Worm farming is a very easy, clever way of getting fantastic nutrition for your plants using compost worms, kitchen waste, manure & water. Otherwise known as vermiculture, it is the process of harnessing earthworms to convert organic waste into the world’s most nutrient-rich fertiliser; worm manure. The system uses compost worms that are not earthworms, they are commonly red wrigglers or tiger worms that eat their own weight every day, you can buy them online or ask a friend with a compost bin and you’re sure to find some in there.
The byproduct of worm farming is called worm castings or worm manure and is a nutritionally rich compost and fertiliser, teaming with minerals and nutrients essential for plant growth, root development and disease suppression.
There are many ways of worm farming and you can use various containers like buckets, wheelie bins, tubs & baths.
Here are two videos that show easy and clever ways to set it up.
Worm towers are basically buckets, with the base cut off & holes in the side, filled with compost, horse manure & compost worms. Dig a hole next to a tree that you want to support, fill up the bucket with water & the nutrient-rich water slowly feeds the trees & plants alongside. Cover it with a lid & fill that with water and the birds love it as a little bird bath.
Worm farming using baths is a brilliant way to recycle and transform household waste into a nutrient-rich fertilizer (liquid and solid). Every day, the system can produce a few liters of fermented worm juice. This can be used as-is or watered down. Additionally, the solid results inside the bucket are worm castings, something that, in many ways, is better than compost. It’s got loads of beneficial bacteria.
To make a worm bath you can use an ordinary bathtub, set up to drain as normal. Place it up high on blocks so that you can put a bucket underneath it to catch the liquid from the drain plug. Get a piece of wire and wrap it in mesh to cover up the bath plug to act as filter, put a heavy weight like a brick on top to keep it in place. Fill the tub halfway with cow or horse manure and add some worms. Then, top it off with food scraps each day, and the worms will come up for it. They just don’t like onions or citrus. Cover over the bath with dense shade cloth over the top, protecting the worms from the sun and predators.
Once the worms have gone to work, fill it up with water and the liquid will drain out into the container below the plug hole, picking up nutrients from the worm castings. This makes excellent fertilizer, which apparently is better than manure tea because it doesn’t go anaerobic and it has a neutral pH level. The worm castings / worm manure can be harvested about every three months. Due to the nutritional superiority of worm manure, farmers and gardeners often refer to it as ‘Black Gold’, with one tablespoon enough to feed a small plant for three months.
Our worm bath was set up in the orchard in 2020.
In April 2022, we had a soil test done by Jake Corin from Soil Symbiosis and he tested our worm bath. He gave us this important advice:
The worm farm is showing to have alot of microbial activity. There was a healthy amount of bacterial feeding nematodes – an excellent predator to keep the bacterial populations down. There was no fungal biomass detected in the observations. It would be recommended to add some fungal foods to add this important species into the worm farm and then have a more biologically complete worm juice. There were some small numbers of Cilliates and Rotifers detected in the juice. These species are signals that the oxygen levels are decreasing and that the worm juice may over time start to turn anaerobic as the bacterial populations are to high and using all the oxygen. This is another reason why adding fungi would help keep the worm farm in balance.
I would recommend to add a mix of garden waste 50%, 20% manure, 20% Woodchips to the existing food waste in the worm farm. This would give a biodiverse mix of foods and add fungal populations to the worm farm. If possible add the existing food material on top of the mix recommended this would then allow for the
juice and species to flow through the added organic material and be a great starter. Then continue as normal adding the food waste as its working well for the nematodes and Amoebas. To super charge the worm juice add biochar or activated charcoal to a bucket and leave the worm juice to soak for a day then spread around the plants. The charcoal acts as a hotel for the microorganisms and provides food and shelter to them.
Posted by Elise Langley, 10th June 2020