Page 35 - Simply Vegetables Summer 2023

Fresh waste newly added
Liquid feed from sump
Three tier wormery set up
Some of the advertisements suggest
that you can keep a wormery indoors. If your only option is indoors, I would suggest you don’t get one. Even if you manage it with a religious fervor, a wormery is going to be smelly and you simply cannot avoid fruit flies entirely. Mine stays outdoors all year round and I occasionally move it into the shed if there is a prolonged period of really heavy frost and ice and there is a risk that the whole system might freeze solid. By occasionally I mean once every 3 or 4 years, they really do cope fine most of the time. The other risk from weather is rain, because if you forget to drain the sump and it rains a lot, the whole system can become overly wet. If this does happen, empty the sump, give them an extra dose of paper or cardboard and they will recover fine.
Along with the basic kits, many suppliers also sell additives that you can put into
the top bin to encourage your worms and keep a balance in the pH of the waste. In all honesty these are nice to have’s and
by no means necessary to keep your wormery working fine. After the first couple of years, I gave up with them; just make sure you keep adding a balance of waste at a reasonable pace and you don’t need to spend money on additives.
Finally, a little bit about the end products. The main chambers, by the time the
whole system is full, will produce a small quantity of worm cast compost. You can expect to get around 4 to 6 of these each year depending on how fast you feed the system, weather conditions and so on. It is too rich for seeds or seedlings but is great used in small quantities to enrich compost mixes used in pots for older plants, particularly if you use purchased compost. I have no scientific evidence, but it just seems to bring a bit of life to the compost and plants respond well. The other output is the worm juice that collects in the sump. Use this as a liquid feed as you would a comfrey tea – drain it off and dilute at a rate of about a pint in a large watering can, so
the result is a weak tea colour. You will get plenty of this all year round and it really does invigorate plants. The only other tip I can give you with this is you need to filter
it before you put it in a can with a fine rose, otherwise it will clog up the rose. I pour it through old nylon tights and this works fine for me.
So in conclusion, I’ve had a wormery for years and would recommend you keeping
one provided you don’t expect it to be a replacement for composting in bulk. Don’t waste money on the various additives unless you really want to. Enjoy the free liquid plant tonic it will produce.
Very good advice and my apologies for missing Gary’s article out of a earlier magazine – Ed
Wormcast compost in bottom layer
Simply Vegetables 35