Worms Glorious Worms
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Worms Make For Blooming Lovely Gardens!
Just because you have a small garden or even no garden at all it doesn’t mean you can’t compost. There is an alternative – wormeries! Composting with worms is an easy, convenient and environmentally friendly way of turning kitchen scraps into a high quality compost and liquid fertiliser. All you need is the wormery and worms and you're on your way to making your own supply of compost - Free!
What Is A Wormery?
A wormery consists of enclosed trays which house your organic kitchen and garden waste and lots of worms. It’s like having a miniature compost heap. Wormeries are hygienic and odourless and they can be sited either inside or outside. A firm favourite with children, wormeries come in a variety of sizes to suit your needs and available space.
How Does It Work?
Worms munch away on the kitchen and garden waste that you give them, eating their own body weight in food every day. As worms don’t sleep they produce compost 24 hours a day! It should take around 4 – 5 months to turn your waste into compost although these times are dependant on the number of worms, time of year and health of your worms.
What Will I Need?
You will need a wormery! there are many different sizes and designs available so it is worth investigating a few before buying one. The size and design of your wormery will affect the price but most wormeries come as a kit including worms.
Worms are self regulating, which means they will only breed to fill the size of wormery they live in. This means that you shouldn't need to top the worms up as they will take care of that themselves!
Garden worms are not suitable for use in a wormery: The most common type of worm in the garden is the lob. Lob worms are deep burrowers and so they are not suitable for living in the shallow matter of the wormery. The most common type of worm used in a wormery is the dendras or European nightcrawler worm, whose normal habitat is the less compacted shallower soil on forest floors, this makes the dendras worm much more suited to life in the wormery.
How Much Space Will I Need?
Wormeries can come in all shapes and sizes and in some cases be made from recycled plastics, they’re either round, rectangular or cylindrical and can be placed inside or outside.
What Can I Feed My Worms?
Worms will produce the best compost if they are fed a variety of foods. Some examples are listed below:
- Vegetables and peelings
- Fruit / Peel
- Coffee / Tea Bags
- Bread
- Pizza
- Rice
- Pasta
- Flowers (if shop bought - ensure no insecticides are present)
- Cereals
- Crushed Egg Shells
- Cakes/ Biscuits
- Sugar
- Cheese
- Cardboard / Paper
- Pet or Human Hair (this takes ages to rot down)
- Hoover Contents
- Baked Beans
- Pet Faeces (This must only be from pets with a vegetarian diet like Rabbits or Gerbils etc)
- Leaves (In Moderation)
What Are The Benefits of Getting a Wormery?
Wormeries can take up less space than a traditional compost bin if you are short on space in your garden. Your worms will not only give you top quality compost but also generate a concentrated liquid fertiliser which can be used on plants.
And don’t worry if you go on holiday as worms will happily keep on making compost for several weeks while you’re away!
Why Should I Buy A Wormery?
In the UK around a third of the food we buy ends up being wasted and thrown away. That’s around 6.7 million tonnes of wasted food each year, most of which could have been eaten. Some food waste is always inevitable such as raw or cooked meat products but most other types of waste, such as those listed above such make ideal food for worms. Buying a wormery can make a big difference to the amount of waste going into your bin as well as really improve your garden and plants!
If you have a general wormery question please contact the WRAP helpline on 0845 600 0323
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