Troubleshooting Your Wormery

Further to the damp and compacted conditions you can find in your wormery after prolonged rain and/or Winter - see http://blog.sherlock.co.uk/2015/04/looking-after-your-wormery-in-spring.html - what else should you look out for?

Here’s 5 of the most common things I see in my wormeries:

1. Insects

In the winter and early spring there isn't much of a problem but as things start to warm up there are a number of insects who somehow manage to make a home in your wormery.  Most are OK as they (or their larvae) eat the waste and generally help in the process of breaking things down nicely.  As you get more experienced you will be able to match up the conditions with the insect and act accordingly.

Some of the more common ones are:

a) Pot worms - these are small white worms that many people mistake for baby worms.  They are fine if you don’t mind them BUT they do indicate damp conditions and a compost that is starting to become acidic.  To get rid of them in the short term leave a slice of bread in the wormery overnight.  

Small white pot-worms

The next morning you will find said bread absolutely teeming with pot worms so remove it and put it on the bird table to give your birds a treat.  In the long term you need to aerate the compost so mix in some shredded paper and cardboard as well as a hand full of lime mix if you have some. This will bring down the pH and make for happier worms.

b) Springtails - these are very small white insects that aid the composting and are totally harmless as they eat fungi that grows on the waste. I use them as an indication that things are generally functioning well.

Springtails in amongst the worms

c) Fruit flies - they love the fruit you add and do no damage to the worms at all BUT there’s nothing quite like opening the lid and having them swarm up your nose and in your ears so you’re going to want to discourage them wherever possible. The perfect way to do this is to get into the habit of wrapping all your food waste in a sheet of newspaper before adding it to the wormery. The paper soaks up some moisture, the worms will eat it from below and yet the waste is protected from the fruit flies who can’t get to it to lay their eggs.  This is an especially good idea during the summer months. Alternatively, bury the waste underneath a good layer of shredded paper, again so the flies cannot get at it to lay their eggs.

d) Ants - these are a real pain because they cart off the cocoons (worm eggs that each contain a number of baby worms) so your worm population will suffer in the long run.  To keep them out you can stand the wormery legs in jars of water (ants won’t cross water) but if they do get in you will probably have to go hunting for the queen and remove her.  They are also an indication that the wormery is too dry so it may be worth adding some water to dampen the compost a bit. I know, I've been telling you how to stop the wormery getting too wet! It’s one of the reasons to keep a regular eye on things.

2. Overfeeding

Really this is one of the most common problems people have and it can be disastrous, especially with a new wormery.

When you first get a wormery add small amounts of kitchen waste and paper and keep an eye on how the worms are coping.  Once the population increases you can start increasing the amount of waste but always keep an eye on things.  Once established I try to make sure there is pure vermicompost about 3-4 inches below the top layer and that the worms are working well in your current layer of food.  This helps stop them from being over faced with too much to choose from and will keep conditions optimal.  

Another thing to remember is that most new wormeries come with a coir block to act as an immediate bedding and people worry that the worms are reluctant to move up to their kitchen waste.  This is because they are quite happy eating the coir block so only add a small amount of kitchen waste at first, a hefty amount of shredded paper and leave them to it for a bit.  They will move onto the kitchen waste once they are ready - just keep a regular eye on things so you know when to start feeding them more.

3. Type of waste

So what exactly can you feed your worms?  Well, they love variety (as do we all) so try and vary what you give them.  The following is a rough list of the things they like and what you should avoid:

Good:

• Kitchen food waste such as vegetable peelings, tea leaves and coffee grounds.  Be aware that with teabags quite a few have a quantity of nylon in them to hold them together so although the worms will break into them and eat the tea leaves you may well be left with the odd teabag ‘ghost’.  They won’t bother the worms but you will notice them when you come to use the compost - just remove them when you add to other compost or borders if you want. I use a lot of teabags and it really doesn't cause a problem.
• Fruit peelings such as banana skins and apple cores (beware of fruit flies with these - follow the tips above for wrapping your waste in newspaper).
• Crushed up egg shells - the worms need the grit that these provide and they help with the pH of the compost. Worms lack teeth though so a great tip is to dry the shells in the bottom of the oven while you cook something else.  They can then easily be crushed into a powder and sprinkled into the wormery.
• Shredded or torn up paper; newspaper, bank statements, credit card receipts, toilet roll inners, kitchen paper and tissues as well as brown corrugated cardboard from the likes of Amazon etc.

