It's almost that time of year where we need to pot up our chilli plants into their final pot size
Before sticking them out into the greenhouse and the polytunnel and that means we need a lot of compost
There's one compost in particular that I'm a big fan of and that is vermi compost or worm poop. I
Have quite a few wormeries that I run and they'll be going all year round
I've been running them now for probably two or three years and
They've been doing pretty great. I get quite a lot of compost out of them and
I think it's time to go and check in on them and see how they've done over this winter
So you can see I've actually put some paper in here recently with some apples and stuff like that
Trying to keep them fed through the winter. They don't eat as much as
when they
when they're in the summertime, but
They they are still active during the winter so we can see here. These apples are
Nicely rotting. So that's perfect and the worms will really go to town on that
It's good to break it up a little bit it helps them out. But if we dig a little bit underneath all this
they'll start seeing
these worms
And I see where they all are so here's a whole stack of them
So, let's see there and these guys are just gonna get very active once
When summer comes along once the weather starts warming up
There we can see there
They are looking a little bit lethargic
but
They'll be just fine and they'll start really populating quite rapidly
Once the once the weather warms up, but plenty of great compost in here
All this down here. This is good stuff and well dry it out
We'll get we'll get the worms to move from one side to the other. We'll start piling food up onto the one side alone and
In in about a month's time. We'll see that all the worms will have migrated to where the food is
Normally, I only feed on one side at a time, but during the winter. I just kind of
Just threw food in all over the place. Just make sure that they were
Properly fed, but the worms are doing okay plenty of compost
so
This worm bin or worm sink. Whatever want to call it is doing
quite well
Anyway, I'm going to stop playing around with them now and just let them get back to
Doing what they do, and let's check out the next bin
So this one here is one that I made in a previous video and
See how the loads of paper in there just to soak up any excess moisture that might be in there
So I can see lots of this paper. They do love cardboard. There's a
Bit of a sugary substance that keeps the cardboard all together and the worms just absolutely love it. Of course
They're gonna eat all these apples as well
Well, they don't eat them directly. They eat the enzymes and the bacteria that
breaks down the apples and the fruit and the vegetables and
That's what they actually eating. They're not eating the food itself
That's all I want to see I just want to make sure that we have
Got worms and you can see we got plenty in there
and
Same as the other bin summertime comes along. These guys are just gonna rapidly
Populate this bin once again
Food doesn't break down as quickly in the in the wintertime just because the the enzymes and everything are not as active between that
colder period of the year, but
Summer comes along and these guys will go into overdrive
But there we go we've got
Enough worms in yet to really do some good work in this bin
and again, we've got plenty of
Great compost down at the bottom there that stuff there is just pure gold
So plenty plenty to work with and you really don't need a lot of this. I usually use
About one part this compost to ten parts of traditional compost
so go one last worm bin or worm tower to go have a look at and
Let's go do that now
So this here is my worm tower and I only recently put some food in here probably about a day or two ago and
just
Covered it over but underneath the worms are doing just fine
As you can see down there
And I can see
And see yeah
lots and lots of activity in there
It's an avocado
Wow, that's a serious root from an avocado pit
that's
Pretty incredible, but the worms are having a good old go in there, but check out that
That's impressive
so yeah the worms quite an abundance in here as well and
They love the coffee grounds to see I put coffee grounds in with the actual paper the paper's
biodegradable too and again some more cardboard paper and
some more apples
So I can see
can see plenty plenty worms, and I can also see a few
Eggs in here and I know I'll be seeing a lot more of the eggs
In the next probably two or three weeks. They're gonna really start
reproducing and
Again we're just gonna have a massive abundance of worms
here I'm trying to find...
An egg to show you
So the worms when they reproduce they they lay these little eggs, they look like little shiny yellow lemon shaped
things and
You get about
There we go, there's one
actually two of my finger there, but you get
you get
About I think about five to ten worms from each of these eggs
And I believe they lay or they can lay an egg every two weeks so they can reproduce
Very very quickly. So the way that this worm tower works since it's pretty good idea
I just I think it's just a little bit over-priced for what it is
You basically put a new layer on each time a layer gets full
so if you look underneath there, you can see that's composted down and
Then you just go and stick a new one on top. And when that's all composted down you put another layer on top, but I
Like my other bins actually a little bit more than this. Yeah
This is looking good a little bit drier than the other bin and it's not necessarily a good thing
You wanted to have some moisture because the worms need to have moisture in there
But there's plenty of fresh
Apple and things like that. So if they didn't want to be in the dry area
Then they can always go to where the the Apple is
in case you're wondering the reason I have so many apples is because I pick up any of the apples that the
supermarket's throw away that they say are out of date and
I know the worms love it as long as you balance it out. You don't want just just apples in here
You need to balance it out with cardboard
coffee you just want to make sure that
They're not just having this because they won't last very long. If it's just gonna be a messy pile of Apple in here
So gonna cover this back up let the worms carry on doing their thing breaking that down
I will do another update maybe in about a month's time and
Just if you take note of what we're looking at here, you'll see in a month's time. This will be broken down
Much more than what you see right now
My worms have done a fantastic job over the winter and I have plenty vermicompost more than enough to do what I need
Which is to fill up 100 pots for my hundred chili plants that will be going into the greenhouse and the polytunnel for the rest
Of the season. We'll be doing the potting up in about three weeks time four weeks time
It really depends on when the last frosts will be here. So keep an eye out for for that video and
You'll see
you'll see what I do in terms of the mix that I use with the vermicompost and a few other ingredients as well and
There's a bit of an experiment that I'm gonna be doing this year as well
one of our subscribers has sent me some pretty cool compost that I've never tried before and
I will be comparing it side by side with my vermicompost and we'll see how that goes throughout the season
So I'll tell you a bit more about that in the potting up episode
I hope that videos like this
Around my worms and that sort of thing gives you some inspiration to maybe start your own worm farm
I have got videos that I'll link up above or down in the description
Showing you how to make your own worm farm. You don't have to spend a lot and
I'll do a video in the future as well on how to get worms without having to buy them online because the worms you use
for vermicomposting are a special type of worm - the European Nightcrawler or the Red Wiggler there's a few out there and
If you don't wanna buy them, there are ways to get them without having to do that
Anyway, thank you so much for watching
I hope that you enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you on the next one. Until then - Stay spicy