style of wormeries? We have tried two different styles of wormery but with mixed results, and so we were looking for something new.

We live in a terraced house with a back yard, so we don't have any open soil and everything is in pots and planters. A traditional compost bin with an open bottom won't work for us.

With the "original wormery", the large grey bin, we had some success, but we found it got very soggy at the bottom and the compost was a very messy job to collect, especially in a concrete yard right next to the house. Being sealed, flies and smells weren't a problem.

We also tried the Wormcity tray wormery, which was much easier to gather the compost from, but the design is very open with gaps down the sides. However, with it being open at the sides it was smelly and attracted flies. In a small yard that we sit out in, it was very unpleasant. We tried it in one of the outhouses, but it just became a spider breeding ground and the flies would come out in a cloud when we opened the door. We kept the cover on it, of course!

We were wondering if anyone has any experience of the "Wormbox" design? This seems to have the best of both worlds - it's in trays making compost collection easy, but it also seems more sealed against flies getting in down the sides and smells coming out.

I think in a garden the smells and flies would be less of a problem, but in a small yard they are quite an issue.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

We had a box type wormery in the school playground, it didn't smell at all and was easy to empty and the kids enjoyed feeding it. I can't recollect what make it was, but it was similar to those shown in this advert.
Wormery by Wormcity Made In The UK

 

Thanks Dave. We tried this one but found it unsuitable because of its open-sided design encouraged the flies too much.
We’re hoping the wormbox design would be better, but it would be good to hear from someone who has one.

 

Hi

Over winter you must keep them from getting frosted or frozen as it will kill all the worms

 

We were gifted a stacking wormery by a member a couple of years ago.





Vermicompost (aka poo of worm)


Wee of worm fertiliser liquid.


Tapped off ready for use next year.



In a good functioning wormery, as others have mentioned, there should be no bad odours emanating from them.

The only odour emanating from our own wormery is a mushroomy (like well rotted leafmold) odour.

Fresh vermicompost is valuable stuff so I treat it like how a baker treats their heirloom yeast starter.

I add a scoop mixed in with spent compost to the bottom of a container for planting or for when I start off a compost pile as it will contain worms and worm "eggs" to help with the composting process.

 

Thanks for this interesting thread. I am half considering getting a wormery and some red composting worms, but it is a lot of money and I am concerned about smells and the hygiene aspect, and where I would keep it.

 

There was a fashion at one point of having these in the kitchen, I believe
So I don't think that they smell bad.
But just outside the door would be good I would think then you don't have to walk a long way to put stuff in it.

 

Originally my thought was these things cost about £160 for the whole kit, which is a lot of bags of Poundland potting compost.

People probably keep them in the kitchen so they are warm enough. You couldn't keep them outside in winter, it would be too cold.

I did read that if you know exactly what you are looking for you can buy the worms from fishing shops.

 

The worms are called brandlings I believe, reddish with white bands around them, they are around naturally in lots of compost heaps.
Yes they are used as fishing bait I think.

 

I've had good success with red rigglers in a sunken bucket in my beds. I just load em up with veg , spent coffee grinds, cardboard and away the go. They survive the winter as they are sunk low. See comparison pot out of the beds. I clear them out once a year with a riddle and back they go.

the bucket is shown on the gravel and the worm bins are in the beds, ignore the buckets around the tomatoes as they are an experiment on adventitious rooting.

the buckets have holes below the surface line and in the bottom for the compost tea to leech out. Worms seems happy not to disappear and vermin can't get to it.