what do i do with a wormery???

[wohmum]

In the garden of our new house we've got a wormery....

what do I do with it? I'm keen to do something with it (do I feed 'em food waste?)

we've moved from one local council who had food waste bins to one that doesn't and I've found that I'm finding it hard to bin the waste food...... i know, maybe we shoudl eat it all!

also , does anone know if it is good to use our real fire for burning cardboard/paper etc or are we better to recycle it?

is the wormery 'working' and established?

and, do you want to make compost to use in the garden, or just have an eco way of disposing of food?

coz i have answers for you

thanks for your reply - I'm not that bothered about making compost, is that what they are for ?

but I am keen on an eco way of getting rid of food waste.. grateful for any tips,

feed them food waste, cooked and raw. The eat it and make compost.
There's a web site, wriggly wrigglers or something.

Go to www.originalorganics.co.uk. They sell wormeries (which I know you don't need), worms and ancillary equipment, plus their staff are very helpful to anyone who needs a helping hand.

Essentially though, make sure there is a sump that will allow you to tap off the liquid feed the worms produce, then add as much food waste as you can, as often as you can. I also add cat and dog fur, hair clippings, teabags, crushed eggshells, wood ash etc. Make sure it's not too wet (if it is add more shredded newspaper or shredded cardboard) and away you go. The worm colony should be self-sustaining and self-regulating, but if you need more worms, call Original Organics (if you go elsewhere ensure you buy tiger worms).

Any more that you need to know, post here and I'll try to answer.

raw food waste only, not cooked. Ours does a helluva job at getting rid of the food waste, but produces teeny amounts of compost, so I wouldn't worry about that!

I put some cooked food waste in too - I try to waste as little as possible in the first place, but leftover fruit, vegetables, salad etc causes no problems. Only thing that doesn't seem to work for me is whole cherry tomatoes!

recycel your paper - burning it clogs up your chimney and is bad for the environment (??!!) plus you mght be in a smoke free zone (are you in a town centre?)

Thanks everyone , I've emailed wiggly wigglers as the wormery is one of theirs (can-o-worms ) to see what they say about restarting it.

can i put stale bread in ? I do tend to feed it to the birds, but i know that's not ideal either.

i didn't realise about burning paper - we didn't do lots, just odd bits like junk mail, but it's as easy to recycle (apart form seperating the envelope windows!

I may have been a bit too enthusiastic before. Until the colony is well established you shouldn't add too much waste. It's hard to put a figure on how much you should add when, but it's important to make sure that the food is being eaten by the worms, noit rotting. Use common sense!

it varies a bit with the time of year - our worms seem to have lost their appetites recently (I think they may be hibernating...), past experience suggests they will be munching faster than we can keep up with come the spring