Bad (or at least not so good):

• Cooked food such as meat or fish - this will rot and smell as well as invite unwanted guests to appear (to compost such things why not try Bokashi, a system that is sealed and works brilliantly with most things that a wormery can’t handle).
• Citrus fruit and onion peelings as they are acidic. Very small doses may be OK but I find it best to avoid where possible, and add some lime every now and then.
• Animal manure though possibly OK is best avoided as you cannot guarantee that it isn't from an animal recently wormed (disastrous).  Worms also cannot break down any pathogens it may contains so the finished compost may not be great for vegetable production etc.  I have used a wormery for dogs mess but a lot of care needs to be taken and I've only used the finished product for under the hedge.  

4. Position

Where you keep your wormery can really make a difference. You want it close to the house but sheltered enough to keep it safe.

In the Spring and summer try and keep it out of direct sunlight otherwise it will heat up quickly in the sun, bake the worms (or make them try and escape), cause excess condensation that then makes the compost too wet and generally make for a less than stable environment for your worms to work (too hot one minute and then quickly cooling down etc).

In the winter it needs to be out of the wind and rain so it doesn't get too cold and wet for all the reasons mentioned previously.

Try and keep a weight on the lid, such as a house brick.  This holds the lid firmly in place during windier weather as well minimising the number of escapees when conditions aren't optimal inside the wormery (especially when newly set-up).

Brick to help keep lid in place and bottle for collecting leachate

5. Regularly empty the sump

It is a really good idea to get into the habit of emptying the sump on a regular basis.  If it gets too full the compost will get wet causing soggy, anaerobic conditions as well as possibly drowning your worms.  The worm tea (leachate) makes a great liquid feed during the growing season and can be stored throughout the winter (or just poured directly on your borders).  Either way getting into the habit of emptying the sump is good so you avoid the sudden realisation that it hasn't stopped raining for a couple of weeks and you haven’t been doing it.  I guarantee you will find the odd dead worm come from the tap when you do get round to it and I wouldn't worry about it.  They seem to go to the sump to die - I just re-add them to the top when I check the bin over.

Conclusion

I appreciate there is quite a lot of information there but if you take the time to give the wormery a Spring clean and check over it will soon reward you with some fantastic compost for top dressing house plants and vegetables such potted tomatoes etc. You can then look forward to another bumper year safe in the knowledge that your waste is now working for you, as are your worms.

Wiggly Wigglers 2010 Catalogue

Earlier in the year Heather from Wiggly Wigglers asked me to write a piece on composting and wormeries for their forthcoming catalogue.

I was really pleased with how they presented the article and I've had some great feedback about it (it caused some great discussions on the use of teabags as well) *

Anyway, the catalogue is soon to replaced by another edition and Heather kindly let me have a PDF version of my article. You can read/download it here.

* I still compost teabags, both in the wormery and the compost bin as I would rather have the odd "teabag ghost" than add to the methane build-up in landfill. If you'd rather not have the ghosts then it's worth trying tea leaves. I can heartily recommend Trumpers loose leaf tea as an alternative to tea bags, though to be honest I still like my PG Tips as well (sacrilege I hear some of you cry) :)

Emptying the bottom layer of your worm bin

In many of the discussions on worm bins people ask about either adding the next layer or how do they go about emptying the bottom layer (or even knowing when it's ready to empty).

I generally empty mine when the top layer is almost full (generally twice a year with my family) and I try and do it in the Spring and the Autumn i.e. while the weather is still reasonable.

