Got my new wormery!

[everdream78]

Tis rather good so I recycle nearly everything now! Just gotts pursuade the local council to take away plastic for recycling and my life will be complete!

On a serious note though, it's been getting a bit nippy the past few nights. I've put the wormery just outside the back door - should I wrap it up in something to keep the temperature up? The leaflet said to keep them at 12 degrees or above.

Any suggestions/hints/tips please?

TIA

[moggssue]

Can't help with the temp of your wormery sorry, but just wanted to wish you well with it!

[wormlady]

Hi Everdream
Assuming you have composting worms which are native to the UK they will be fine as long as they dont freeze however they do slow down (as in eat less) a lot in winter. Really the best time to start a wormery is springtime.

Anyway since you have it now, I would recommend you start off very slowly with feeding,
there is nothing stinkier and more yucky than a wormery which has been over fed! The worms will take some time to settle down into their new home and the various bacteria, fungi etc will also all take time to establish themselves in the correct proportions for composting to take place. You can kick start this process by adding some worm compost from a friend or from your regular compost heap. If you can keep your worms in a shed/garage they will eat more as they will be warmer. Or you can wrap them up in an old blanket/cardboard/bubble wrap, just make sure air can circulate.

Id say only add a small handfull of something squishy (leftover salad, toms, melon etc) at first and then leave it a week before adding some more, remember worms have no teeth so they cant eat stuff till it starts to break down. What sort of bedding did they come with? The bedding is food for them too so dont worry about them starving!

There is a brilliant worm forum on the recycleworks website with lots of very keen wormers who love chatting worms so Id recommend you have a browse thru the old posts on there.

Anyway welcome to the wonderful world of worms and I hope it all works out for you:-)

[Alison]

I concur with what Wormlady says and also recoment the recycleworks web site (http://www.recycleworks.co.uk/forum/...91a9aa13452e17). I've found it very useful although rather more hard core than this site. I wrapped the sides of my wormery in bubble wrap the first winter and am not sure how much difference it made as they seemed to pretty much hibernate until it warmed up with very little matter being consumed. Since then I've put it in the greenhouse, which although unheated is still warmer and more sheltered than outside. This seemed to work well. However, as said above, start VERY slow, if you look at the posts on the worm forum you'll find a lot of people who have overfed and had to start again. The instructions you get with the wormeries are usually a bit on the optimistic side and it's a fair while until you can put much in, especially as you're starting in the autumn. Good luck by the way.

[everdream78]

Cool, thanks for the advice! I've been quite surprised that I've had no escapes so far, considering everything I read on them being Steve McQueen impersonators!

[Alison]

Mine didn't try too much either although I used to end up with quite a few of them topping themselves in the sump to start with - since then I've left the tap undone so as there is no liquor there for any drowning incidents. What type of wormery have you gone for by the way? Mine is a Can of Worms which although expensive when I got it (but it was a pressie) has been very good. I don't seem to have had all the problems with it sweating etc which some people report, but then again mine is in the shade most of the day.

[everdream78]

I got mine from Wormcity - it's basically three green recycled plastic boxes that stack into each other. Got a clear lid and a tap. The instructions were a little vague but I think I've done it right. It was about £45 including delivery.

I think I'm going to resite mine in the shed wrapped in some old carpet over the worst bit of winter. I know they're only worms but I got all upset the other night when it was so cold! lol

[Alison]

Shed sounds a good idea, especially if it's insulated, just make sure that you don't block out all the air gaps.

[Madasafish]

I have 2 daleks full of worms. I feed them overfeed them, underfeed them, never insulate in winter (they freeze solid at times), keep them wet, add all one type of waste for weeks on end.

And my worms thrive.. I have thousands and thousands..

(Personally I think worms fend very well without human intervention.. anything more than neglect is obsessive:-)))))

[everdream78]

lol! Ok, I'll stop feeling so guilty when it's frosty!

[Alison]

I have 2 daleks full of worms. I feed them overfeed them, underfeed them, never insulate in winter (they freeze solid at times), keep them wet, add all one type of waste for weeks on end.

And my worms thrive.. I have thousands and thousands..

(Personally I think worms fend very well without human intervention.. anything more than neglect is obsessive:-)))))

When you say Daleks, do you mean conventional compost bins or actual wormeries?

[Madasafish]

Conentional compost bins. But they are on soil in our vegetable garden, in sun from 10 am to 5pm and have effectively turned into wormeries. When you open the lid on a warm day, there are worms on the lid, on the walls, and in the compost. Red /brown brandling worms. Literally thousands..

I feed with vegetable and kitchen waste from the kitchen.. in our house that means only the inedible bits as we eat everything else, and leaves and a bit of grass plus turkey/quail bedding (woodshavings) plus the odd weeds and inedible home grown apples and surplus crab apples.. plus teabags and the odd bit of newspaper plus the dust etc collected from the Dyson. (eggshells are kept separate) . We have 3 separate compost piles in addition and in winter two extra piles of nearly finshed compost waiting to be put on the ground.

So the daleks have effectively become giant wormeries. They work well, every year I dig out the bottom and add to tomato bags/pots and hanging baskets... (Our blackbirds like them as well for the worms.)

[Flummery]

I also have loads of brandling worms in my ordinary Daleks. I always have to be careful when I close the lids because they lurk around and are likely to get screwed in half!

[wormlady]

Hiya
I think you can be a bit more cavalier with bigger dalek style compost bins than you can with smaller wormeries as the worms have lots of space to get away from things they dont like, heat from grass decomposing etc. And of course you can put loads more stuff in as its not just worms doing the composting but hopefully thermophillic bacteria and whatnot too.
Can of Worms and Wormcity wormeries are quite small really and thats why you have to be a bit more careful about what you put in and looking after them.
And youre not doing "hot composting" in a wormery which I guess is what we're all aiming for in a dalek style bin (with varying degrees of success!).
But yes of course all compost bins should be heaving with worms and established wormeries can cope with a large degree of neglect, just when youre starting one up you need to be a bit careful otherwise you end up with a stinky wormery full of dead worms and rotting food!
Thats my tupenceworth anyway!
Ax

[Alison]

Thanks Wormlady, was just about to post something similar and so you've saved me the effort! One of the things I really like about the wormery is that, being small, it fits nicely by the back door so I can nip out to it in all weathers rather than having a pile up of scraps in the kitchen whereas the compost heaps are at the bottom of the garden and far less convenient. I find that between my compost heaps, the wormery, the newly aquired bokashi bins and the council green bin (for some weeds or very woody stuff) I'm pretty well sorted although it confuses the hell out of OH as he never knows what to put where!