Friday 1 March 2013

New critters on the blog

Welcome to my new follower, Frugal Mammy.

Earlier this week, we took charge of some new critters to our home. Eventually they will live outdoors but as the weather is so cold, it is recommended they stay somewhere indoors for a while. As we don't have a greenhouse or garden shed and the garage is only really big enough for the car, they have been given a temporary des-res in the conservatory!

What are you talking about I hear you say, indoor critters. Well, let me explain. I had read on another blog, The Squirrel Family over here
that they had invested in Wormcity a new style of wormery. I had previously had another make and it had failed. From reading the comprehensive instructions that came with this, I now know why. I have just won £50 on the premium bonds so that, plus a little extra bought us a Wormcity 75.


So let me take you through building it, within one hour from it arriving. 30 minutes of that time is soaking the coir compost brick so had I got myself properly organised, it would have taken around 30 minutes in total.


This is what it came in, other than the tape holding the box together and two small plastic bags inside, everything else is usable. That is a great start by this company in my view.
Once opened and the top of the wormery removed, here is what you get to start it off:

1 coir compost brick to be soaked in 3 litres of warm water for 30 minutes, 1 bag of worm food, 1 x 500g bag of live and wriggly worms (plus babies and a few un-hatched eggs), a tap,two nuts and bolts and an instruction sheet. As we may be moving this around for its first few months, DB put in another 2 nuts and bolts but it doesn't really need it.


I won't discuss the build too much but show pictures as there is a link to their web site here






We used the front of the box to line the first tray (plus damp newspaper) and decided to stand it inside the box once built as sometimes, the worms have wanderlust in the first few days! 

A few days down the line, this hasn't happened. Indeed, when I lifted the lid, cardboard and top layer of newspaper, the are nowhere to be seen. They must have dug down deeply into the compost.  

Our conservatory is west facing and this time of years stays between 8C and 20C, which apparently is within their happy range. We have to leave them for a week then give them another feed of the worm food. After another week, they should be ready to begin feeding on a small amount of chopped kitchen waste. Fingers crossed.

4 comments:

  1. This looks great (and I love the sound of 'Worm city' for some reason it reminded me of Batman and Gotham City....I know ..... I'm sad!!).

    I'll be interested to see how you get on with this, we do it on a huge scale but I think a small wormery would be a handy thing to have near my polytunnel, next time I get one that is. I guess I could just 'kidnap' some of Lovely Hubby's worms to get me started.

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    1. I'll also be interested to see how it goes. It was quite an investment so we are hoping once it gets going we will have some nice worm poo and liquid to give a boost to our plants.

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  2. We have two wormeries. One is 3 trays with a lid that is on legs. The other is in an unwanted black dustbin that I came across and wombled and we drilled holes in it. We've had both for over 10 years and they are very successful. All our little worms provide us with lots of lovely compost to help grow our veg. It is very satisfying to know that so little input from us turns into such a lovely pile of quality compost. Hope your new wormery goes well for you.

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  3. Good luck with your wormery, I'm glad that your worms have settled in so quickly.

    March is generally the month when the worms start to become really active, so it won't take long for your food to break down into vermicompost

    Ronnie - Wormcity :)

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