Wormery

[LemonFrosting]

So within the last few days I've suddenly found myself a new hobby....gardening!! Son is loving it too which I'm very happy about. 😊

I was thinking of getting a compost bin for the garden but have come across wormeries which I thought would be alot more interesting for my son. My question is, is this a bad idea?! Before I fork out for a set up (they're so expensive, around £80-£100), I thought I'd get some advice from here first. I'd only want something small as garden isn't that big. Has anyone here got a wormery?

They don't need to be that expensive. I made mine out of plastic dustbins layered up with some drilled holes.

Trick is to not too wet and not too dry and the worms will chomp through loads of kitchen scraps paper in a few weeks. Don't add citrus or onions they don't like it.

I haven't got a wormery but am in a similar situation to you in newly discovering gardening. I got a compost bin last year and reaped the rewards this year! I live by the beach so hardly any worms and certainly not the kind that do a good composting job. So I ordered some from Yorkshire Worms. I am so enthusiastic about them that when DD and I use the compost in the garden and we come across a worm, we put it back in the compost bin! The bin also benefits from woodlice and centipedes. So o suppose if you just got a wormery you wouldn't see so many of those critters. I did also have a load of ants in it last year and whilst they certainly do no harm, they do get everywhere when you're trying to turn it, so I dug it out and the ants went elsewhere. Some people out slugs and snails they find in their garden in there too but I think it means their eggs then get spread on the garden.

Good luck with it!

I have a composting hot bin (it's amazing) and someone told me to buy a pack of worms to dump in it in winter when it cools down. Somehow enough of them survive when it gets hot for it to continue to work as a wormery all year round - so best of both worlds. I love my worms - they do a great job! I'm also a recent convert to gardening.

Oh I really want to give it a try now!! I'm going to look on YouTube at how easy/difficult it is to make my own wormery and might give that a go.

I had a wormery made out of stacking black boxes with a wooden lid, which was brilliant. Made by my partner and children for Mother’s Day. I used to release my worms into the compost bin when it got cold in the winter, and would restock it in the spring.

After quite a long time it broke, and I “upgraded” to a wiggly wrigglers. What a waste of money. It let in too much water so I constantly had drowned worms.

Now I just use a compost bin. We have thousands of happy worms in that. I love worms.

If I was to get a compost bin, do I need to make adjustments to turn it into a wormery?

No- just buy a small pack of composting worms and dump them in there. The difference between that and a wormery is it's hard to separate the worm from the compost when you want to use it. I just leave them in the compost as there are enough in the bin to replenish the population.

Thank you!
I've seen a small wormery set up that's a bucket with tap on the bottom but it's only 10 litre, is that too small?

Composting worms are those that like a high humus content. Unless you’re very unlucky, they’re in your garden anyway, in low numbers, and when youadd a compost bin they multiply very quickly. So give the heap a couple of months before spending money on something which would have arrived eventually of its own accord

I've had one for 20+ years and it copes remarkably well with the large volume of kitchen waste we produce. It's a stacking tray one that is dead simple to use.

www.wormsdirectuk.co.uk/product/can-o-worms/

I think a stacking tray one will be better suited to be honest. There goes my idea of making one!! I've looked on gumtree and eBay but can't find any bargains, I'm a sucker for a bargain, you'll normally find me in the Christmas bargain thread! 😉

We had one which was just a set of plastic stacking storage boxes with a water butt tap on the bottom. The bottom box had a couple of bricks in it and then a metal mesh to stop the soil clogging up the tap. All boxes except the bottom one had holes drilled in so the worms could move throughout the stack. As the boxes filled up, you added another box on the top and then occasionally took the bottom box and emptied the compost out.

The stacking wormery does work very well, but I do find it tends not to work so well in the winter, and I have to watch carefully to make sure the new stuff I'm putting on isn't rotting before the worms get to it.

To get really good compost quickly does need you to be quite proactive though. You need to have a good mix of what goes into it, you should spend time shredding stuff to get a better compost and it should be moved/turned regularly. I have even got a compost thermometer, as getting it up to the right temperature at the beginning is important.

If you are new to composting you really can't get better than the good old green dalek composter. Put it somewhere where it can get hot and let it go. The worms in your garden will find it and will get to work, and you will get useable compost eventually but it might take a bit longer.

I don't know how much space you have but I now have two wormeries, a double compost heap, which I turn every couple of months, a bokashi bin system and a couple of plastic daleks! You have been warned.

There is lots on YouTube about composting.

I have a stacking wormery. Love it. I dont get a lot of compost maybe enough for the top of some pots. I get loads of plant food from the bottom tap which needs diluting. I have lots in old milk cartons in garage. Chop the food up small and don't over do it. Can freeze some into ice tray. Any made a home in mine and the eat the eggs, so I emptied it all into my compost bin and started again. I love it.

*ants

Try wormcity i bought one of theirs a few years back after experimenting with making my own
We take a full tray of vermicompost out of it every 6-8 weeks. We keep it in a shady spot in the summer and in the garage in the winter.
It doesn't compost all our food waste as we produce too much, but the compost it produces is the best

My dd is fascinated with it, as it contains all sorts of bugs, a self contained ecosystem

Me again! Are 2 levels or 3 levels best? I'm presuming three so that there's more space for the worms?

I'm looking at the Wormcity. I was going to make one but husband has said he will gift me one instead 😄 I've been trying to get a wormery off ebay or a deal on one but there's nothing coming up. Can't get a composter as it needs to be on grass and haven't the grass space in a sheltered area sadly