Vermicomposting – aka: Wormeries are becoming big business, its cheap, eco friendly, educational and it doesnt smell

I am seriously considering buying a wormery to recycle all my kitchen waste into compost, i was considering just a small wormery that would fit in my kitchen, my flatmate isnt too keen on having worms in the flat, but the idea of these little guys breaking down all that waste food and peelings and paper into eco fertiliser…. well it gets me unusually excited (dont ask).

little girl enjoying the wormery

How does it work:

Firstly wormery worms are different from regular earth worms, a compost worm eats and lives on the decaying foods on the surface, whereas a garden worm burrows deep into the ground. The most popular wormery worm is the ‘tiger worm’, that has striped markings (thus the name).

a tiger worm

Wormeries house thousands of these tiger worms along with plant food and organic kitchen waste and utilising the worms unique ability to break down kitchen waste into highly plant nutrious liquid fertiliser.

But isnt it a hassle to keep worms, we dont throw that much edible food away, do we?

About half of the 6.7 million tonnes of food thrown in the bin each year is edible and the rest comprises waste such as peelings and bones.
Food accounts for 19% of domestic waste, cooked food is more likely to be thrown away than raw ingredients and fruit and vegetables are the most common uncooked foods to be discarded.
All this waste then gets taken to landfill sites around the UK which are not only nearly full, but also account for a huge percentage of methane emissions (one of the greenhouse gases) that pollute our atmosphere.

Quote from Wormcity

What you can feed your worms

• You CAN feed your worms
• Paper
• Cardboard
• Fruit and Vegetable peelings
• Citrus fruits
• Pasta and rice
• Coffee grounds and tea bags
• Pet and human hair (urgh)
• Cereals
• Sugar
• Pizza and bread
• Leaves
• Baked beans
• Small amount of dead flowers

What NOT to feed your worms

• Meat and Fish
• Bones
• Garlic / Onion and salt
• Diary products like milk, cheese, butter and eggs
• Insecticides and pesticides
• Solvents
• Curry (spicy foods)
• Lawn cuttings
• Non biodegradable materials like plastic

What kind of wormeries are there?

Wormeries are plastic containers that look a bit like water butts or in some cases boxes. They can be stacked and usually have a tap right at the bottom for releasing the liquid fertiliser.

Some examples of wormeries:

There all all kinds of wormeries in every shape and size, some a tiny buckets, some are massive long containers and some look just like plant pots. I’ll list a number of stockists at the end to this post.

kids wormery

Executive wormery

plant garden wormery

Where can you keep your worms?

Your wormery can be kept outside or inside depending apon the type you have, they apparently ‘do not smell’ so could be kept indoors. You could, if you dont have a garden like me, keep it on the balcony.. it is best to bring it in though in winter or you poor little worms could freeze. I suppose its a bit like that dinosaur that lived under the sink in the Flintstones, you just have a load of living things eating all your rubbish for you, which is kind of cool.

Anyway, i will keep you all posted on the wormery situation and any of you that have a wormery and want to tell us about it, please do. In the meantime here are those wormery stockists:

1. worm city wormeries
   
2. original organics wormeries
3. Wiggly wigglers wormeries (these guys have a superb podcast)
4. recycle works

tiger worms feeding

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• Yard Waste Great Substance For Composting (backyardgardeningtips.com)
• Learn About Compost (backyardgardeningtips.com)
• Composting For House and Apartment Dwellers Alike (ecolocalizer.com)
• Urban Composting Adventures: “Worms Were Trying to Escape” (gothamist.com)
• What You Need to Know About Worm Farming (hbb2obm.com)
• Wasted opportunities: Cutting back the vast tonnage of household food that ends up in landfill (guardian.co.uk)