Here is a worm farm with a difference…. easy to make as we all have pots sitting round the place.
http://hillsandplainsseedsavers.blogspot.com/2008/05/easy-worm-farm.html
looks interseting.
veg gardener said:
looks interseting.
It does doesn’t it?? pretty well a free worm farm….
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
looks interseting.
It does doesn’t it?? pretty well a free worm farm….
yep, ill be making one of these in the garden out the front, may be where all the herbs are going to grow hopefully.
veg gardener said:
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
looks interseting.
It does doesn’t it?? pretty well a free worm farm….
yep, ill be making one of these in the garden out the front, may be where all the herbs are going to grow hopefully.
Hey good idea…….. worms will love you for it;)
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
looks interseting.
It does doesn’t it?? pretty well a free worm farm….
yep, ill be making one of these in the garden out the front, may be where all the herbs are going to grow hopefully.
Hey good idea…….. worms will love you for it;)
yep, do u know if any of the seedsavers have a forums?
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
looks interseting.
It does doesn’t it?? pretty well a free worm farm….
what a terrific idea and recycling those unused pot’s:)
..do I need bigger vege’s ? LOLveg gardener said:
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
looks interseting.
It does doesn’t it?? pretty well a free worm farm….
yep, ill be making one of these in the garden out the front, may be where all the herbs are going to grow hopefully.
Hey good idea…….. worms will love you for it;)
yep, do u know if any of the seedsavers have a forums?
No they don’t but Scarecrow is a member…(pretty sure she is)
Happy Potter said:
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
looks interseting.
It does doesn’t it?? pretty well a free worm farm….
what a terrific idea and recycling those unused pot’s:)
..do I need bigger vege’s ? LOL
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
Lucky1 said:
veg gardener said:
looks interseting.
It does doesn’t it?? pretty well a free worm farm….
yep, ill be making one of these in the garden out the front, may be where all the herbs are going to grow hopefully.
Hey good idea…….. worms will love you for it;)
yep, do u know if any of the seedsavers have a forums?
No they don’t but Scarecrow is a member…(pretty sure she is)
ok, i am trying to join my local seedsavers, they dont reply to there emails or anything. i havent sent them heaps of them.
something like this would go well in the centre of my round “raintank” bed. It is hard to harvest stuff in the centre, but I could use this system to continually enrich the soil in there.
bluegreen said:
something like this would go well in the centre of my round “raintank” bed. It is hard to harvest stuff in the centre, but I could use this system to continually enrich the soil in there.
Good idea Bluegreen…….. say what is growing in the tank at the moment??
Lucky1 said:
say what is growing in the tank at the moment??
green manure. looking very lush too :)
bluegreen said:
Lucky1 said:
say what is growing in the tank at the moment??
green manure. looking very lush too :)
I still have to put mine in….. need to walk to the toyshop and buy some bird netting. Looking at finally regoing the car…first pay in June….. then its not a 3 hour walk there……. then in goes the green manure seeds.
I didn’t want to start a new topic, but the subject should really be “Worm farm – HELP!!!!!”
One of our worm farms at work has (very suddenly) developed an AWFUL smell, and there is a little patch that is CRAWLING with little white maggots.
What do we do??
Apart from this it still looks great – good ratio of castings/food scraps in the top, so food is going off in the farm, stacks of worms on the surface when you open the lid up… however I think some people are still sneaking in really old mouldy food even though we’ve asked everyone not to.
Can we ignore it, or do I need to peg my nose up, scoop out the problem area and chuck it in the bin??
Someone already added dolomite lime a couple of days ago, and we poured a bit of water through to try to dissipate the smell… no good.
Bon…couple of questions for you……
Is there a lot of rotting food in the feed tray????
Those white maggots couple be vinegar fly pupa …..
If you put the lime and and then watered it….water could have washed all the lime out and this would have defeated the purpose of using the lime.
How often do you “fluff” the feed tray up and get air into it???
Lucky1 said:
Bon…couple of questions for you……Is there a lot of rotting food in the feed tray????
Those white maggots couple be vinegar fly pupa …..
If you put the lime and and then watered it….water could have washed all the lime out and this would have defeated the purpose of using the lime.
How often do you “fluff” the feed tray up and get air into it???
Thanks Lucky, I was hoping you’d be around :):)
(By the way, in my first post I meant to say – food ISN’T going off in the feed tray!)
No, we never have any rotting food int he feed tray EXCEPT when some naughty office person puts something in whcih is already off. I haven’t been able to find out who is doing this :(
hmmm.. we don’t really fluff up the tray at all! Just when we put the new scraps in, we dig it in a little and spread it out level. How deep should it be “fluffed”???
I can put some more dolomite in… but should we take out the maggots?
Sorry about your canary :(
No, we never have any rotting food int he feed tray EXCEPT when some naughty office person puts something in whcih is already off. I haven’t been able to find out who is doing this :(
sometimes people can over feed the worms and this can lead to a smelly farm. This is why I asked you that question.
hmmm.. we don’t really fluff up the tray at all! Just when we put the new scraps in, we dig it in a little and spread it out level. How deep should it be “fluffed”???
I have one of those claw hand help tools and each time I feed my farms, I gently turn over the food tray bedding area. This is a great way of getting air into the food and help to break it down and stop it becoming acidic.
I can put some more dolomite in… but should we take out the maggots?
Yep just a handful weekly is enough, sprinkled over their food. You can try adding a piece of bread to the feed area and in a day or so remove it. The maggots should (in theory ) take a shine to the bread.
