Website for worms.
October 29th, 2008 - Posted in permaculture, self-sufficiency, sustainable living - by Brendhan|
Kaimata Croft websites has just launched a new website for the Greymouth Fishing Club. This is being paid for by a mixture of barter (fishing trips and lessons) and real money. When we handed the website over to the club they liked it so much that the secretary threw in a worm farm that she no longer required (thanks again Sharron:-)).
The worm farm will provide liquid fertiliser from the tap at the bottom and the worms will leave behind casts (worm poo) as they move up to the next layers. Worm casts are an excellent garden fertiliser and soil conditioner .
It even came complete with little white worms. However the instruction manual recommended tiger worms and a quick internet search which turned up a picture and description which did not seem to match what we were seeing. As the tiger worms are apparently also suitable for fishing bait we decided to retire the little white worms to our normal compost bin and get some of the much bigger tiger worms from the local nursery (who get them from Earthly delights).
After cleaning out the can-o-worms wormfarm (available from these stores in NZ) we got hold of some coconut coir (from Westland fleece and fodder) for the initial worm bedding as recommended by the instructions. We just knocked a corner off the block broke it up into a bucket and it expanded to fill the whole bucket.
Just a little chunk filled the whole bucket when mixed with water!
After filling the bottom tray with this stuff we spread the 5l plastic container full of worms (approx 1000 worms) on top and watched them all burrow down into the coir.
Eisenia foetida – Tiger worms
Once they were all safely burrowed in we sprinkled a worm fattening mix onto the surface comprising of:
- 5 parts chicken layers pellets
- 1 part cornflour (wheat flour would also do)
- 1 part powdered milk (whole or skim)
- 2 parts oat meal (we didn’t have any bran or wheat meal)
- 1 part garden lime
We then tucked them in with a nice damp piece of hessian, put the two empty trays on top and moved it to it’s final resting place.
All tucked in!
Home sweet home for 1000 tiger worms!
In a week or so we will add some kitchen scraps top the next tray up and the worms should climb up through the holes in the bottom and start eating. According to the manual if we treat the worms well they will multiply and in a couple of years we will have 15,000 to 20,000 worms!
on October 30th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Hi Guys
Bloody good stuff that worm juice. We have an old bath and buy 50c bags of horse manure from the main rd which is full of tiger worms munching away, easy way to increase the population for not much coin.
Mike & Lyn, Noname rd Marsden
on October 31st, 2008 at 8:37 am
Hi Mike and Lynette,
We had heard that bathtubs made good worm farms also car tyre stacks there’s more ideas here http://www.wormsrus.co.nz/RECYCLEDWORMS.html
The book that came with ours also recomended horse manure but warned against manure from horses that had been recently wormed!
You guys wanted to know when we started lime plastering our workshop. We have started, just finished the first coat (of 3) on the back wall today. We were going to ring you but we lost your phone number! Give us a ring (7626526) if you want to come check it out.
on October 31st, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Kathleen glad she does not have to deal with
the worms-prefers looking at the sheep.
‘wormsrus’is a fine name. It conjurs up a picture
of worms dealing with customers, or answering the
phone.
Sun still shining here but v.cold