Since abandoning our worm farm a few years ago (the weather was too hot in Brisbane), we decided to try a worm tower. This one is by Birdies Garden Products. The beauty of this method is the temperature is lower as the soil acts as an insulator.
When you first set up the tower, you may like to add a handful of composting worms and some pre-soaked coconut coir as bedding material.
You use it just like a compost bin but you leave out the big bits. We have a container on our bench top where we place some of our fruit and vegetable scraps and this then gets emptied into the worm farm which has a removable lid. Don’t forget worms do not like onions or citrus so keep these things out and put them in your normal compost bin. You can also add leaves, grass clippings, material from your garden, paper, small pieces of cardboard, and hair.
We’ve had no problems with our worm farm, but if it is starting to smell add a handful of lime to neutralise the food scraps.
The tower itself sits in one of our raised vegetable beds and is slightly higher than the soil and edge of the bed. It’s just less than my hand wide with lots of holes at the bottom to allow the composting worms to move freely between the garden bed and the compost. Worm poo (what is left after the worms have digested the material) is a rich source of nutrients and an excellent fertiliser for your vegetable plants.
After the compost has decomposed enough you can top it up or move it to a new location in the vegetable bed to spread the nutrients around. We would recommend moving the worm tower every six months to a new spot. The benefit of placing it in the bed is that the plants are receiving nutrients right at the root zone.
Worm towers are an easy way to keep a worm farm in a hot or cold location.
Thank you to Birdies Garden Products for providing us with the worm tower.
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