Worms in the vegie patch- in South Gippsland

Recently a member of the Korumburra Permaculture group showed the group around her property (we'll call her M) with a key focus on worm farming and the methods she uses.

In a beautiful greenhouse, in South Gippsland, is a haven for worms. The best worm restaurant in town! Because M doesn't just feed her worms any old scraps from the kitchen, she's set up an insinkerator that she travelled to Melbourne to buy, in her greenhouse to create a special wet food pulp for her worms, and makes sure to exclude citrus and onion scraps, as worms don't like those, they disturb the PH as they are quite acidic.

M prefers to use a pot that is commonly used for aquatic plants, with larger gaps for the worms to move in and out of the pot and in the surrounding garden bed soil as they please. The pot is buried into the soil. She places a tile on top to keep the moisture in, and to keep it dark.

M had prepared an area of the garden bed for her garlic to be planted into, but first wanted to feed the soil with worm castings from one of her nearby worm farm pots.

M removed about half of the worms and their castings and sprinkled that over the garden bed area, leaving some soil and castings still remaining at the bottom of the pot.

She then covered the relocated worms and castings with straw, to shade them from direct light, to retain moisture and to act as a mulch for her garlic planting.

The remaining worms would now be fed the wet worm food, which includes the mashed food scraps and a bit of carbon, in this case torn up brown paper, you can also use leaves. The tile lid is placed back on top of the worm farm pot after feeding. M feeds the worms a couple time per week, if you do it too often it gets a bit stinky because the worms can't keep up with the volume of food.

M has many of these worm farm pots buried out in her various garden areas too, you could see the tiles dotted amongst trellises and along garden bed borders, it's such a great way to feed different areas of your garden and increase your worms. Because worms, like birds, use mechanical digestion, M sometimes adds a bit of sand to the mix, this is ingested and helps to grind the food.

M started off with regular black plastic worm farm towers, which she still uses, and keeps in a shaded area against a wall, but has progressed to the in ground method as her preference now.

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Feeding the wet food rather than large food scraps helps to reduce the food rotting smell often associated with worm farms and compost bins, there was no smell, just a pleasant earth scent once the coir mat was lifted off the top layer of worms where the food is placed. This mat helps to keep the soil cool and moist, the black plastic can heat up quickly in the sun so shade is vital or the worms will perish. M warns against adding garden soil to these worm bins, as it could bring in predator and pest larvae that the worms can't escape. If you can see lots of tiny white pot worms (Enchytraeidae) in with the "red wrigglers" (Eisenia fetida) compost worms it means the mix is too acidic, try adding a small amount of lime to the mix. The white pot worms are not harmful to the red wrigglers.

Thank you to M and the Korumburra Permaculture group for this tour. We loved learning about how M farms her worms and we wanted to share these excellent tips with our community, so let's all start a worm farm if you haven't already! Ask a friend or local for some worm castings so you can get the worm eggs to start your own colony.