My Garden: My Worm Farm

You’ll never guess what I got for Christmas? A Worm Farm complete with worms! My granddaughter thought it was the most amazing things that “Grammy got worms for Christmas!” I’ve actually wanted to try composting with worms for years.

A worm composter is an incredibly efficient way to quickly convert your kitchen waste, cardboard, newspaper, junk mail, dried leave and other organic matter into nutrient-rich compost for your plants, planters, flower beds and garden.

When my worm composter or vermicomposter is in full operation, it will house 10,000 to 12,000 worms, helping the microorganisms process up to five pounds of food waste and junk mail a week.

The vermicomposter was easy to set up. The directions were clear and easy to follow. You line an empty working tray with 3-4 sheets of newspaper. You then mix up some bedding composed of a partial block of coir (supplied in the kit),

some active compost of leaf litter and some shredded newspaper. This mixture is spread over the sheets of newspaper. Several handfuls of food scraps are then placed in one corner of the working tray.

The worms are then placed on top of this mixture and covered with several more sheets of moist newspaper.

The lid is then placed on the vermicomposter and the worms are allowed to settle. Every three days I remove the lid from the working tray and lift the layer of moist newspaper. If the worms are crawling in and around the food in the working tray it is time to add more handfuls of food waste. It will take 1-2 months for the working tray to be full at which point I will add a new working tray to the vermicomposter. I have not had my worms long enough to have to add another tray yet.