About Vermiculture
(In much more detail)
Looking after worms is easy and fun (in fact, addictive).
They need five basics things; bedding, food, water, air, and protection from temperature extremes.
You can make your own worm farm or buy a commercially made one. We’ll explain more about worm farms work and how they work later.
Bedding should:
- absorb and hold water because worms must have a moist environment; and
- have a bulking structure that allows air flow or air pockets because worms need to breath; and
- have low nitrogen content so it doesn’t heat up because worms need somewhere to escape to if the feeding layer gets too hot.
Hence, bedding provides damp but not wet conditions for the worms to live in or escape to.
Shredded cardboard or newspaper makes excellent bedding. Alternatively, horse manure is excellent bedding if your worm farm is in the garden. To reduce the environmental footprint, try to use a material that is a waste product instead of buying something, e.g. shredded office paper, toilet rolls, paper towels, moist straw, brown leaves from the lawnmower, etc.
When you first add worms to the bedding in a new worm farm, don’t feed them for a couple of days to let them settle in.
Feeding
Worms eat half their body weight each day, and their population can double every two months (in ideal conditions). So, if you start your worm farm with 4,000 worms (1kg) they will process approx. 500g of food waste each day.
Worms regulate their population to suit the amount of available space and food. Interestingly, their eggs don’t hatch if they are overcrowded or if there is no food. The eggs lay dormant until conditions are suitable for hatching. (In nature, this may be a lucky strike from a cow pat).
Worms only “eat” food scraps once they start to decompose. To speed up this process simply cut your scraps into smaller pieces, or if keen, blend in food processor or soften in microwave (and obviously let cool)
Worms eat everything that decomposes, e.g. fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee, tea bags, rice, cardboard packaging, newspapers, toilets rolls, paper towels, garden clippings, mowed grass, etc. Pasta and bread in moderation. While learning to manage a worm farm avoid meat, dairy, onion, and citrus peel.
Simply feed your worms by placing food scraps on top of the bedding, then cover. The worms will do the rest. If you want to see it happen, check out this time lapse video.
Worms are light sensitive, so if you cover the food they will work 24 hours. For indoor worm farms, some ripped up cardboard packaging or newspaper spread over the food provides the darkness and assists building a new bedding layer and provides some bulk for the next layers of food to decompose onto.
For an outdoor worm farm, cover with carpet or a hessian bag, but once again, it’s useful to add layers of shredded cardboard occasionally to prevent drying out in external conditions.
You don’t really need to buy a “worm blanket”, try an old towel, cut up t-shirt, hessian bag, bath mat, etc.
Covering the food (with either bedding or vermicompost) also reduces attracting fruit flies.
When you start your worm farm, it’s good to start slowly so as not to overload it. Monitor the food daily to see how quickly it is decomposing. If the food is building up, stop adding food until it’s gone.
Worm farms don’t smell, if yours does its probably water logged (and therefore anaerobic) from too much food, or its too acidic. Both of these can be fixed by tearing up some corrugated cardboard, leave it dry, and mix it through your worm farm. This will absorb excess moisture and provide bulk to allow airflow.
Compost worms tolerate pH levels from 5.5 to 8.5. Contrary to popular belief, they prefer the acidic end of this range, i.e. closer to 6, so don’t get too heavy handed with “conditioners” such as dolomite or lime that raise the pH level.
Green garden waste heats up, so need depth of bedding to escape from it.