A common misconception is that all the worms will have vacated the bottom layer and moved up. I've owned a wormery since 1998 and I have never yet known this to be the case - there are always a few of the stubborn ones quite happy in the bottom layer.



So how do you separate them from the compost?

You have a few choices:

• The first is don't bother. You can just empty the whole bottom layer in your border or compost bin where the few stragglers and eggs will either live in the garden, become live food for the birds or in the case of the compost bin carry on regardless. I like the last option because they can then colonise your compost and thereby speed up that process as well.
  
  
• You can empty the whole lot into a barrow or onto a plastic sheet and hand pick them out, either adding them to your wormery again or even box them up and head off fishing. The choice is yours.
  
  
• Put the bottom layer on the top with the lid off. Scrape away and remove compost until you come across some worms and then leave it for a bit. Worms hate the light and will burrow down into the compost that remains. Repeat this process until they have all burrowed into the layer below, by which time you will have harvested all the compost.
  Be warned though that this is a lengthy process.
  

When you remove the bottom layer you will almost definitely find that the sump is full of worms. Many beginners panic and worry about worms getting in the sump but they always do.

It's yet another reason to make sure you empty the sump regularly so that they don't drown.

They can and will climb out when they are ready but you're very lucky indeed if you never find any there.



As you can see from the pictures both my bins have plenty of worms in the sump. So while we're emptying the bottom layer make sure you empty the contents of the sump (drain it of liquid first though) into the top layer. It tidies the sump up as well as helping establish worms in the new top layer.

So now you've emptied the bottom layer and cleaned out the sump you can place the now empty tray to the top of the bin.

When adding this new layer be careful to make sure that it fits snugly. If there's too much stuff in there then a) you'll be squashing them with the new one and b) they can get out of the sides.

I just add the layer and start adding waste - they will move up when they are ready i.e. they have eaten most of the layer below and fancy some of the new stuff.

I guess it wouldn't harm to take some of the bottom layer and add it to the new one, especially if it's quite full and stops the new layer fitting snugly. Definitely add the moisture mat (or a layer of cardboard) as the darkness will further attract them into the new layer.



As you can see from the pictures, adding what's in the sump can make the wormery look quite wet and soggy so make sure you add a fair amount of shredded/scrunched paper and/or cardboard to help dry things out.

You can never have enough paper in a worm bin, something that people often forget. It helps keep things dry and adds a god dose of carbon. The worms will munch their way through it as fast (if not faster) than the food scraps and the resultant compost will be of a higher standard.

Not Quite Gardeners Question Time

On Friday I travelled down to Ledbury, dropped the family off at some friends and then (with an awful lot of help from Digital Doris, TomTom for short) drove on to Preston-on-Wye for "Not Quite Gardeners Question Time", a talk being given by Terry Walton (allotment guru from Jeremy Vine's Radio 2 show) and Richard Fishbourne of Wiggly Wigglers



Amazingly I made it in time for a glass of mulled cider and was made very welcome by the team from Wiggly's, all of whom I have dealt with electronically in the past but never actually met. For me it was worth the journey down to actually meet everybody in person as much as to hear the banter between Richard and Terry, and even more so to find that they are all just as pleasant and easy to talk to as you expect from listening to the weekly podcast. Even Michael, technical wizz behind the podcast, catalogue, web site and just about any other form of media used by Wiggly Wigglers, put up with me asking questions behind the Wiggly's web site and how it all works.

The talk itself was fantastic, light hearted and full of audience participation; Terry makes stories of vegetable gardening entertaining, amusing and, above all, extremely informative, while Richard steers the conversation around to various composting techniques (standard, wormeries and Bokashi) and wild life, such as how important bees are in the garden etc. The only downside to the evening was being forced to sing "My. My. My. Dahlia" to the (not quite) tune of Tom Jones' "Delilah"!

Part one of the talk is available as Wiggly Podcast 0153.

And thanks again to Heather for inviting me down, being so welcoming and above all, not mentioning the cat argument from podcast 60!

All in all I had a great time and it was a real shame I had to get back to Ledbury and therefore turn down the offer of a pint afterwards...