How to Build a Wormery - Garden - The Environment Site Green Living Guides

How to Build a Wormery

You will need

A wooden, plastic or glass box (an old aquarium perhaps) with a lid

Old newspapers

Vegetable/fruit waste

Garden trowel

Moss

Worms (preferably tiger worms available from fishing tackle shops)

What to Do

In the bottom of the container create bedding for the worms by shredding the newspapers and mixing them with a small amount of moss

Worms need water so add enough to make the bedding feel like a wet sponge

Now add the fruit/vegetable Waste (a little crushed eggshell can be added to give your worms Calcium)

Cover the Waste with more bedding material

Now add your worms

It will take approximately 3 months before your compost can be harvested

When you want to harvest your compost shine a torch onto the wormery. This makes the worms wriggle down to the bottom

Take out the compost and use it in pots, tubs and garden plots to make your school environment a better, more beautiful place rich in wildlife

23.10.2006. 01:36

Michael on 04.12.2006. 01:31

If you have a garden, and room for a small compost heap, a wormery isn't necessarily the best way to start composting. Normal compost heaps are normally more flexible in the amount of material they'll accept at any one time, and maybe more forgiving of beginners mistakes.
Except for people without access to a garden, wormeries are often started in addition to existing compost heaps.

As far as the worms are concerned brandlings, or compost worms, or tiger worms because they have red hoops around their bodies (not stripes) will appear in almost any compost heap after a time. Even if you make compost in a plastic dustbin providing there's a hole in the bottom.
They're different to earthworms and presumably they live among any rotting vegetation in the soil.

Commercial wormeries are merely purpose designed plastic versions of what you can make for yourself. The point about wormeries is that they bye-pass all the normal bacterial processes involved in composting - i.e breaking
down the plant material and so there's guaranteed to be no smell. The worms eat the vegetation before it has a chance to get attacked by the bacteria. In theory. As in theory there should be no smell from any properly made up compost heap in any case. Its just you wouldn't want
to try it under the sink in the kitchen just in case.

What you're paying £60 - £100 for basically is the kit which all fits together neatly - and a set of detailed instructions - and the worms. The point being maybe that wormeries can be used by people who may not even have a garden, who have no ready supply of brandlings, and no knowledge of fishing bait.

mark on 27.06.2007. 06:35

ur instructions are great.

john mcconnachie on 05.09.2008. 07:05

Hello, could you tell me if i can grow my own worms for fishing as i do not have a garden or veg plot to dig,can a wormery supply worms for fishing on a regular basis.
Thank you,
John.

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