In article ,
says...

Janet wrote in news:MPG.29e7d30d26e1e2e198b339
@news.eternal-september.org:

No stables with horse-manure heaps in the neighbourhood? You should
find some in there.

Janet,
Thanks for the tip. Yes, I do have horse dung-heaps locally. I hope I can
identify the said brandlings! Pinkish-brown with lateral stripes, yes?

Al



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ei...ompost_bin.jpg

Janet

On 04/04/2012 16:01, AL_n wrote:
Terry wrote in
:


Farmer Giles wrote:

On 03/04/2012 20:12, AL_n wrote:

Can anyone please enlighten me:

a) For a single person (with a larger than average garden, who
doesn't throw away much, if any, vegetable matter from the kitchen,
are wormeries worth the trouble?

b) what are the pros and cons of maintaining one?

c) can anyone provide instructions, or a link to a good guide to
starting an maintaining a home-made wormery?

Get a
large plastic container - I make home-brewed beer, and find the old
5-gallon brewing buckets ideal for this - and make a number of small
holes in the botton - about 1cm in diameter.

Put this container somewhere in the garden - in an area that's
convenient, and particularly one that you'd like to improve the
fertility of - and then just tip your kitchen waste in to it. In the
fullness of time composting worms will find the bin and colonise it
(and dreed rapidly). fill the bin with your waste and keep it topped
up - starting more bins when you run out of space.

In the days when SWMBO composted the (non-meat) kitchen waste, I used
to add the output of the paper shredder. It was astonishing: worms
would turn up from seemingly nowhere and in seven days you couldn't
tell that any paper had ever been put in there. I think they liked the
paper best of all!

Terry Fields


That's great, I think I'll have a go with the highly acclaimed red
wigglers. Can anyone recommend an online source of these?

TIA


You don't need to buy any, just put the right materials in a container
and they will find their own way there. It doesn't happen overnight,
though - just be patient, and once they colonise your containers they
will multiply very quickly.

"Farmer Giles" wrote in message
...
On 04/04/2012 16:01, AL_n wrote:
Terry wrote in
:


Farmer Giles wrote:

On 03/04/2012 20:12, AL_n wrote:

Can anyone please enlighten me:

a) For a single person (with a larger than average garden, who
doesn't throw away much, if any, vegetable matter from the kitchen,
are wormeries worth the trouble?

b) what are the pros and cons of maintaining one?

c) can anyone provide instructions, or a link to a good guide to
starting an maintaining a home-made wormery?

Get a
large plastic container - I make home-brewed beer, and find the old
5-gallon brewing buckets ideal for this - and make a number of small
holes in the botton - about 1cm in diameter.

Put this container somewhere in the garden - in an area that's
convenient, and particularly one that you'd like to improve the
fertility of - and then just tip your kitchen waste in to it. In the
fullness of time composting worms will find the bin and colonise it
(and dreed rapidly). fill the bin with your waste and keep it topped
up - starting more bins when you run out of space.

In the days when SWMBO composted the (non-meat) kitchen waste, I used
to add the output of the paper shredder. It was astonishing: worms
would turn up from seemingly nowhere and in seven days you couldn't
tell that any paper had ever been put in there. I think they liked the
paper best of all!

Terry Fields


That's great, I think I'll have a go with the highly acclaimed red
wigglers. Can anyone recommend an online source of these?

TIA


You don't need to buy any, just put the right materials in a container and
they will find their own way there. It doesn't happen overnight, though -
just be patient, and once they colonise your containers they will multiply
very quickly.


Make sure at least part of your compost bin is on soil and also keep it wet.
Watering can if needed.

Mike



--

....................................

I'm an Angel, honest ! The horns are there just to keep the halo straight.

....................................

On 04/04/2012 11:02, AL_n wrote:
Farmer wrote in news:-ZidnYWtPsT4-
:


I've had wormeries for years, but they can be a lot of trouble -
particularly in winter. An easy way that I have found to get the benefit
of wormeries, using your kitchen waste in the process, is this. Get a
large plastic container - I make home-brewed beer, and find the old
5-gallon brewing buckets ideal for this - and make a number of small
holes in the botton - about 1cm in diameter.

Put this container somewhere in the garden - in an area that's
convenient, and particularly one that you'd like to improve the
fertility of - and then just tip your kitchen waste in to it. In the
fullness of time composting worms will find the bin and colonise it (and
dreed rapidly). fill the bin with your waste and keep it topped up -
starting more bins when you run out of space. The advantage of this
method is that the worms will leave the bin when it gets too cold or dry
for them and go into the soil - returning when things return to normal.
The soil around the bin will improve enormously - and you can move the
bin after a while to spread the benefit. After several months you will
need to empty the bin and start again - using the residual worm cast
material in your composts, etc.

FG,
Thanks for the interesting suggestion.

I wondered if I could somehow employ worms to speed up the breakdown of new
composting material, such as grass clods, stable sweepings and grass
clippings (all of which I have a ton of. Using my present system (covering
it with two layers of tarp, it will take about 2 years to convert into
loam. Even if I could add a couple of buckets-full of the stuff to a
wormery and get some useful material from it within a couple of weeks, it
would make a wormery worthwhile. I wonder if your suggested option could be
used for this pourpose.

I gather that the commercially-sold wormeries are designed to produce
liquid fertilizer, and not much else. Is that correct?


I don't know about commercial wormeries, but worms will produce lots of
very rich 'casts' after digesting your kitchen waste. This material will
appear in time at the bottom of your compost bin - and if you keep
adding more material the worms will move up into this. The method I
suggested would work very well with the material you have available -
but do try to provide a good general mix - although nothing much will
happen within a couple of weeks, it will take longer than that.

