SCHWOIT

Many of you no doubt have seen my recent Worm Farm and The Many Gifts of a Worm Farm articles. Also, as you may have read I am considering a second farm, however being budget aware I am not too keen to fork out for another Can’O'Worms. I have though found a nice way to build a worm farm that is both inexpensive and reuses one of the most common and hard to dispose of storage boxes, the polystyrene box.

The polystyrene box is great when moving breakables or shipping items that require insulations, such as tropical fish. However, once empty can become hard to dispose of and becomes nothing more than a nuisance. Even when broken up it consumes a large volume of space in the bin, and due to its inherent construction, it also consumes space in a landfill for years to come. As you can tell I am quite passionate about this as we have a number of these stored for the pending move and I know that once we have moved that we will have these things hanging around for months to come. I am thus quite looking forward to reusing these as a worm farm.

The idea has come from the Worm Farming article posted on the City of Ryde web site. The approach takes advantage of the longevity of polystyrene. The irony is that this is the facet that makes polystyrene a menace to the environment and is being used to assist the environment. By reusing these boxes we can improve our own gardens and reduce landfill. Surely that is a win all round.

Basically, the construction is simple. The steps are:

1. Obtain 2 polystyrene boxes of the same width and length.
2. Obtain 1 lid that will fit the boxes.
3. Carefully pierce holes in the base of 1 of the polystyrene boxes.
4. Place the pierced box on top of the other. The base box will collect the liquid fertiliser, or worm tea.
5. Build up a 10-15cm bedding of shredded paper, leaves, and finished compost.
6. Add 1000 worms. Check out “the big kids toy shop” (Bunnings), your local garden centre, or Google worm farm to find out who sell worms in packets suitable for worm farms.
7. Cover the farm with damp hessian, paper, or carpet scraps. This locks in the heat and moistness, whilst blocking out the sun.
8. Wait a few days, and then begin adding food scraps etc.

I would suggest that you could add more containers as needed, however given the dimensions of most polystyrene boxes that would be a lot of waste.

I am considering constructing one of these in the coming days. Especially since Hamper King delivered frozen hampers in polystyrene boxes on the weekend that are superflous to our needs, and the current stack of cardboard, we have a heap of food for the worms to process. If I proceed I will post pictures as a step by step guide.

Tags: liquid fertiliser, rich nutrients, worm, worm castings, worm compost, worm farm, worm juice, worm tea, worms
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During recent posts I advised that I had used some of the composted materials in recent plantings. All of those plants are taking off. However, the rich compost is only part of the benefits of worm farming. The second benefit is the natural liquid fertiliser that is produced. This morning I decided that I would bottle that rich source of nutrients into some empty soft drink bottles.

So I went to the worm farm with two 2 litre Coca Cola bottles and one 600 mill Lipton Red Tea bottle. The idea was to drain the worm farm tank into the smaller bottle then fill the Coke bottles. Quickly I filled the 2 Coke bottles and had to get another 1.25 litre Coke bottle. That too was promptly filled, however the drain rate from the farm was greatly reduced. I then drained the remaining worm juice and half filled the Lipton bottle.

So I now have just under 5 litres of rich and natural liquid fertiliser. That will last for some time as I will be diluting it in the watering can. In fact, by the time I get through the current stocks I should be able to perform a new harvest.

Addendum
Tonight I have used some of the worm juice on the plants. It stinks to high heaven until diluted. I shall let you know the outcomes, especially around my struggling zucchini seedlings. With luck the burst of nutrients will see those plants turn around and become strong once more.

Tags: liquid fertiliser, rich nutrients, worm, worm castings, worm compost, worm farm, worm juice, worm tea, worms
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Some months ago we decided that we would like to begin worm farming as a means to remove much of the vegetable waste that we are generating through being humans. We have decided that simply throw it in the bin to go to the local land fill we will feed the worms and produce an endless supply of useable fertiliser in the form, of worm castings, for use on the garden. Much of which will in turn return the worm farm for processing.

The one we decided on had a modular system where you start with one layer, and when it is at capacity add a second layer. The process continues once more, so at any point in time there is a maximum of 3 layers in service. When you harvest you take the lower most layer, empty it, and then add it back to the top. We have been running with the 3rd layer for about 2 months and it to was approaching capacity. As a result I decided that I would look at harvesting some of the worm castings.

Upon inspection I found that there were several thousand worms working their magic still in the first layer. This was a bit surprising as the food source in this layer should have been largely exhausted several months ago. That said they must still be deriving some nutrients from this layer as each dig I performed exposed a minimum of five worms. I think they have bred as we started with a thousand worms. However, there seems to be a monumental amount in the farm.

I then inspected the second layer and found that the worms had clearly been at this level and processed everything they could. All that was in this level was about 2 or 3 corn cobs and what looked like an avocado skin. The rest was bare clean plastic. I was shocked at how well the worms had processed this layer. It also explained why there were very few worms evident in the top most layer. Clearly traversing the great plastic divide was too much for the worms.

Today, I have decided I need to check out how encourage the worms to move upwards quickly. Clearly I can not produce enough vegetable waste quickly enough to fill the layer in the next month. As such I relied on my good mate Google and found the NSW EPA Worm Farming article. Within that it provided an easy answer to my problems, shredded, soaked cardboard.

As previously discussed I have heaps of cardboard available at present and I have a few sources of rainwater at present. So I have just filled the second layer, and half filled the first layers of the worm farm with cardboard. This should provide the worms with the perfect excuse to move from the first layer to the two rich food source layers.

I hope so as my half barrels have arrived from Deals Direct and I am keen to use worm castings with them to supplement the RichGro potting mix.

Tags: liquid fertiliser, rich nutrients, worm, worm castings, worm compost, worm farm, worm juice, worm tea, worms
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