Hello and welcome back. My name is Shaun, also known as ChilliChump.
It's been a little while since i've updated you on my vermicomposting worms and
that's because we've recently moved home. We've been here about three months and it's been
hectically busy, building greenhouses and getting things all ready. But, the vermicomposting worms,
one of the first things I did, is made sure that they had a new home as well. Because
as I'm sure you're aware, vermicompost is possibly one of the best amendments out there,
and with growing my chillies I want to make sure that they have the best chance of success.
So this was always my plan, to make sure that I could create enough vermicompost to actually
manage all my plants. This year alone I have 180 chilli plants, next year there'll be even more.
So I'm going to need a lot of vermicompost. Now i've kind of spoiled my worms a little bit and
I'll show you what I mean in just a second. But we've got to do some maintenance today as well.
It is boiling hot today and with this weather it causes a few issues with the worms. So let's
go take a look at their new home which is just behind me over there, in that shed, and we'll see
what we're going to be doing today to make sure that our worms are nice and happy, and productive.
So this used to be an old wood storage shed and instead of wood we now have our worms all set
up here. So I kind of teased this a little bit in one of my earlier videos when we first moved in.
I was asking what I was going to be doing with these tubs. Now one of them I'm using
to mix up my compost inside my greenhouses, but I bought another three that I'm using
for my vermicompost. Now these are some of the worms that I brought with me, well actually,
all of these are worms that I started back in 2017 I think. It was still from the original batch,
they're doing really well. You can see the worm tower over there is still the exact same one that
we had in the last property and we'll show you what the worms are doing and how they're
progressing, but you can get an idea of just how much vermicompost we're going to be creating here.
These tubs are I believe around 170 liters, so that's a lot of vermicompost that can be created.
As you can see the temperature inside the vermicomposting shed is over 33 degrees celsius
at the moment. Now yesterday, it actually went up to about 45 degrees celsius, which is really not
good. Worms like to have between 15 and 30 degrees celsius to be at their optimum, that's when they
will eat the most, that's when they will reproduce the most, that's when they're at their happiest.
As you can see I'm sweating, I'm uncomfortable. And if I'm uncomfortable then the worms are most
certainly going to be uncomfortable. So there are a few things we can do
and I'm going to show you the trick that I use to help make
sure that my worms are at their most productive and healthiest and happiest.
So worms need moisture. One of the mistakes i've made in previous years is making my worm bins
too moist, and I'm trying to avoid that this year. It will result in a much more fluffy
kind of vermicompost, which we can see here. That is just so much better. We still have some
worms doing their business here. I've actually started moving most of my fresh food that is
for them to start eating, i've started moving that across to the side. So this side can just
basically get itself ready. On this side, this is where the fresh food is coming in and we can
still see I'm using a lot of coffee grounds, and banana peels. They absolutely love banana peels.
But the worms are doing okay. You can see there's quite a few in here still,
they're doing their business. The worms, when it does get hotter, they're just
going to start diving down and they're not going to be processing this food very much.
But if we have a look here we can see there are still loads and loads of worms and I'm really
happy with them. They're just not as active as i'd like them to be because it has been pretty warm.
But like I said the one thing that we can do to improve that
is use some ice. Just put it in the freezer inside little takeaway containers, and we make ourselves
some big blocks of ice. Now I'm just going to put directly on top here I'm going to cover it over
and that will start melting obviously,
and it will cool things down in here. It'll also provide the necessary moisture, because what
we get at the moment is this is drying out very very quickly. So as much as I want to keep this
not as moist as previous years, when it is hot like this you really need to make sure that these
worms don't dry out because they will die. That's probably worse than heat, is lack of moisture.
This here is the newest bin that i've started and we can see obviously it's empty down there. This
actually helps me to keep an eye on how much water there is inside the rest of this. So if we look
across there we can see that i've got most of this piled up to the right now. Over time, obviously,
we'll start putting some food on this side too. And we'll put some more
cardboard down for this as bedding. But we can see that there's no moisture sitting down here
and that's exactly what I want to see. I don't want to see too much leeching. People like to
think that the leeching or leachate that comes out from worms is great. It's not. It's just
an indication that you've got way too much water inside your worm bin. So let's have a look at this
side over here and see how the worms are doing. These are, like I said, it's a fairly new
worm bed over here, but we started with a few. We can see that they are doing quite well,
there's quite a few in there and I can see some eggs and the worms are looking healthy.
Yesterday I stuck my hand in here and it was pretty warm and the ice certainly did help.
I've been doing this once a day for the last week or so because the weather has been just so hot.
So there we go, we're just going to put a little bit less ice because there's not as much going
on over here. Let me put this down here and cover it over and that's going to provide the moisture
as the day heats up. Which I'm guessing is going to be as hot as it was yesterday by probably in
the next three four hours and that ice is going to help just keep these guys a little happier.
We have one more worm bin to have a look at and that's my trusty worm tower. This thing
is always doing well and well, let's have a look underneath first. We can see there...so
one thing I don't like about the worm tower, I can't really manage the moisture as well as
I can in my other open bins, but still get some great compost and will do just fine.
But if we have a look here, again there's going to be lots of activity, lots of worms,
lots of baby worms which I like to see. Yeah and they're looking healthy. You
want to make sure they're active, they're not too lethargic. That one there is not looking
too happy but that one there is nice and firm, should be wriggling a little bit more than that
though. Probably need to put some more cardboard in here to soak up a bit of this moisture
but they're being active so I'm not too worried about that, and lots of eggs. It
is quite moist in there. I'm going to cover this over with some fresh cardboard and that'll soak
up any excess moisture but this is going to help just cool things down inside here.
Now you may be asking why have I got them inside a shed when it gets so hot in there. The thing is,
this is the uk, this weather is not going to last. It'll be like this for maybe a couple of weeks
and if we're lucky maybe a couple of months. But for the majority of the year the temperature is
actually too low. And I'd rather have them a little bit insulated,which they are in there,
which allows them to keep on populating throughout the winter.
If you haven't yet started vermicomposting I really recommend you do it is so rewarding
in many different ways. Not only do I get some fantastic chilli harvests, which allows me to
make some amazing sauces for you guys, but it also is a great way to recycle and do your bit
for the environment. All those amazon boxes, or all the scrap paper that you have lying around,
I shred that. It goes straight into my worm bins, or it goes into my other big compost heap that's
down that side of the field, and you end up with some amazing compost that not only doesn't really
cost you anything, but it's also far better than the stuff that you can buy a lot of the time.
I hate buying compost! I have to buy it in bulk when I'm doing my chillies
and most of the time when I'm buying it in bulk, it is not great quality stuff
I inevitably am disappointed. But by making my own compost, I know exactly what goes in,
I know exactly what I'm going to get out of it, and I just have much better harvests because of
it. So do consider doing it, it's not difficult. The most expensive part is probably getting the
worms in the beginning. I started off with half a pound of worms in 2017, I now have probably about
10 kilograms of worms and i'll have a lot more than that very soon. They reproduce so quickly.
I hope that you enjoyed this update, there will be more vermicompost updates as the year progresses
I'm hoping that those three bins by the end of the year are going to be full and I'd love
to show that to you. Also make sure that you are subscribed because there will be a series
of videos coming next year that I'm going to be comparing various types of compost,
including my vermicompost, and you can see a definitive reason why vermicompost is just
so good and why I keep talking about how amazing it is. So make sure that you are
subscribed and click that bell icon as well so you get alerted when these new videos come out.
Thank you so much for watching I really appreciate your time and
I look forward to seeing you on the next one. Until then Stay Safe and Stay Spicy.