As someone has also said, you need to make sure that the bins are in
contact with the soil and kept moist (using normal kitchen waste
normally takes care of this, with any excess liquid just draining away
through the holes in the containers). This method works extremely well,
I've been doing it for years with excellent results. You can just leave
the bins winter and summer without having to worry about the bins
freezing, etc, the worms will just move in and out as the conditions
dictate.

After your bins have been in place for a while you will be amazed at the
number of brandling type worms underneath them when you lift them up.

On Thu, 5 Apr 2012 13:58:23 +0100, Janet wrote:

In article , jmsmith2011
says...

On 4 Apr 2012 10:02:18 GMT, "AL_n" wrote:

snip


I gather that the commercially-sold wormeries are designed to produce
liquid fertilizer, and not much else. Is that correct?

Al


No this is no true.

The worms eat the vegetation and produce the "compost".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Worms can eat up to half their own body weight every day and can double their
population every 60-90 days. If you start your wormery with 1 kilo of mature
worms they will consume up to 500g of food waste per day*. After a few months
you should have double your population and you can feed them more. As you
become familiar with your system you will learn their rate of food consumption.
* This is dependant on the time of year, and how long your wormery has been
running

as an approximate guideline a 75 litre wormery should be able to manage 2 - 3
kilos of food per week.

This is dependant on the season and how long your wormery has been running for

http://www.wormcity.co.uk/wormfaq.ht...erywillcompost
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You appear to have confused the amount worms consume, with the amount of
compost worms produce.


Apologies for the confusion - I was basing it on my experience of about ten
years using a wormery.

On Thu, 5 Apr 2012 17:05:02 +0100, Janet wrote:

snip


No stables with horse-manure heaps in the neighbourhood? You should
find some in there.

Janet



You seem to be assuming that everyone lives out in the country with large
gardens.

They don't

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 23:30:48 -0700 (PDT), harry wrote:

snip


Wormeries are a load of bolix.
The reason there are so many about is that there was a national
pyramid selling scam going on a few years back.
Don't waste your time and money.



Yes it is terrible how all of those people who have either bought a cheap one,
made one out of an old dustbin, made one out of scrap wood - got the worms free
from the garden - or paid a £1 from a fishing tackle shop and swear by the
result were all fooled, isn't it?

I assume that you have had a poor experience which has lead you to believe that
they are a total waste of time. You have tried one I assume? What happened?

Oh - by the way - I could not find a single reference to pyramid selling and
wormeries on Google - did you make it up?

In article , jmsmith2011
@hotmail.co.uk says...

On Thu, 5 Apr 2012 13:58:23 +0100, Janet wrote:

In article , jmsmith2011
says...

On 4 Apr 2012 10:02:18 GMT, "AL_n" wrote:

snip


I gather that the commercially-sold wormeries are designed to produce
liquid fertilizer, and not much else. Is that correct?

Al


No this is no true.

The worms eat the vegetation and produce the "compost".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Worms can eat up to half their own body weight every day and can double their
population every 60-90 days. If you start your wormery with 1 kilo of mature
worms they will consume up to 500g of food waste per day*. After a few months
you should have double your population and you can feed them more. As you
become familiar with your system you will learn their rate of food consumption.
* This is dependant on the time of year, and how long your wormery has been
running

as an approximate guideline a 75 litre wormery should be able to manage 2 - 3
kilos of food per week.

This is dependant on the season and how long your wormery has been running for

http://www.wormcity.co.uk/wormfaq.ht...erywillcompost
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You appear to have confused the amount worms consume, with the amount of
compost worms produce.


Apologies for the confusion - I was basing it on my experience of about ten
years using a wormery.

So what volume/weight of compost does your wormery produce in an average
year?
Feel free to express it in barrow loads if you don't know the tonnage :-)

Janet

In article , jmsmith2011
@hotmail.co.uk says...

On Thu, 5 Apr 2012 17:05:02 +0100, Janet wrote:

snip


No stables with horse-manure heaps in the neighbourhood? You should
find some in there.

Janet



You seem to be assuming that everyone lives out in the country with large
gardens.

You seem not to be following the thread.

My advice in this thread is directed to Al's specific circumstance, as
requested by him. IN THIS THREAD, Al said, he has a larger than average
garden and does not throw out much kitchen waste.

From his recent posts I know he lives on the South Coast in a rural area
with a garden big enough to justify a garden shredder.

Why assume that only rural dwellers have access to horse manure? Many
commercial riding schools and liveries serve urban areas.

Janet

"'Mike'" wrote in
:

You don't need to buy any, just put the right materials in a
container and they will find their own way there. It doesn't happen
overnight, though - just be patient, and once they colonise your
containers they will multiply very quickly.


Make sure at least part of your compost bin is on soil and also keep
it wet. Watering can if needed.

Mike


Good idea - thanks. I removed the tarp from my compost heap today and did a
bit of turning and wetting. By all accounts the composting champions seem
to be the ants! Where they have colonised part of the heap, it costists of
the finest loam one could ever wish for. I also saw a big juicy frog and a
lizard! Most of the hoss poo is buried deep, in contact with terra firma,
so hopefully the worms are doing their work down there.

Al

Hi Al,

If you Haven't already solved your issue if you go to our website we have lots of advice about composting and composters etc at Mr Worms South West Wormery on the bottom left hand side you will find the information pages.

I hope that this can help you in some way

Kind regards

Paul
Mr Worms South West Wormery

This might help you decide what type is best for you Mr Worms South West Wormery