Vermiculture

A friend of ours who’s really into permaculture came over a few weeks ago and gave us a bit of a rundown about what we could change around the place. We’ve since created a vegetable patch – more on that later – and we’ve also invested in a worm farm.

We looked at the tiered system like you can get at Bunnings; we looked at the converted wheelie bins at Ceres; in the end my darling’s research powers led us to HungryBin. It sits very neatly in a corner with the wheelie bins; it’s not especially convenient to the kitchen but it’s not like we live on a massive property so that walking out is a problem.

The neat thing about this is that the ‘worm tea’ drips onto the tray at the very bottom, while the worm castings accumulate in an easily removable tray at the bottom of the bin. Apparently. We’re not there yet. Where we are is many litres of compost, about 2000 worms (apparently; it was a kilo), and beginning to add scraps. 

This is what it looked like when I first put stuff in. I ended up taking out the mint from on top, and I’ve realised I needed to cut things up more before putting them in.

The worms seem happy in what is now being called the Earth BnB. I’m making this assumption based on the fact that they are frequently on top of the soil when I check (which isn’t every day… promise… or at least not more than once a day. Now that I’ve had it for a little while) and that the amount of food scraps is definitely decreasing.

Amusing fact: pumpkin seeds will sprout in worm farms as well as in compost.