I Bought A Worm Farm!

Part of my journey toward living the healthy, holistic lifestyle that I want for myself includes growing my own healthy, organic fresh produce.

Commercial fertilisers can be full of nasty chemicals that harm the environment and degrade the quality of the soil, so I decided to buy myself a worm farm so that I am able to make my own organic, environmentally-friendly fertiliser for the garden.

The great thing about the worm farm is that we are able to generate our own garden fertiliser free of charge (if you don't include the money we spent on any scraps we feed them from the fresh produce we buy!).

Having a worm farm also means that we are able to save our fruit and vegetable scraps from ending up in landfill and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, which is another win for our environment. Apparently the worms can eat up to 4kg of worm scraps per week - that's quite a lot!

We picked up our worm farm supplies from Bunnings and decided to go with the Tumbleweed Can-O-Worms.

Tumbleweed Can-O-Worms Worm Farm from Bunnings

The Can-O-Worms worm farm came with a collector tray and legs with a tap to harvest the worm tea as well as 2 working trays and a lid. It also came with a worm bedding block. We had to buy the worms separately as well as a worm blanket for insulation and some compost conditioner.

The worm farm was super-simple to set up. First thing we did was place the worm bedding block (where the worms will live) in a bucket with 5.5L of warm water to expand. While we waited for that to happen, we got to work attaching the legs and tap to the worm farm collection tray.

Using water to expand the worm farm bedding block

Once the worm bedding block was ready, we placed the first working tray on top of the collector tray and lined the bottom with the cardboard that the worm farm came packaged in (all of the worm farm packaging is biodegradable and worm-friendly), then spread the worm bedding on top.

Next step was to add our worms. We bought a bag of 1000 and when we opened up the bag to add them to the worm farm, we were a little disappointed to see that the majority of them were dead!!

Then, thankfully, they surprised us and started wriggling around trying to dig themselves back into the soil.

Now that our worms were introduced into their new home, the only thing left to do was give the soil a good water (as worms like their environment moist), tuck them under a worm blanket for insulation, and put the lid on.

Tumbleweed worm blanket for insulation

It's recommended to wait a few days for the worms to settle in before feeding them, so 2 days later, I chopped up some leftover Christmas fruit salad (after removing the acidic fruits such as kiwi fruit and pineapple) and threw some mango skins in for them.

Once the food scraps were in, I covered them with a thin layer of compost and gave the worm farm another water. I also used this opportunity to add some compost conditioner to balance the PH levels and drained some of the worm tea from the collector tray.

I actually wish that I'd completely read the instruction manual before I did this though because I didn't realise that the worms will actually eat their worm bedding and the cardboard that we used to line the bottom of the tray, so for now I'm pretty sure they may have a little too much food.

After only a couple of days, I didn't think I'd end up with much worm tea, but I was surprised to find that I was able to extract at least 1L, so I added that to my 9L watering can, diluted the worm tea with water and used it on our 2 avocado trees, the tamarillo, my kale, and a few of our blueberry plants.

Worm tea collected from the worm farm, ready to dilute and use on the garden as natural, organic liquid fertiliser

As the working tray fills up with composted food scraps and worm droppings (called worm castings), the tray will eventually reach full capacity and when this happens, we are meant to place the second, empty working tray on top and start feeding the worms in that.

The second/ new/ empty working tray sits on top of the first and the worms will eventually move up into this new tray via the holes in the bottom, leaving the full tray ready to harvest and use on the garden.

Looking forward to seeing how much of an improvement the worm tea and worm castings make to the condition of the plants. I'll keep you updated and let you know how I go. 🙂

Do you compost any of your food scraps at home? Or maybe you have a worm farm of your own? If none of the above, is this something you think you may look at doing in the future?

Happy to have you here and I hope you have a great day/ night!

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Hope to have you back soon. Thanks for reading.

Lisa. 😊 xx