"Stephen Howard" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 17:47:30 +0000 (UTC), "Franz Heymann"
wrote:


"Stephen Howard" wrote in message

I suspect the soil in the garden contains a small number of Brandling
worms per square foot - and is relative to the amount of fresh
compostable material available.
So in theory your scheme could work, but it would mean having to
maintain the level of fresh organic matter - which would perhaps
render the soil unsuitable for general cropping.

Surely not, if I move my worm hostel by a foot or so each day, like my
friend used to do with his guineapig lawn maintenance system.

All that would achieve is leaving behind a trail of soil packed full
od raw vegetable matter - it takes months for the worms to break the
stuff down.

Then my understanding of worm composting is cockeyed. I thought that well
trained worms disposed of vegetable matter in a trice. Or so the worm
composters have led me to believe.


Surely it would be far less hassle to maintain one bin as a nursery
for your worms - all you'd need to do inoculate another bin would be
to grab a handful of gloop from the nursery bin and chuck it in.

Being a lazy sort of bloke, it is all that bin maintenance and harvesting
which I am trying to avoid.

Strikes me that knocking up a number of 'darkrooms', roughing up the
soil beneath them, packing them with vegetable waste.. and then
perhaps moving them on a daily basis adds up to a hell of a lot more
work than tossing a load of kitchen scraps into a bin with a few
handfuls of soil and leaving it to its own devices.

I suppose you are right.

Why not just trench compost?
I do this through the winter months ( though there's no reason why you
can't do it throughout the year ) ...all the kitchen scraps go into a
trench of about a spit and half's depth and are covered with soil as I
go. Come spring these trenches are ideal for sowing peas on, and later
in the season the beans and courgettes take over.
By the next year the raw matter will have been well and truly
incorporated and the same area can be used for standard crops ( spuds
etc. ).

That sounds more or less like what I am talking about, if you replace the
polythene cover by a soil cover.

Franz