Mother Earth’s Garden

Worms and how to love them

by Margaret on December 21st, 2006

I have been asked to give some advice on composting for people with small gardens. There are several possible solutions to this dilemma, but my favourite is worms!

 Composters and would-be composters are usually stuck between two choices. Either you can have a classic heap, but be stuck with the need to aerate it by turning it – which is labour intensive. Or you can have a gooey, messy bin which takes no work at all, and disposes of your kitchen rubbish, but is not really compost in the true sense of the word.

 Worms, either by themselves or in combination with other composting methods represent a “third way” particularly useful for those with limited space. You can put them in your heap or bin, and they will help aerate it for you. In a closed bin system, they help to prevent the whole mess from getting too acidic, and will speed up the breakdown. Of course if conditions in the bin get too noxious, the worms will retreat or die, so they are not a complete answer. You need to pay attention to your combination of sloppy nitrogen rich material and carbon rich material.As a rough guide put in half a bucket of dry material such as sawdust, dried leaves or shredded paper for every bucket of kitchen waste.

In a compost heap, the worms will retreat when the compost heats up, and come back in droves during the final stages, when they become an important part of the “curing” process.

So worms can help with any form of composting – but  if you have limited space and kitchen scraps are your only problem, you can give up on conventional compost all together, and simply install a worm farm. This is a solution available even to flat dwellers. Some keep worm farms in their kitchens, but they are really too smelly for this to be comfortable for most people. However, the commercially available farms are designed to fit in an area not much bigger than a sizable pot plant. They can be kept easily on verandahs, under washing lines or even in the same space as you keep your wheelie bin. Almost anyone can host a worm farm.

It is not silly to love worms. In fact, it is about the most sensible attitude you can have to them. The Latin word for worm is “vermis”, hence worms were the original “vermin”. Until Charles Darwin began his research on earthworms in the mid to late 19th Century, they had a bad name and were despised as a pest. But Darwin realised that for years the worm had been quietly aerating, tilling and fertilising the soils of the planet. He came to believe they were the single most important creature on earth.

There are thousands of species of worms, and most of them probably haven’t even been identified. Any compost heap that is working well will, without your intervention, become home to worms in the “cool down” stages. A really hot compost heap is not a good environment for worms, but they soon gather to eat the organic matter once the temperatures become bearable for them.

But if you want to get into true, specialist compost worm farming, aimed at disposing of the maximum amount of organic waste and producing the maximum amount of worm poo, you need a special kind of compost worm: either tiger worms (Eisenia fetida) or red worms (Eisenia andrei). You can buy these worms from fishing stores. Fishermen have farmed worms for generations, in order to use them for bait.  Or if you prefer, they are available from the specialist worm businesses that are cropping up all over the place. You can find a list of them here for the United States, or more hints and links to business here in Australia.

Although they may go roamin’ in the loamin, compost worms won’t survive in ordinary garden soil – unless it is heavily and richly mulched. They need constant supplies of organic matter, which means that so long as you keep feeding them, they will stay in the farm or the compost heap, even if it is in contact with the soil. On the other hand, worms are necessarily free-range. Even an apparently sealed commercial farm won’t confine a determined escapee worm when conditions inside the farm get bad. Paradise for a compost worm is an environment which is Ph neutral, 25ºC air temperature, above 70% air humidity, and between 70 & 90% soil moisture. Too much sun and heat on an unprotected worm farm not in contact with the soil may kill them, so it is best to keep them in shade.

In a worm farm like mine, which is in touch with the soil, the worms will retreat when times are hard, and may even die, but then come up again or repopulate as soon as more organic matter and moisture are provided. If you have neglected worms in a bed open to the soil, they will go a roaming in search of more food or more moisture – but I have found you can usually lure them back.

Any box or bin can contain worms, provided it is kept at a proper temperature, and there is some method of draining it – either through a tap such as is used on most commercial worm farms, or through contact with the soil so that leachate can drain away. A friend of mine has a worm farm in a wooden box that used to contain his children’s toys. So long as it is in contact with the soil, the worms are neglect proof. The other advantage of compost worms is that you can lure and guide them with food. If you have them in a well mulched spot in your garden, you can build them a “tunnel, or path” of food-rich mulch (manure and newspaper are ideal). Provided there is organic material on the surface, they will travel vast distances to go wherever the food source is richest.

If you keep worms, they will eat shredded paper and nearly all your kitchen scraps. Just as with compost heaps, there are some things it is best not to add in an urban environment, including meat scraps and too much dairy, bread and pasta, all of which can attract pests. Worms also do not like onion, garlic, shallots or materials with high ammonia or nitrogen levels, or large quantities of fats and oils. You can if you wish make things easier for your worms and speed up their work up by putting the scraps you feed them through a blender first, but provided you are prepared to wait a little longer, there is no need to chop things up.

Unlike your other pets, such as dogs and cats, you will find it difficult to board them when you go away, but you can make sure they enough food to get them through. A few thick layers of newspaper and animal manure will keep them going for weeks.
There are hazards. One of my friends was once delighted to receive a lovely lot of animal manure. She added a small amount to her worm farm, and the worms died within days. Only later did she discover that only a few days before the manure was collected the animals it came from had been wormed. Obviously, some of the drug had survived.

Pale, anaemic looking worms usually are living in too acid conditions. A little lime or wood ash dissolved in water can help. It is essential that whatever container you keep your worms in can drain properly – either with a tap, as in commercial worm farms, or direct to the soil if you are keeping them in the garden. That also means, of course, that your worms will be able to escape if you neglect them.

It isn’t necessary to buy a commercial worm farm. You can create a worm farm out of polystyrene boxes from the greengrocers. If you have enough space, worms can live in any box or other container, so long as it has sufficient bedding material or is in touch with the soil. On the other hand, the commercial worm farms are compact, neat and easy to use.

In a three storey commercial worm farm, you put your fresh food scraps and other organic matter in at the top. The worms go into the second layer, and the bottom layer collects the leachate, or worm water, which can be drained off by means of a tap. This worm water is wonderful liquid fertiliser. It can be diluted and poured straight on to your plants.

The dimensions of the container and the numbers of worms required initially will depend on how much organic food waste will need to be composted each week. Worm populations are self-controlling. The worms will gradually reproduce or die according to the amount of food they receive. Under ideal conditions, worm populations can double every couple of months.

All earthworms are true hermaphrodites, with both male and female parts on each worm. However one worm is not enough for a good time, let alone for making baby worms. You need at least two, but any worm of the same species will do. Any two compost worms of breeding age can fertilise each other every which way and produce capsules or eggs, each of which can contain up to 20 compost worms. They hatch in 21 days or so in good conditions. But if hard times have descended on the worm farm, the capsules can remain dormant for months or even years until good conditions come again.

A fully active worm can eat up to its body weight in a day. A thousand worms weigh about a quarter of a kilogram, and research suggests that most Australians produce an average of 2 kilograms of household and garden waste a day. Do the maths! If we assume that all our organic rubbish could be chopped up and fed to worms, then we could dispose of the entire problem if we each kept 8,000 worms as pets. One wonders whether one day, worm-keeping won’t become compulsory! It’s nearly impossible to count your worms, let alone name them. Most professional breeders use weight as a rough guide, but that is all it can ever be.

Worms are wonderful. They enrich life. I can’t imagine my own life without both a compost heap, and a worm farm. Worms are almost company!

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POSTED IN: How to Grow Stuff