the worms

It's a bit pathetic to say I can't think of anything to post about (as I did in my last entry). "Worm farm smell" is one of the search terms which regularly brings readers to my blog. So in the interests of pushing my Google stats higher (kidding), I'll tell you about the worm farm workshop I attended on the weekend.

Attended because my worm farm has continued to smell. And continued to bulge at the seams. A few weeks ago I rang a worm farm expert from the city council. He was thrilled to hear that I'd had a worm farm for 10 years. He's doing a research project on what keeps people going with their worm farms and what makes them give up. I got the impression that most give up. I think what makes them give up is the smell and the maggots/flies. A friend of mine who is a much better gardener than I am has given up for those reasons. Of course you are not meant to have either a smell or maggots in a properly managed worm farm.

Determined not to give up, I decided to attend a workshop to figure out what I was doing wrong. There were about 15 attendees, 95 percent female and about 75 percent over 40. I was the only one who'd ever had a worm farm. I tried not to dwell on the negatives, though one woman did ask me what I meant when I said worm farms required quite a bit of work.

In the middle of the room was a model worm farm - you wouldn't have known it had anything at all inside, so clean and odourless was it. But inside there were about 7000 worms and a lot of celery (from a juice bar down the road.)

My basic mistakes, I learnt, are:

• we need at least two worm farms to cater to a three-person, very vegetarian household which eats nearly all meals at home.
• the farm needs to be under cover when it rains (it hardly ever rains, but when it does, the farm gets wet which contributes to the stinkiness)
• instead of shoving food scraps into every tray, I need to build up a layer of castings (which looks like soil) in the middle tray and put scraps only in the top tray. That way the worms can retreat into the castings when it's hot or wet. I should be removing the castings once a month or so.
• no orange or pineapple peel or dairy or bread (I wasn't putting much dairy in but quite a lot of the others).

I bought a new farm and a new lot of worms (1000 or so). I've emptied out most of the old farm, put the new worms into the new middle tray with their bedding and put the old top tray (which got wet and smelly in the weekend rain) on top of them - that way I figure the old worms can go down and hang out with the new worms and the new ones can go up and eat some of the old food.

I'm determined to sort this out because I cannot bear putting organic waste into a plastic bag to be taken away to be put into a landfill.

Comments

[ThirdCat]

All of ours died when we went away for a few days and the weather got really hot...I'm off tomorrow to buy more, but I'm getting 2000 this time, so we can get a good lot going before the heat again. I need to get all the trays going and fill any empty ones with shredded newspaper. Apparently.

We looooove the worm farm. Although this is the second time we've lost them all.

[ThirdCat]

Oh, but I just re-read your post and see you've got a hot weather solution too...sounds pretty similar in concept to what the worm-man told me today...I just won't have time to have one whole tray filled with castings before the really hot gets here

[Mikhela]

I have an empty worm farm someone gave me. It's been sitting under the house for 12 months waiting for me to figure out what to do with it. I'm thinking it might be the solution to the compost heap problem - it keeps getting raided by brush turkeys. I'm going to get started directly!

[susozs]

Funny you should have a compost problem - for a minute there at the workshop I was thinking a compost bin would be the answer to my worm problem. But our yard isn't big enough for a compost bin - we're *very* inner city and I'd have to take up the brick patio, which I'd like to do but it's a big job.
Meanwhile, my worm farm is very soggy from one lot of rain last weekend. I'll have to come up with something to keep it covered with that isn't an eyesore.

[elsewhere]

I don't have enough space for a compost heap -- without pulling up more flagstones and stinking out the neighbours.

I wondered if a worm farm might be the go, after reading this post. But what temperatures can worms take?

[susoz]

In hot heat, you have to look after the worms by: keeping a damp newspaper on top of them in the top tray; making sure they have a good layer of castings in the middle tray to hide in (and watering that from time to time); leaving worm juice in the bottom tray so that they can go down and cool off there.

[brownie]

I love to think of a worm deciding to 'take a cool off break from the whole damn thing' ..."C'mon everybody let's go down to our basement".

compost does not stink when it is properly managed, and composters know never to add citrus peelings.