Digging in the Dark!

The TUMBLEWEED Worm Cafe

Tonight Tim and I set up our worm farm.

 While some couples may be watching dating in the dark we are digging in the dark!

The main reason we decided to get a worm farm was to recycle our kitchen scrap waste. It is just horrible to see kitchen scraps go into land fill and pollute the earth. The worm farm we have is the Tumbleweed Worm Cafe from Serenity Nursery. It will turn our scraps into useful garden fertiliser full of beneficial microbes. Worm casting and worm tea will be produced and used as organic soil improver's.

Look what we did:

 There are 4 trays with the kit, but you only need one working tray to start. Keep the others put aside.

Insert the first tray and lay a sheet of news paper into the tray. Soak the soil block in water ( it's provided with the worm cafe). Then lay the soil mixture onto the newspaper.

Top up with some soil from the garden that is  free from inorganic fertilisers.

Use a bucket to catch the worm juice. This can be be diluted with water to the colour of weak tea and watered onto the garden.

You will need about 1000 worms for this worm farm and they will cost around $50 (for approx 1000). May I add that I love worms I think it brings back childhood memories of digging in the dirt.

Carefully place the worms on top of soil and water in.

Place the second tray on top. the tray has tiny holes in the bottom of it so the worms

 can crawl up into it.

Our ceramic compost bin is overflowing with kitchen scraps...

Sprinkle some more dirt over the tiny holes and then spread a layer of kitchen scraps.The scraps will attract the worms up into the second tray and the worm casting will be left in the bottom tray.

Continue the process a few times. It is important to add a sprinkling of dirt over the kitchen scraps every time as worms don't have teeth and need the dirt to help grind the food down.

Every week sprinkle a little dolomite lime or TUMBLEWEED worm farm and compost conditioner ( shown here) ontop of the food scraps. This will help lower the acidity of the kitchen scraps especially acid foods like citrus fruit.

I hope you enjoyed our demonstration.

If you want to find out more visit me in the nursery.I'll be more than happy to talk worms with you.

Krystal x

 First Image via Tumbleweed. Other Images Serenity Nursery