There are many joyous tasks to undertake in the garden during the early spring, but in the last couple of years, emptying our wormery has not really been one of them. This year, however, it has been altogether pleasanter.
Allow me to clarify the term “wormery”. Keen gardeners, especially those who lean towards the organic side, will know of the elaborate stacking system wormeries, where kitchen scraps are deposited for digestion and subsequent excretion as compost by hordes of wriggly tiger worms.
Fishermen will know these unfortunate creatures as “bait”.
The bespoke wormery consists of a series of stacking trays with meshed bottoms and a liquid collecting tray with a tap at the base. The worms progress up through the layers of detritus, from one tray to the next and the compost they leave behind can be collected simply by lifting out the lower trays, which can then be replaced at the top of the stack with fresh peelings, tea bags etc. Proprietary wormeries can be round, square or even shaped to look like a traditional beehive.
Unfortunately, the good ones retail for £100 or more. Only a complete stranger to this site will seriously expect me to have spent £100 or more on something to make compost from worm poo.
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| My budget wormery |
Sarah’s wormery is therefore a very cheap plastic dustbin, bought for well under £10 from what I remember. It does have a tap fitted towards the base, under a horizontal wire mesh with an old coir doormat on top, which stops it getting clogged up with compost bits.
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| One use for an ex doormat |
The compost liquid can be drawn off from time to time, which is essential to prevent the worms from drowning. The liquid is a good, nutrient-rich plant food (it needs to be well-diluted), but smells as you might imagine Gollum’s micturations to smell, evil and swampy.
A lot of people would find the whole wormery concept totally evil and swampy, of course. If you think that individual worms are bit creepy, you definitely won't enjoy dealing with great tangled knots of them, slithering and writhing through the rotting matter like something from the Hell panel of a medieval Doom Painting. It's all distinctly Hieronymus Bosch!
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| Wormageddon! |
The problem I have had in previous years is that, despite regular removal of the Smeagol pee, I have still tended to end the year with a large bin of stinking, viscous slime, rather than crumbly, fragrant compost. Not one to waste anything needlessly, I’ve used this foul stuff in my bean trench, but have always hoped to produce something better. Without the need to spend serious money on a fancy wormery.
So it was with great pride that, after carefully removing the worm-infested top layer to a trug for restocking the wormery later, I was able to scoop out a large trug-load of rather excellent compost. I intend to grow my tomatoes in it this year.
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| Success at last! |
The solution to the slime issue proved to be quite simple. It’s the familiar one regarding getting the chemical balance right in compost ingredients. Just the chucking the peelings and trimmings from fruit and veg into the bin meant it was too high in nitrogen and too low in carbon. Putting empty paper flour bags, sugar bags and kitchen paper in as well seems to have corrected that. I make a lot of our bread, so we get plenty of flour bags. The sugar bags tend to be available in number after jam-making sessions, when the soft fruit surplus is being preserved. Or after my other favourite method of saving fruit for later, namely turning it into wine.
A good tip from some literature we got at college was to put a layer of newspaper on top after each bin of scraps, as this also discourages the nasty little flies and gnats which can colonise a wormery.
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| Making a fresh start - worms and peelings back in the bin. |
Do enjoy your lunch!