Thanks about PK too.
Lucky1 said:
No, we never have any rotting food int he feed tray EXCEPT when some naughty office person puts something in whcih is already off. I haven’t been able to find out who is doing this :(sometimes people can over feed the worms and this can lead to a smelly farm. This is why I asked you that question.
hmmm.. we don’t really fluff up the tray at all! Just when we put the new scraps in, we dig it in a little and spread it out level. How deep should it be “fluffed”???
I have one of those claw hand help tools and each time I feed my farms, I gently turn over the food tray bedding area. This is a great way of getting air into the food and help to break it down and stop it becoming acidic.
I can put some more dolomite in… but should we take out the maggots?
Yep just a handful weekly is enough, sprinkled over their food. You can try adding a piece of bread to the feed area and in a day or so remove it. The maggots should (in theory ) take a shine to the bread.
Thanks about PK too.
Thanks!! Yes, we had a big problem with food going rotten, so that was when we started the whip-round for the second farm. Since we put the second farm in, it’s a lot longer between castings harvest, BUT the food doesn’t go mouldy :) I will send out an email later on telling everyone about the maggots, and reminding everyone not to put something in if it’s already going off.
I’ll see if anyone has some bread I can pinch :D
bon008 said:
Lucky1 said:
No, we never have any rotting food int he feed tray EXCEPT when some naughty office person puts something in whcih is already off. I haven’t been able to find out who is doing this :(sometimes people can over feed the worms and this can lead to a smelly farm. This is why I asked you that question.
hmmm.. we don’t really fluff up the tray at all! Just when we put the new scraps in, we dig it in a little and spread it out level. How deep should it be “fluffed”???
I have one of those claw hand help tools and each time I feed my farms, I gently turn over the food tray bedding area. This is a great way of getting air into the food and help to break it down and stop it becoming acidic.
I can put some more dolomite in… but should we take out the maggots?
Yep just a handful weekly is enough, sprinkled over their food. You can try adding a piece of bread to the feed area and in a day or so remove it. The maggots should (in theory ) take a shine to the bread.
Thanks about PK too.
Thanks!! Yes, we had a big problem with food going rotten, so that was when we started the whip-round for the second farm. Since we put the second farm in, it’s a lot longer between castings harvest, BUT the food doesn’t go mouldy :) I will send out an email later on telling everyone about the maggots, and reminding everyone not to put something in if it’s already going off.
I’ll see if anyone has some bread I can pinch :D
Hope I was of some help and the farm improves.
Lucky1 said:
Hope I was of some help and the farm improves.
We’ve just nipped over to the canteen and picked up a bread roll for 60c, cut it in half – soaked it in milk as I remember reading that somewhere – and put the pieces over the area where the maggots are. I guess I’ll go have a look in the afternoon and take them out.
I’m just about to send around an email to everyone asking them not to disturb that farm today, and reminding them not to add mouldy stuff to the farms. Thanks Lucky, I’ll let you know how it goes :)
Bon is there a way the food can be popped into a big bucket with a good tight lid? Then the food can be chopped up with a shovel/spade and added to the farm.
This will monitor what goes into the farm. Plus with the food chopped up, worms will turn the food supply over quicker.
Just a though.
Lucky1 said:
Bon is there a way the food can be popped into a big bucket with a good tight lid? Then the food can be chopped up with a shovel/spade and added to the farm.This will monitor what goes into the farm. Plus with the food chopped up, worms will turn the food supply over quicker.
Just a though.
Yep, we have a container with a lid where the scraps go each day before being chopped up in the afternoon and added to the farms. The problem is, some sneaky so and so has been bypassing the scraps container and sneaking mouldy stuff directly into the farms. Also maybe some of our rostered feeders weren’t aware that mouldy food should be taken out and binned. I’ve just sent my reminder email so hopefully that will take care of the problem.
Our roster system is a bit tricky as generally each of us only sees the farms once a week. We should have really assigned everyone a full week each instead of a day, as this way it’s a bit disjointed and you don’t know what everyone else has been up to. It mostly works well though.
It mostly works well though.
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Congrats on taking the idea of a worm farm in the company from a dream to reality. I do wonder how many companies do this.????
Lucky1 said:
It mostly works well though.
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Congrats on taking the idea of a worm farm in the company from a dream to reality. I do wonder how many companies do this.????
I know of a few… but I think you do need 3 or 4 people who are really dedicated, otherwise the unconcious distate of others and the general concern of management would probably be too hard to overcome. I’ve been surprised at how many people here have really gotten into it – and everyone is now careful not to bin their teabags etc, but probably half of the people aren’t interested to tend to the worms or follow their progress.
Lucky1 said:
It mostly works well though.
—————————————————————-
Congrats on taking the idea of a worm farm in the company from a dream to reality. I do wonder how many companies do this.????
It was considered at work, but they decided it was probably too big a logistical nightmare. Mind you – this is the same company that decided to provide co-mingled recycling facility (that is paper, plastics etc rather than just straight paper). They bought exactly the same bins for the kitchens as the bins that were already in there. <sigh> I keep dumping my tea bags in the wrong bin because I forget to check which is which.
OK, we just went and pulled the bread out of the farm – got most of the maggots.
We gave the top layer a really good stir – I hadn’t realised how compacted and soggy it had become! Added some dolomite and did the same for the other farm to stop it going nasty. Hopefully it’ll look better come Monday…