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Once you have decided to have a wormery there are two ways to go - either buy one that is purpose built or make one yourself. Buying one is obvious the easiest choice but making your own is relatively simple and far more satisfying. The choice of materials is as large as your imagination but one of the most practical and easily obtainable are the large, polystyrene boxes used for packaging fish.
You can get these from you local supermarket or fish mongers who are usually more than happy for you to take them away to save them the cost of disposal. Alternatively, enquire at your local aquatic shop as this type of packaging is used for transporting tropical fish. If you feel that the aquatic polystyrene boxes are too tall for your use then they can always be reduced in height by using a saw or hot wire. The benefit of using aquatic boxes is that they will normally come with a purpose made lid, however you will only need one for constructing your wormery. For the purpose of this construction you will need three boxes.
Take the first box and make an inch wide hole in the centre of its base. This is all that needs to be done and the box is now ready to be placed on some old wood, bricks or concrete blocks. Make sure that it is raised enough off the ground so that a suitable container can be placed underneath it to collect any fluid that drains through. This by-product of the decomposing process makes a rich, and highly nutritious liquid fertiliser, but to apply it you will need to dilute it down to an approximate 1:10 rate with water.
Take the other two boxes and make seven or eight small holes – around ¼ of an inch - in the bottom of them. These holes are there so that the worms can pass freely between the boxes. Place these two in a column on the first box you prepared then put the lid on the top one. Your wormery has now been built.
To start your wormery off you will be using approximately 100 tiger worms. Place some kitchen scraps combined with small amounts of leaves, ripped newspaper or scrunched-up, brown cardboard into the bottom of the first, single holed box. This will act as bedding for your introduction of the tiger worms. When you are not adding more waste to the box make sure that the lid is kept on.
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As time passes, continue to filling with more kitchen waste mixed with a little bit of cardboard, newspaper or leaves. When this box is full to the top, remove the lid and place the next box on top of it making sure that the base of the new box is in contact with the waste in the lower box. The lid is now kept on the top most box.
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Use this new box in the same way as the first one by filling it again with kitchen waste combined with small amounts of leaves, old cardboard and or newspaper. When that is full, repeat the process with the last box. The worms will move through the holes between layers in search of food. By the time the top box is full of food waste, the bottom box should be full of worm casts. Take it out and empty the contents but make sure that you replace any dislodged worms back into the wormery. The worm compost collected can be put to use either straight onto the soil or added to a mix for potting compost.
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3 comments:
A wormery is a fantastic addition to any garden. Not only does it reduce unecessary food waste going to landfill it also provides you with high quality compost.
Watch your garden blossom with the help of a wormery. You can even decompose meat and bones, helping stop your bin smelling awful too!
I have used these boxes for a month now and all is well. Just placed my second box on and some worms have moved up. The others seem content to stay in the first box at the moment.
A great idea and much cheaper than buying a plastic bin.
I am confused by what is to be done with the one box that has a 25mmhole in it. Does it eventually become just the same as the other boxes IE has a 25mm hole and some smaller holes? Do all the boxes end up the same and simply rotate round the stack that has been produced
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