(GENTLE ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC)
If you've ever dreamed of the farm life,
but are a city dweller like me,
don't worry.
I've got some productive friends who will help fulfil your desires.
Red wrigglers, redworms, compost worms, vermiculture -
whatever terms you use,
these lovely little worms are a vital part of any healthy garden.
They turn our scraps and waste into high-quality food for plants
so that we can grow more plants and flowers for ourselves,
giving us garden gold.
There's different ways to harness their good work,
and it all starts by creating a decent set-up.
There's lots of different varieties of manufactured worm farms out there.
This is a rectangular variety with three levels.
You can get circular versions of it.
You can get wheelie bin-like ones.
Alternatively, you can upcycle a couple of polystyrene boxes.
You could even get an old bathtub and build a frame for it.
The main thing from a location point of view is
keep them out of direct sunlight or strong prevailing winds.
The worms we use in farms
are species that live typically in the top layers of the soil
or the leaf litter
and they help to break down organic matter.
Your farm needs to mimic this natural environment.
Your worms need ample moisture and oxygen
because they breathe through their skin,
so this feeding layer - or call it the dining room -
doesn't want to be saturated.
It just needs to have a consistency of, say, a moist sponge.
I'm lucky because I've got a plentiful supply of food scraps.
Yeah, good.
There's my own that I put in my benchtop tidy,
but I also have my own little share-way system
where about 15 houses bring me their food scraps
and they drop it into this bucket
and there's all sorts of different things
that people include in these scraps.
And the big question still remains -
what can and what can't I feed my worms?
Well, the key thing is diversity.
You don't want all of the one same thing
because this is a living, breathing thing.
You don't want it to compact and block out all the air.
I'm always asked, "Can you put citrus in a worm farm?"
The answer is, yes, you can, but not too much,
and the other thing you can do is
actually put your citrus into the freezer
and when it thaws out and goes into the worm farm,
all the cells have been broken by freezing
and, that way, it's easier for the worms to digest it.
Bear in mind that you don't want to overload your worm farm
with too many scraps.
Put enough out and then monitor it
and as you get a feeling for how much and how long it takes
for them to eat what you put out,
you can then add more as your worm numbers increase.
It's important to remember that worms only have small mouths,
so they can get themselves around really big chunks of food.
When you're actually chopping up scraps,
chop them a little bit more
and then that way it'll be easier,
but, most of all, quicker for the worms to digest it.
The other thing to remember is worms don't actually have teeth.
What they do to break food down is grind it through their stomach,
and to help in that grinding process,
a little scoop of garden soil from time to time will add some grit
and that grit helps crush the food
and turn it into castings a lot quicker.
Now, when your worm farm here is full
and the worms have eaten all the scraps,
what you end up with is this,
which is this beautiful rich worm castings,
otherwise known as worm poo,
because they've digested it
and turned it into this fertiliser for your garden.
Now, the simplest method that I find for harvesting the worm castings
is to start to scrape layers off
and give the worms a chance to dive down out of the light,
just like teenagers if you open the curtains in the morning.
They don't want it. They hide under the doona and go deeper and deeper.
So, what I like to do is take off the first couple of centimetres
because in that layer, there's usually eggs and babies,
so I want to save those, so I just scrape that off like so
and I put it aside into a separate container
and I'll put that back in at the end.
Next, I start to scrape down...
..around about 20 millimetres,
and as I scrape, I just keep an eye out
and see whether I'm coming across any worms.
But at this point, I can't see any, which is good.
So, I've got another container here
and I'll just pick that out.
And look - there's one worm.
If you see one, just save it. Put it in there.
That's fine.
And now, normally, I'd wait about 10 minutes
and, that way, the light beaming down on here
is forcing the worms further south.
Then we go again.
Once I reach pretty close to the bottom
or where there's a lot of worms,
I say, "Enough,"
take that, get this, pour that back in
and then you can start feeding this tray again and away you go
to repeat the cycle.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
Whether you use these worm castings around your pot plants,
around your garden plants
or if you turn it into a slurry and a liquid fertiliser,
either way, the benefits of all that hard work by the worms
is going to be appreciated by every single one of your plants.
These gorgeous wriggling red workers are creating garden magic.
Follow a few simple tips and become a wise worm farmer
and keep harvesting that goodness.