DIY: worm whare
Home » Magazine » Good, issue 1 » The goods » DIY: worm whareDIY worm whare with "worm lady" Linda Lee
Linda Lee, aka ‘The Tiger Worm Lady’, teaches the art of growing worms and gives sustainability advice to schools and the community. Photographs by Francis van Beek
Sure, you could buy a worm farm. But making your own is easy, and you can recover and re-use materials otherwise destined for landfill in the process. Tyres, old bathtubs, wheelie bins and fish crates make great houses for worms.
Auckland residents can re-invent their blue recycling bins as worm whares when the new recycling wheelie bins are introduced in June. A blue bin fits perfectly into an old dairy crate; slide an icecream container underneath to catch the ‘worm wee’ fertiliser.
What you’ll need:
- 2 or 3 phone books
- 2 tyres
- 1m2–ish corrugated iron or Perspex
- Plastic lid or wooden board
- Brick or other heavy thing
- 1 plastic bag
- Shredded newspaper and cardboard
- Compost worms (tiger, red or blue worms)
- Kitchen scraps
1. Location
Your worm whare needs to be sheltered, out of direct rain and sunlight. In cold climates, it’s best to build your wormerie in a garage or basement. Stack last year’s phone books at one side. Place the corrugated iron or Perspex on top of the phone books, so it slopes.
2. Insulation
Put the first tyre on top of the base. Pack the hollow area in the tyre’s sides with soaked, shredded newspaper and cardboard. This is where the worms will lay their eggs; it also feeds the compost’s micro-citizens: fungi and bacteria that break the scraps down for the worms.
3. Bedding
Cover the area at the bottom of the tyre with 3cm of bedding: use grass clippings, more wet shredded paper, compost and soil. Put your kitchen scraps on top of this bedding — the smaller the pieces, the better.
4. Move in
Now, add your worms—500 grams of tiger worms will eat scraps from a family of four. Worms can be bought online or from Linda Lee herself: phone (09) 275 9991 or (027) 370 9991.
5. Add an extension
Put the second tyre on top; add more tyres as necessary, removing lower tyres when compost is ready. Use a plastic bag to loosely cover the compost; it will capture condensation and keep moisture in. Put on a lid (plastic, wood or even a potted plant) and weigh it down with a brick.
6. Look after your worms
Feed your new pets vegetable and food scraps, wet shredded paper (40% paper to 60% scraps is a good ratio) and garden vegetation. Add water if the paper dries out, and once a month dust with garden lime.
