Out for lunch with the girls from work we got to talking about food waste and how much food everyone puts out with their weekly rubbish.
I proudly said "we have no food waste, I have worms"
Silence.....akward looks and I clarified
"A worm farm in my garden"
No one wanted to talk about the other type I worms they thought I had and how that would mean there weren't often leftovers, over our lunch.
I have had a worm farm since 2010. Given to me when a friend moved overseas. He has since came back to NZ and not asked for it back, hopefully he doesn't after being reminded by my blog!
It's such a great way to reduce household food waste, the worms (tiger worms, not normal worms) eat almost anything. Avoid meat (maggots), too much Citris (burnies for wormies), too much bread/pasta (mould), chilli/garlic/onion (must taste yuck), avacado skin or stones (hard on worm digestion).
They even eat tea bags. Until I had a veggie garden I used to tip worm wee anywhere to get rid of it as I kept the farm for its effective food waste management, and didn't care about having good soil. Now I am loving this environmentally friendly by-product.
Their wee is magical fertiliser. Worm wees diluted with water (otherwise it can burn roots) makes all plant babies happy and is what I am topping up my veggie garden with.
There are thousands of worms and even if you don't feed them for ages they are almost impossible to kill. Although my sister managed it with Dunedin frosts.
The worm farm has three levels that you rotate if space is needed for more scraps, however our family of 3 plus flatmate struggle to keep one level topped up. Our worms are hungry little buggers.
Not only wees is handy, their castings (poos) is also great for digging into soil.
BEWARE worms can't break down tomato seeds.
This means anywhere you dig in castings will most likely sprout unwanted tomato plants, some people don't put tomatoes into their worm farms because of this, I just pull the tomatoe plants out like weeds. Or I sometimes give them a chance and see how they go. I love the smell of tomato plants so I give them a chance to see/smell that tomato goodness.
Auckland city use to run free information sessions on composting, including worm farming, their website is really helpful.
(Lunch was at Zap, a fav with my work mates)
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