Worms and Composting

Worm farms are excellent for small areas like balconies and courtyards because they are compact and relatively tidy. Worm castings (excrement) and juice (liquid runoff) make an excellent organic soil ...

Worm farms are excellent for small areas like balconies and courtyards because they are compact and relatively tidy. Worm castings (excrement) and juice (liquid runoff) make an excellent organic soil conditioner and fertilizer for the garden and potted plants. Worm farms are amazing little things. Essentially you put your food scraps into a container with worms, they chomp away on it and give you a by product of pH balanced castings (like a top grade potting mix, but probably better) and pH balanced liquid fertilizer.

Worm castings are coated allowing the nutrients to time release to your plants. Unlike chemical fertilizers, you can not burn your plants by using too many castings. Casts do not have to be diluted for use in the garden, but make sure they are tilled into the soil. For best results, add compost and mulch as soil cover.

Red worms are best for a worm farm and will eat most any vegetable waste from your table scraps. They also eat egg shells (crushed), apple peelings, banana peels, cabbage, onion peels, celery ends, potato skins, grains, coffee grounds, and small amounts of citrus foods. Compost worms breed faster, eat a different diet, and tolerate much more mucky environments than earthworms. The worms you find in soil will not thrive in kitchen scraps, and will likely die - so best to leave them in the garden.

Vermicomposting is the perfect way to turn your household waste into something useful. Vegetable waste, animal droppings and other organic waste can be turned into high quality soil. Vermicompost is a nutrient-rich, natural fertilizer and soil conditioner. The process of producing vermicompost is called vermicomposting .Compost is a wonderfully rich type of soil that can be dug lightly into your garden or placed directly on the surface of beds. If laid on the surface it will act as a mulch before being decomposed further. It can also be added to potted plants. Composting is the responsible and sustainable thing to do for our planet. Composting your kitchen scraps and green waste produces free, natural fertilizer for your pot plants or garden, and reduces the amount of rubbish that is sent to landfill.