Nearly June and things are hotting up!

Well, I split the wormery up a couple of months ago - I meant to post about it, but the house renovations took over again!  :)

Anyway, I already had a 3-tier wormery from a different supplier than my main one - I had not kept it well and allowed it to fail, prompting the decision to start again and set up this blog - I'd cleaned it out and let it 'naturalise' for quite a while, and with the worms now doing well I felt it was time to start it again.

I took about half of the matter & worms from the main wormery and transferred it over to the other, spread it gently across the surface, covered it with soggy egg box bits and then soggy phone book pages (yes, they still have their uses!) and left it alone for several weeks.
It has a slightly smaller footprint and a different sump design, as well as a different lid design, and I thought it would be interesting to see how it fared compared with the main one.

Here we are a couple of months later and both wormeries are really hotting up!  I've been feeding every 2-3 weeks, no more than the contents of a 2litre ice cream tub full of kitchen waste per wormery each time - about half that to start with when it was colder.

I keep all my eggshells and dry them out in the oven whenever I do a roast or some baking, then grind them up in a pestle & mortar.  I add a couple of handfuls of this grit to the feed very so often (not every time), and will also add some shredded paper (I shred all my junk mail and sensitive documents) if I think it's getting a bit wet.  I then either put more soggy egg box bits over the top if the old ones are getting too mushy / eaten, or just replace the original ones, then put the soggy paper back over the top.

There are masses of new worms (despite many of them trying for careers as endurance swimmers in the sump) and plenty of eggs, and the compost / castings looks fabulous. 

I'm now at the point where I'll add a second tray to each wormery on the next feed.

What I have noticed with the two styles is that the smaller one seems to allow much more ingress of rainwater, and because of this I have to ensure that the sump is drained more regularly as otherwise it fills up very quickly and threatens to drown all the worms.

Am looking forward to using the worm tea on my tomatoes at the allotment this year!  I'm thinking (as I have, as usual, far too many plants) that I will feed half with worm tea, and leave half with just water, and see what the results are.

Hopefully by the end of the year I'll be able to start separating out the compost from the bottom trays and will be able to use it for my seedlings!

winter slow-worms

It's been about 3 months since I last updated this - things have been somewhat hectic at the house, and rather slow in the wormery!

The renovations at the house have had priority so I haven't really paid a lot of attention to the wormery but thankfully as it's winter it really hasn't needed attention and has probably benfitted from my leaving it alone.

Knowing that there was a cold snap coming up, I wrapped the wormery in bubble wrap and made sure that there was plenty of insulating egg box type material on top of the waste.  This was probably left alone for a good 6 to 8 weeks before checking it again after all the snow and cold weather here had passed.

The worms had surviced the weather fine, and seemed to be wriggling around quite happily in the nice compost, so another 2litre tub full of kitchen waste was added to the top, the insulation put back on and the wormery wrapped up again, just in case.

I checked the wormery again about 4 weeks later and the waste has not reduced much - the cold weather is still keeping the worms quite sluggish so I'm not worried and will check again in a couple of weeks to see how they are doing.  All I've added lately is more shredded paper insulation and some crushed egg shell.

On the next check I'll aerate the compost and check the worm count (not individually, just a quick check by eye of whether there are any dead ones or more little ones around).

Another couple of months of cool weather to come so I probably won't need to feed them more often than about once a month.

2 November

Well, here we are over a month in and all is going well.  I've been putting a 2litre ice-cream-tub-full of waste in the wormery (spread over one half of the surface area) about once every week to ten days, and that seems to be working well so far.

I had to go away on business for a week mid-October and they suffered no ill-effects while I was away - good job too, as I'll be away several more times before the end of the year!

We've had a couple of frosts already (although it's warm again now), so I'm ready with the bubble-wrap to give them a bit of insulation, stop them from slowing down in the cold, and keep them wriggling and munching ...

They're making great compost, although still little to no 'worm tea' - I'm being careful not to put too much wet waste in, so that may be affecting it.  I don't mind, the tea is a bonus really, and I only expected to get it over the summer. 

