1. Worm farming - a slow and gentle soil factory, transforming your food scraps 24/7 

Why become a worm farmer?

We need soil to grow food. Worm castings, vermicast, or ‘worm poop’ is one of the best things you can add to your soil. The fact that worm farms turn your food waste into useful soil makes it just common sense to include this process in your garden. You also get to feel like a farmer, caring for these little creatures. A lot of my customers talk or even sing to their worms.

What is a worm farm?

It's a controlled environment, where you can add food scraps and the worms turn them into beautiful soil for the garden. There are different types of worm farms used in home garden settings. We’ll look at two of these. 

How a worm farm is set up:

1. Standard Worm farm (Hungry bin or layered box style) - the worms crawl up to get to fresh food, and you remove soil from the lower part of the worm farm when you want to harvest it.
2. In-ground worm farm (DIY style or Subpod) - the worms are able to 'escape' their controlled environment and crawl through your garden. This then becomes a self-fertilising situation.

Do's and don’ts common to both systems: 

1. Setting up - start with bedding material, and add food slowly. Let the worms catch up each time you add food. 
2. Keep other animals out - use a cover like newspaper or a woollen blanket to prevent fruit flies from breeding. 
3. You’ll see a lot of people telling you no citrus or onions. I disagree with this advice, but recommend cutting these items into small pieces, and adding them slowly as you observe how long it takes for them to be transformed into soil. 
4. Liquid coming out the bottom is NOT worm tea. More information on worm tea is in the worm farming course. 
5. Troubleshooting: the most common issues are lack of oxygen and poor drainage, resulting in a stinky worm farm or drowned worms. To prevent these issues, use a compost aerator to gently turn the soil every now and then, and check in on your worms once every week or so. 

“My worms died, I am scared to try again”

Failure is a part of gardening. Sorry, but every now and then you might slip up and make a mistake. This is one of the reasons I always get people to plant half a dozen different types of seeds at once. It’s much easier to keep going when you see SOME success in amongst the failures. Can you work out what went wrong with your worm farm and prevent that in future? 

I have helped people all over the world troubleshoot their worm farms, so do get in touch if you want to figure out what went wrong, and what needs to be tweaked for next time.

I can’t wait to show you how we’re going to use the worm castings when we start growing food. But there’s another type of soil to talk about first - compost.

EXTRA RESOURCES

Rhonda Sherman's webinar on the ILSR: https://ilsr.org/webinar-vermicomposting-january-2019/

To read a little more about Charles Darwin and his views on earthworms, here's the Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Formation_of_Vegetable_Mould_Through_the_Action_of_Worms

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Thanks so much,
Katrina