How To Make Worm Compost

When it comes to making compost your self then there is nothing better to help things along than using worms to assist with the composting process. However be aware that you should not just use any old worms that you come across. This is because earthworms just tunnel through the soil and do not eat any of the waste in it.

Where as what you really want is composting worms, as composting worms eat their way through organic matter and rapidly help turn it in to great compost.

They are some times termed “Red wigglers”, as the name suggests they are redder than normal earthworms and wriggle around more! They are ideally suited to helping breakdown organic kitchen waste such as old potatoes trimmings, leftover salad, etc. Basically they will eat any household waste that will decompose. You should not however put any animal waste e.g. leftover red meat, fish or chicken in the composter as they will not eat it, and it will simply result in a compost bin full of maggots, making it unusable.

This means that composting worms are ideally suited to being placed in a small household organic waste container as opposed to your main compost bin.

As food waste has a lot of water in it, you will find that as the worms break it down, you will end up with a bit of dark looking liquid in the bottom of the composter. This should not be poured away as it is packed full of nutrients that have drained down into it, it can be siphoned off in to a plastic bottle and used as a liquid fertilizer. So by having a worm composter you win on two counts!

However whilst a plastic container is ideal for putting your organic waste in to, you have to be aware that just like us composting worms need to breath and so you will need to put some air holes in the top of the container. Not so big as to let the worms out, and rain in, but big enough for them to breathe. As well as this just like us they can drown, and so you will need to regularly empty the liquid mentioned above in to a bottle. You can buy composting worms on the Internet, just remember to remove them from their postal packaging and put them in your composter as soon as possible. Or you could buy a worm composting kit that complete with worms and a compost bin.

By Richard Allen -

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