Worms in ma wormery

Foleyart

Hi all, I bought a wormery last year and started it off as instructed by the booklet. However it appears the worms disappeared ! My question is, there is about 6 inches of rotting veg in the bin, would I be able to just add in another 500 worms and see how it goes? any ideas?.

The Sweeper

Is your bin open to the ground?

If not, dump out the rotting veg, but leave worm castings and any other soil / earthiness in there. Add a little shredded newspaper and a handful of carrot peelings. Make sure it's moist. Cover and return a week later, see if there's any evidence of worms. If not, buy another 500.

Excessive food creates a toxic, sludgey, gross environment and your worms won't want to go near it. That sort of sludge also holds no oxygen so it's not a worm friendly environment. You'll probably find the existing ones died off, but there are dormant worm eggs in the castings and soil, waiting for ideal conditions again.

Next time around, don't overfeed them.

Foleyart

Thanks for that MAJD, will do:)

The Sweeper

It's a good idea to chop your worm scraps up small for them as well - I like to feed my wormies only what they enjoy - so carrot peelings, a few potato peelings, the leaves off a head of celery, chopped up, other vegetable offcuts (no onions and no citrus). I chop it up small for them and only feed as much as they'll go through in a few days.

I have a triple-tiered wormery home-made from polystyrene boxes. The bottom box is the liquid tray. The middle is worm city, with a fine-weave shadecloth base so they can't get into the water and drown, and lots of castings and worm muck. The top layer is the food layer, where I lay food and then cover with a sort of straw 'lid' that I lift to put in more food.

It doesn't look as fancy schmancy as the shop bought ones, but it works and my plants like the worm tea!

Need to do something of an overhaul soon though, take out some of those excellent castings and rebuild some of the 'carbon' in the worm city layer.

(Talk about anthropomorphising your pets? A wildlife carer asked me recently if she could rely on me for worms to feed baby birds in care. I was horrified. )

Minder

Any idea how to get rid of the gazillion fruit flies that are using my wormery as a home? I have added a resevoir of sugar water to the top layer - it has a lip that stops the worms getting in and the flies drown in that. But it would be nice to find a way to stop the buggers getting in there in the first place.