Compost Worms

Much has been said about the life of the humble worm and it’s benefits to our gardens and environment. There is plenty of short ‘comments’ on the internet about worm farming and compost worms, and there are plenty of long winded books that go into the full biology of worms. I’m here to write a no nonsense outline on successfully creating an environment that is suited to the growth and breeding of composting worms.

Over the past 4 years I have bought and bred up a full colony of composting worms in my three tier Reln Worm Factory. I have had a couple of failures, mostly due to over heating and over feeding but it can be easily avoided.

Starting out:
Firstly you will need to get hold of a worm farm, there are a number of commercial units available, but if you are really keen you can build your own. I’m not going to go into details on how to build one, but here are a good link to get you started.

A lot of people use Polystyrene boxes, they are manufactured from pertrochemical products that will release toxins into your worm castings by means of chemical breakdown and oxidation. If you want your worm farm to be organic, dont use them.

Using a Reln Worm Factory or Can Of Worms you can be up and running within a short period of time.

Tip: If you live in Queensland (Australia) the State Government will give you a $50 rebate on your worm farm and worms as part of it’s environmental policy.

Inside your worm farm you will find a coir block and some instructions. The basic outline of the instructions is to wet the coir and place in one of the baskets supplied. Make sure you squeeze out a fair bit of the water, as the new worms don’t like it being too wet.

The next step is to source some worms, they can be purchased from garden centres or online from a retailer such as Worms Down Under, 1000 worms should be plenty to start your farm, they are about $40 for 1000. They can ship them via registered post in a box with wet newspaper all wrapped up in a calico bag. My worms took 4 days to arrive, even after that period they were as lively as ever!

Introducing the worms:
Tip the worms and soil they arrived in on top of the moist coir. Leave the lid off the worm farm, the light will cause them to move down into their new home.

Take a newspaper and soak it in water making sure that all the pages are soaked. Unfold it in the centre and lay it over the top of the soil in the worm farm. This will keep the worms cool and moist. Coir can be slightly acidic, so a couple of teaspoons of garden lime through the coir will help bring it back to neutral.

Food:
You can feed the worms food scraps such as fruit and vegetable peels, pulverized egg shells, tea bags and coffee grounds. It is advisable not to compost meats, dairy products, oily foods, and grains because of problems with smells, flies, and rodents.

Onion skins and citrus are not very good for worms as they don’t like them much.

Worms don’t have teeth, so the smaller you can make the food the better. A blender is always a good way to make food smaller, otherwise you can freeze the scraps for a day or two which when they defrost will be softer for the worms to eat.

Location:
Worms like a temperature range of 12 to 29 degrees celcius, so the prime location will vary from area to area. Typically a shady spot without full sun will do them best. In warmer areas you can cover them with a white towel or sheet to prevent excessive heat absorbtion.

Breeding:
In optimum conditions compost worms breed and lay an egg capsule every 7 to 10 days. Each egg contains on 6 to 20 worms, hatching in 21 days and reaching maturity in 3 months. Best breeding occurs in autumn, late winter and spring. To grow your worm population you need to give them a damp, cool and dark environment avoiding bright light and noise.

Worm Wee:

As 70-80% of what gets put into the worm farm is water, one of the biggest by products of your worm farm will be water. This gets caught in the bottom tray and can be used as a fertiliser for your garden. The ‘worm wee’ is a combination of water and nutrients from the break down of the material, simply dilute it 4 parts water to 1 part worm wee and pour it on your plants.

Harvesting Castings:
When the lower tray is converted to castings and reaches high enough for the next tray to touch the castings then it is time to add the next tray. Scrape an inch of compost from the top and place into the next tray making sure that the top of the bedding in the lower tray comes in complete contact with the bottom of the tray you are adding. Add some food to the top tray then cover with 10 cm of wetted (moist) shredded paper.

Leave this for a week, a lot of the worms (being hungry) will move from the bottom tray to the top tray to get food.After a week, put the second tray on the bottom, place the tray full of castings on the top with the lid off. As worms don’t like light, any worms left in the mix will move down. After 20 minutes, skim a layer of 3cm off the castings and set aside, leave for another 20 minutes. Repeat this process till there are no castings left and the worms have been forced down.

Odours:
Bad odor is usually due to overabundance of “greens” (wet waste) in the bin, results from too much nitrogen combining with hydrogen to form ammonia. To neutralize the odors, add a fair amount of shredded newspaper or other “browns” to the mix to absorb excess moisture, remove the smelly waste, and stop adding food to the bin until a substantial portion of the uneaten food has been turned into compost. The carbon will absorb the nitrogen and form a compound that is not smelly.

Pests:
Having a worm farm that is up and out of the way of pests is the easiest method to prevent them. Ants can pose a problem, but can be easily fixed by putting the legs in trays of water will stop them in their tracks. Maggots grow really well in worm farms, one fly can lay 500 eggs so make sure you keep the lid on your bin!

This short video goes through the process of freezing your scraps. I’m not sure what the plastic bags in the worm farm do though, worms dont eat plastic!

There it all is, should you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!