Saturday, August 30, 2008

Making a worm place

Worms are good for your garden because they eat decaying material and they help break up soil and are good for fertility. Here is an easy way to make a worm farm.

You can make it out of old tyres or crates. Here's what you do.

Get a piece of old perspex or corrugated iron and lay where you want it. Raise one end with something. I used an old phone book.and bits of old paving stones.

Next you soak some newspaper and cardboard in some water. Enough to stuff around the inside part of the tyre. This is where the worms will lay eggs and it serves also as food for fungi and bacteria that break down food for the worms.

Then you get some lawn clippings,, more wet shredded paper, compost and soil. Just enough to make like a 3cm layer on the bottom. Then you get some food scraps and put on top. This is food for the worms. The next part is the hard part. Finding worms. You can buy them, but I just went on a worm hunt around the garden. Next place another tyre on top and when the compost is ready you remove the lower tyre and the put it back on top again. Feed the worms with veges and food scraps and wet shredded paper. Add water if paper dries out and once a month dust with garden lime. Lastly cover the tyres with plastic weighed down with something to keep it in place. I used a couple of bits of wood and a pot plant

I didn't find too many worms so I'll look again tomorrow.

6 comments:

  1. Sorry I am not sure why my words turned out squished up and why some parts of the photos cover up some parts of words. I am not good at blogs

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  2. Hi Sue this is wonderful advice and we use tyres and the last one is now growing a big crop of potatoes from it. Basically you can just keep adding tyres on top of each other and covering the potatoes up until you have a good depth for the potatoes to grow those little taters into.
    Oh your blog showed through just fine to me here.however if it is still squishy go back to edit and place spaces between lines until you get what you want. Have a play you are fine it just takes practice thats all.
    A lovely post and thanks so much for sharing here.

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  3. I have never had experience with worm farms although I do work hard on getting them into my soil. Love your gumboots by the way and so good to see you use things laying about to create it. I think the manufactured farms are great too but where you can - recycle - it is nature's way.

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  4. Diane from upstairs has a very 'perfect' brought worm farm..layers where you put in your scraps to be broken down..and lovely black gold flows from a tap at the bottom...I also like the look of yours too Susan

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  5. Very cool! Back home in California I simply bought red wigglers and put them in my compost bin, but here in Idaho the winters are too cold for that. So, I'm considering making a worm bin for my garage. I'll see how my compost pile does over the winter as I add kitchen scraps to it before I decide fer sher.

    I like the potted plant on your worm bin. It's a very creative and beautiful way to keep the cover sheet in place.

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