7 August 2008
Latest addition to Team Soup
One of the unforseen consequences of vegetable gardening at home is that we now produce far more material for composting than we used to. Our two beehive composters are full and we are, of course, still shelling peas, topping and tailing carrots and ripping up teabags in the kitchen that also need somewhere to rot down into something more useful.
We have had a wormery for a couple of years now, but last year while we were in the process of giving the garden its big revamp I temporarily closed down the wormery, rehousing the worms in the compost bins. Now is the time to reinstate the wormery and today my new worms arrived.
They’re settling in nicely, but it will be some weeks before they’re up to full composting capacity. I think we might have to get another beehive composter as well at this rate!
Filed under: Hard labour — Clare @ 10:05 am
Found you whilst trolling around blog land!
We really must get a wormery, I have wanted one for ages but just never got round to it. What happens to them in the winter don’t they freeze?
(07.08.08 @ 10:41 am)
Sounds like a good idea. I too produce TONS of material to chuck on the compost heap, but weirdly I get very little compost. Vast quantities of greenstuff rot down to about 0.000001% of their original volume, so it takes me about three seasons to produce a single bin of decent compost. Infuriating.
(07.08.08 @ 11:20 am)
Hi Libby – Welcome to P’Soup – delighted that you found us. The worms can freeze in winter, but we have never had that problem. First of all our garden is very sheltered. Secondly, the worms should be OK if you make sure they have plenty of food (though they will eat much less when it is colder) and levae the worm compost in so they can bed in it. Finally, if there’s a real worry, you can always cover the wormery in bubble wrap to protect it from the worst of the weather. No guarantees, but worth a try. My biggest problem is that I always let them get too wet…
Soilman – I know what you mean about the disappointing amount of resulting compost. I never seem to quite manage to kill off all the weed seeds either!
(07.08.08 @ 2:09 pm)