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Worm farm setup and management

Cover the top bin with the holes with a wet cardboard sheet no council water( Don't want chemicals) unless it has been in the sun for 72 hours) Rain or borehole water is the best.

Place the worms from the container heaped in the one corner away from the aeration hole.

Cut strips of cardboard 5-10mm and soak till well wet. Squeeze all excess water out and loosen slightly and place next to the worms. This is what we call bedding. Start placing their food next to them. Don’t give them acidic foods i.e. Tomatoes, onions and citrus.

When the farm feels a bit dry moisten with a misting spray. Don’t over wet.

When the bin is a quarter full, take half of the worms with the sub-straight(what they are living in)and do as you did in the top bin. You will now have both bins producing tea and castings.

When your bins are half full, push everything to one side (far from the hole) and build a wall in the middle of the bin with the same bedding you made in the beginning. Cover the 8 exposed holes in the bottom with cardboard and start feeding. This will allow the worms to finish the food and eggs to hatch and migrate to the new food side. After a couple of weeks you will have castings on the full side with very few worms.

When you need to make worm tea take a hand full of castings and place in a ladies stocking. Get a 20 litre bucket and half fill with water. Get a bubbler (like fish tanks have) and place it against one side and hang the stocking in the water over the bubbler (24 hours). This will dissolve the castings into worm tea. The tea should be diluted to the colour of a beer. What this does is kills the bad microbes and only the good microbes will live. You can bottle in a jar/bucket but don’t seal. When you use the tea, just mist spray onto the plants. They will absorb the tea through the underside of the leaves. It will also act as a repellent to a variety of bugs.  When you water, it will wash down into the roots.

The bottom bin with the tap will have what we call leachate a mix of tea and moisture of rotting veggies. I would recommend only for the root system. This can also be aerated.

Egg shells- grind them into a maize meal texture and sprinkle in the farm. It will give them calcium that they need.They also love used coffee grounds.

Dilute the leachate or worm tea to the colour of beer before using particularly the tea.

Rather keep castings than tea as it will last longer in an open bucketwith a damp cloth cover and keep moist.

Don’t let them get hot and the bins must be in full shade.

NB: Ants can be a problem but sprinkle diatomaceous earth around the outside of the farm.  When there is an infestation of fruit flies cover directly inside the bin with a sheet of wet newspaper. This will stop the fruit flies from flying and die. The worms will eat them.