Wormery Woes

[Pootle]

I was being totally serious about worm blankets made from jumpers! You do have to make sure that they're natural fibres (wool/cotton etc) though otherwise there is no way the lovely wigglers will touch them!

You can also put in pet hair and when I cut OH's hair - that goes in too!

Our worm wee didn't arrive for quite a long while - but its worth the wait. Our potted plants have never been healthier and I can't wait to use it on the allotment this year

[ClayGarden]

I put my hair on our compost, not a wormery, but it seems totally decomposed a year later, so the worms cant of hated it

[Pootle]

We'll be back to the MIL if we're not careful...

[craigpugh]

Wormery advice- I have spent a stinky afternoon clearing out my wormery, and i realsuied i have only got the compost out of it once before today, and that as i was bought it as a leaving pressie from work in a job i finished 5 years ago, i'm not getting exacltyly loads.

The problem is that its a big rectangular womery- not one with the layers you can lift off.

Anyone know any secrets as to how to harvest my worm casts?

Today I dug the whole lot out, most of it was still partially decomposed food and stank, then all the fully eaten stuff was still chock full of worms and really wet, i have been sieving it through a riddle, laying it on card, covered with card board and leaving it overnight to see if the worms come to the top so i can put wem back in the bin and use the compost, but then i was shoveling 4 carrier bags of rot back into the thing.

Now the manual says that the worms eat everything, then keep heading upwards to the new stuff blah blha blah.

There must be an easier way???

[Pootle]

We've got the one with the lift off sections but find that they head back into the 'ready' compost if the weather is particularly cold or damp. The solution in this case seems to be to add more newspaper/fibrous material to the top layer and to put on a new blanket which encourages them back up. I also have a bag of worm treat which seems to balance the womery out if things aren't going to plan - it came with the COW and I've only used about 1/4 of the bag in 2 years.

Not sure if this advice would work in the same way with the other sort, but it might be worth a try. Or check out the Wiggly Wigglers website for more tips ...

[Alison]

If your wormery is that wet then you definitely need to add plenty of torn newspaper. If sounds like you could be adding you veg waste in to large an amount, it's very important to go for the little and often approach. I suppose the advantage of the CoW type with the different layers is that once it's up and running you're fine, where as for the bin types it's like starting from scratch every time you empty.

[karen000]

i have just done a work shop on worms for composting and they love all cooked foods about 1/2 a kl for every 1 kl of worms and if you feed them chicken mash they will multyply 6 times a year and you must add finely ground up egg shells to keep the nemotoads down and it helps the worms to digest food if anyone has any more advice i would love to hear from you