Last Christmas Mr BC gifted me with a worm farm that he had made himself, with his own three hands. I was super happy because I'd been wanting a worm farm for ever, and also touched that he had made it. Is there anything sweeter than a poo farm, hand made by your sweet heart? No, there is not!
So the worm farm was apparently super easy to make, and sits fairly unobtrusively in the garden. It's made of 3 stackable 25 litre containers, and a few easy to collect extras. The top two containers have holes drilled into the bottom - about 40 x 6 mm holes that are easy to do with an electric drill. The bottom container has a smallish tap inserted near the bottom, made water tight with some plastic cement. We are not quite ready to use the 3rd container yet, but we will be soon.
There is a wooden lid fitted over the top, to keep the rain and any curious creatures out.
I wouldn't want my worm darlings to get eaten by birds!
The lid is easy to lift off, and underneath that is a thick piece of woven material with a handle. This was bought at the hardware store and is specifically made for worm farms, if you like, you can use a square of carpet underlay, or hessian or something. Quilting something suitable yourself would be well received, the worms like to have their own blankie to keep the light out, bless.
This blankie is kept constantly wet, so it's a bit gross looking. Just the way the worms love it! See them having a cuddle of it in the next photo? Naww, so sweet!
Underneath the worm's blankie is where the poo farming happens in earnest. Every day or so I give them a handful of vegetable scraps from the kitchen (no onions or citrus!) and a big glass of water, and they happily eat and wee and poop to their hearts content!
To collect the worm poo, put the extra container on top of the middle one, and start putting the food in that. The worms will follow the food up through the drainage holes, and happily start poo production in the new container. When all the worms have migrated up, the poo in the middle container is free to be used in the garden - just dig it straight in, no diluting. If you can't wait for that, leave their blankie off half of the area, they will scootch over to the dark side, leaving the sunshiny side clear for you to harvest.
Look at the new growth on this potted orange tree! This is after about 3 weeks of worm tea. The containers are basic storage containers, to enable them to stack like this we just reversed them so that they rest easily on top of each other. I was worried about the worms getting compressed if we didn't, but I don't think it will be too much of a problem when we do this to move the worms up to their next level.
Because this was a gift, I don't know how much it cost to put together, but I do know that worms are about $48 per half kilo, which is about 1000 worms. This is plenty to start with , because if they are happy they will reproduce, and with this sort of luxury, why wouldn't they? If you don't want to make your own worm farm, you can buy the complete set up from most hardware stores, and check out You Tube, there are lots of fanatical worm farmers out there with their own methods of creating the best worm farm!
Happy farming!
xx