I'm hoping that the worms will do well over the winter, and may decide to split them to start a second wormery next summer - I'll have to see how they breed over the winter though.

Pictures

Got the camera out and took some pictures, now that we're into the fourth week of feeding.

Here's the wormery with the lid and the top layers of paper off:

The worms you can see on the top were in the top layers of paper.  The next layer is ripped up cardboard (from the base of a box of wine - gives the same effect as eggboxes).  To the left you can see my old wormery, which is now growing peas!  They had germinated after being thrown away...

To the right is the lid of the wormery and the papers that were removed.

Here's how it looks with the cardboard removed:

You can see the remains of each week's waste, with this week's in the bottom left corner.  Top left was week 1, and the lettuce and carrot stumps are growing in the compost, rather than being broken down and eaten.  Top right was week 2 and the bananas are all but gone, a few bits of skin that were attached still remain.

Bottom right was week 3, and the teabags and bigger bits of carrot are clearly visible.  Of course all of this week's waste is still there, although there is plenty of mould growing on it already.

Now, here are some (slightly fuzzy, admittedly) pictures of worm eggs...

This one was on the top layers of paper...

This one at the top of the wormery, between week1 & 2 waste...  This one looks more developed, and I can see at least two baby worms in it...

This one is in amongst week 3's waste, and looks fairly new.

I'm really happy with the way it's going so far - hopefully it will continue this way through the winter!

Week 6

Another good week - it's all going well so far!

Added quite a large amount of waste this week - made tomato soup with some of the produce from the lottie.  After the first cooking, the soup gets passed through a sieve to remove the skins, seeds etc, and this pulp all went into the caddy.

I've been putting each week's waste into a different corner of the worm tray, as per the instructions, so thats the last corner filled.  Will take a picture later to show the processing of each week's waste - what's still left and what has been transformed into lovely compost...

Worms are still nice and active, although we did have a night that dropped to 7C this week, so I've saved some bubblewrap from a parcel that I will use to insulate the wormery when the weather cools down a bit more.

Week 5

Third week of feeding - a handful of kitchen waste, inlcuding the mouldy end of a loaf of bread, went into the wormery today.  Have started keeping two pots for waste in the kitchen, one with softer stuff, and the other with harder stuff and worm-averse items like onion and citrus.  Not sure how the worms feel about my 'green tea with lemon' teabags, so am limiting how many go into the wormery caddy.

There are still lots of carrot stumps and the cut ends of the fine beans left from the first week of feeding - in fact the carrot tops have started sprouting!  The bananas have mushed well and are being processed quickly though.

Now seeing quite a few worm eggs, and the original bedding has been turned into lovely 'black gold' compost.

I am however, finding a few slugs in the top of the bin, usually in between the layers of paper.  I pick them out and get rid of them when I find them. I think they have either come in on the wet paper (which was left outside for months) or in the soil that was added on the first day, rather than climbing in after the bin was set up.

Any liquid collecting in the sump still seems to be rainwater dripping through rather than 'worm tea' as it's clear in colour.  I'm just draining this off to prevent the level rising too much and drowning the worms (who are still occasionally popping into the top sump levels for a visit).

Week 4

There was still a fair bit of waste left from last week - not unexpected as some of it was a bit 'hard' (carrot stumps etc) and not as soft as the wrigglers like.  Only added two very soft bananas (not the skins) on Wednesday so as not to overfeed.  This morning there are lots of worms crowded around the mush so they seem to like that....  :)

The top layers of paper tend to dry out a bit, especially at the edges, so I've started using a water sprayer to damp them down a bit every few days.  Basically when I check them every couple of days, I peel back the papers, and if they feel dry I give them a few squirts of water.

Found my first worm eggs this week!  Very exciting...  :)  Also found some worms mating on the top shelf in the sump...  Moved them carefully back into the tray - hopefully not interfering too much with what they were getting up to...  The 'earth' definitely moved for them though!