On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 08:42:22 +0000 (UTC), "Franz Heymann"
wrote:

Please comment on the following musings:

Make a wooden frame about 18" square and cover one open side with black
polythene, so that when inverted on the ground, you have a small darkroom.
Lightly till a piece of soil in the garden bed with a handfork. Make it
just the size of the darkroom.
Put about half a pound of compost worms in this space.
Tip today's kitchen waste over them.
Cover with the darkroom to protect the worms from the birds and the sun.
Repeat daily somewhere else.
If you are lucky, you might be able to build up a dense enough worm
population to enable you to cease inoculating the ground with worms after a
time, and to just put out your kitchen scraps out under a dark protective
cover.
Or am I behind the times, as usual?.

If the object to this exercise is to build up a significant population
of 'compost worms' ( Brandling worms ) then I'm not sure how
successful it will be.
Brandling worms thrive in a specific environment ( i.e. plenty on
non-rotted organic material ). Once the rotting down process is
complete they either move on or die.
I currently have two worm compost bins on the go - one is active, and
full of icky vegetable matter and thousands of worm, the other is full
of completed compost with barely a worm in sight.

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 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.

Regards,



--
Stephen Howard - Woodwind repairs & period restorations
www.shwoodwind.co.uk
Emails to: showard{whoisat}shwoodwind{dot}co{dot}uk