Worm Farm

If you are producing vegetables for your own consumption then you will pile up with peelings and all the other parts of the veggies which you don’t eat. How about turning them back to your garden to fertilize the existing soil and completing the chain.

A worm farm is a simple setup which will turn your green kitchen scrap into a really beneficial soil (worm casting) and liquid fertiliser. You will not only have the benefit of these two but also helping to the environment by reducing your waste.

I bought mine from the local Magnet Mart. 79 Australian dollars and 3 buckets of compost worms each 15 dollars (1500 worms in total). You can get one from Amazon as well. It has 3 layers and a liquid container at the bottom. Once one layer is full, you can start to the second one. When you come to the third one, the first layer will be ready to be used in the garden or in the pots. The population can go up to 20.000 worms as it is stated in the hand book; after this, worms will not produce anymore. At this point, you can share some with your friends and help them to start a worm farm.

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It comes with a block of coconut fibre which will be the first layer for your worms. Soak this in a bucket of water to expand and lay it down on the first layer. Put your compost worms on it and let them settle for about 3 weeks. In the mean time they will eat the coconut fibre turning it into a nice black worm casting. The packaging is also used in this setup for the

The juice of this setup collected on the bucket seen on the picture and it is a nice fertiliser for the seedlings. Actually this setup increased our vegetable consumption so that worms can have something to chew on. All your green kitchen scrap cooked or raw can go into this but no meet or bread or animal fat or citrus peelings. I also put used coffee grinds, some paper, all my tea bags.

I have vinegar fly problem at the moment but I sprinkled some lime on it to reduce the acidity. This actually means I am putting more than the worms can eat and things are rotting before worms can eat. I also covered the top layer with wet newspaper. Seems like flies reduced. I will put this outside as soon as weather gets a little better.

Compost worms and earth worms are two different type of worms. Earth worms are more sturdy than their compost cousins and does not require much food other than a dump cool ground and some soil to dig into. Compost worms are red worms and they eat green vegetables. Compost worms does not survive in the garden mostly. Compost worms are also excellent for fishing which is another of my hobby.

If you are planning to build a vegetable garden, a worm farm is one of the many setups to return your scrap back into the garden. Kids love it too.

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Posted in English, Permakültür.

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