Topic: Wormery woes

[veggiewomble]

We got a wormery for our balcony about 10 months ago. The main intention was just to reduce the amount of our household waste, although I thought some compost would be nice too. :) There's two of us in the household and we put in stuff like veg and fruit peelings, rice and pasta, eggshells and the usual stuff. Over the winter, the worms seemed to be hardly working at all, so we tried to avoid overburdening them. But now, nearly a year later, we've used up 3 tiers of our wormery (we got it from Wiggly Wigglers) and when I tried to check whether the first tier was totally ready, we still found plenty of remnants of peanut shells and other rotting stuff, and there were still loads of worms working in that layer. So we've got worms in all 3 layers of our bin.. not how it's supposed to work, I guess... but we put on three tiers because we were fast running out of space! :( Anyway, is it normal to have to wait so long to harvest any compost?

Also, there's much talk about worm pee... but we hardly get any. Maybe one or two cm's of pee in a glass every few weeks or so, if we're lucky. I wonder if our worm bin is just too dry, cos we're very efficient at putting in toilet rolls and egg boxes??

vg

[antipodes]

hmmm now I do not have a wormery but I almost got one so I read a lot of stuff about them. I would say that your problems are mainly:
1. You should have had your worms warmer in the winter as they probably went dormant on you. They might need more warmth?
2. In a wormery you might not be making things accessible enough for the worms: shells and hard casings like peanut shells should probably be crushed up finely before adding them. Egg shells will always be almost whole, but you will find that all the inside has been eaten and all you have left is a brittle calcium shell that crushes up to powder.
Idem with the paper - must be shredded finely. Even large veg scraps should be cut into smaller pieces.
3. I was told not to put cereal-based scraps in as that takes a long time to break down.
4. It sounds like it might be too dry. Try soaking the paper bits before putting them in.
You might be able to sieve out some of the oldest compost and put the worms and bigger bits back in one of the other trays?
I started an outdoor compost bin in January and already have some usable compost... however I do keep my veg in a bin at home for a week or two before taking it to the garden heap, so often it is already gungy by the time it goes in. Dunno if this helps or not??

[newbies]

My problem in my wormery is flies, I think they are fruit flies.  It says on the instructions that a few are OK, but I seem to have loads and loads.  Would it be ok to kind of sieve out stuff, and maybe bury the fresh stuff?  I know the flies are harmless, but I don't like them buzzing round me when I put stuff in!

[froglets]

Hi veggie,

I'm no expert but i've had my wormery for about three years.

re your questions, if you are on a blacony the wormery is probably quite sheltered & as you put in dry stuff, that's probably why you don't get a lot of worm wee.  Mine is outside and mainly gets food waste & I get lots especially in the winter so I think quite a bit is rainwater percolating through.  The downside of this is that it flushes silt into the valve at the bottom blocking it up & I have to dive in and clear out the sludge.

I always get undigested bits in the bottom compost layer, I just leave it all inthere and use - it will rot down eventually in the pots or on the garden.  nut shells, egg shells ( I crush them now when I put them in), avocado skins and sticky labels off old fruit are favourites to make it through unscathed.

It does take a long time especially over the winter.  I wrap the sides of mine in bubble wrap over theworst of the weather, but they still go dormant for a bit.

OH loves the job of "rescuing" worms from the bottom layeer when I'm ready to use it.  The ones we miss survive quite happily in the garden. We are good friends with our worms and aren't bothered about handling them, but this is probably overkill.  last lot we sifted we found lots of pupae and larvae in it.  No idea what they were but our friendly robin was a fat biffer by the end of the excercise.

Doesn't sound too different from my experience, but if you're still not sure, give WW a ring, they're pretty helpful.

Newbies, I'd suggest your mixture is a bit too wet - try a layer of shredded paper.  I do that with my bank statements etc - I figure it's a pretty good method of avoiding identity fraud!

Hope that helps.

[veggiewomble]

Thanks for the thoughts!!

I do try and keep the worms warm... they have an old cardigan draped over the top layer, as they ate their way quickly through the mat that WW provided (they seemed more interested in the mat than the rubbish I put in  >:( )

I do have a slight problem with tiny fruit flies too. We bought a "worm cap" to protect the bin from too much rain water... when it rains, the bin suffers a bit of splatter so the lid does get very wet and we were worried the worms would drown. Even now with the cap, the inside of the lid can get pretty wet, although the compost itself is just really sticky, but dry and if we are lucky, we get an inch or so of worm pee every few weeks. Not quite as much as we were told.

When we checked last weekend, the bottom layer was mostly composted apart from little scraps and the peanut shells that they don't seem too keen on (I didn't shred them). But there were still loads of worms in that layer... it was very hard to scoop up any compost to use without having 2-3 worms in the mix. I'm pretty squeamish so OH does this bit... but I don't think either of us are so keen on getting very intimate with our worms, so....  :D The compost I harvested was extremely sticky. :P I hope this is normal!

Having said that I think we have more worms than we started off with, so at least we probably did ONE thing right!

vg

[froglets]

Just a thought, if the bottom layer was sticky, is your tap at the bottom clear of soil?  The compost does work it's way through the bottom layer & collects at the lowest point in the structure - ie the tap.

Cheers

[veggiewomble]

Sorry I left this thread for so long... yes, we FINALLY plucked up the courage to lift up all 3 trays and ... discovered a pool of foul water at the bottom, with lots of drowned worms in it!  :o The tap was indeed blocked with compost and it was quite a job getting at the blockage through the water. I have to say that I retreated to the safety of my tomato plants while OH got on with it with a pair of Marigolds!!!!

Anyway ever since then, we've been collecting lots of worm pee (in an old beer glass, no less!). It is still a bit too moist and I suppose this is what attracts the many little flies to it. :(

vw

[froglets]

Well done, you either hate that sort of thing or love it - perhaps you could find an 8 year old to help out - slimy squidgy wormy tasks are the stuff of dreams to kids of that age ( & some of 40 ish too).

I have a watering can wedged under my tap so I can leave it for weeks on end and then either add soem water or just splash it straight onto mainly my potted shrubs & trees.  They seem to do well on it and a bit of balanced feed in the growing season.

Gott alove those worms   ;)

[OllieC]

Is the worm wee supposed to smell really putrid? Mine (from the wormery) is absolutely foul, and if my wee smelt like that, I'd be down at the doctors before you could say "total organ failure".

[veggiewomble]

The worm pee from our wormery smells like a blocked drain would after a couple of days of really hot weather.  :o

Well we didn't know how productive our worms would be and didn't turn on the tap for over a week. Imagine the shock when we turned the tap on and a geyser shot out of the tap. We had enough to fill the beer glass several times over, and we eventually had to store the liquid in glass jars.  :o I never knew worms were capable of producing so much pee! Now I know, and open the tap every few days to get a manageable amount to fill my watering can with.

How often are you supposed to feed your plants with diluted worm pee anyway....?  :-X

vw

[froglets]

you know you are bored when this is the perfect excuse to descend from the loft office and go and sniff your worm wee!

The neighbours are used to me, it's their version of care in the community.

Back in 10.

[froglets]

Hmmmm,

Buy a supermarket lettuce, use half, return the rest to the plastic bag it came in.

Shove it to the back of the 'fridge and forget.

Go away for a week.

Open fridge and retrieve furry sludge filled bag from back of fridge.

Sniff.

= worm wee smell

 ;D

[OllieC]

Hmmm, so you don't get a hint of gangrene or rotting flesh as well, Froglets? More as an aftertaste...