Up to my armpits in worm compost. Nice!!

Hello Friends,
Made the mistake of watching a snippet of lunchtime news today. Oh my days.....another Windsor baby & all the sycophancy & non-news nonsense that entails. Just need the toadying Nicholas Witchell to turn up outside Kensington Palace........give it 10 seconds......& yes, there he is! Then it's off to Oxford where the Windsors weren't, due to morning sickness, but let's go to Oxford anyway & deliver some more nonsense from there! I nearly choked on a grape when someone else was asked how the new Windsor might tackle being younger sibling to an heir to the throne. One suggestion was that he or she would probably choose to be 'patron of different charities'. Well, big wow & yippee doo! Glad I coughed up the licence fee for that cutting edge piece of insight, I can tell you! Here at the 'People & Cats Republic of Hagstones' we ill-wish no-one for the circumstances of their birth (excepting certain members of the current government, of course) but can the BBC not just make a news announcement about the pregnancy then leave it until there is any actual further real news? So my thoughts today are with all the pregnant women who have had to get up & go into work today despite horrible morning sickness, with those women who were too poorly being sick to make it to work but still had to struggle to get a GP's appointment this week, because they stand virtually zero chance of a home visit, & most of all, why the British public allows itself to be infantilised by this intrusive, sycophantic minutiae. It makes us a laughing stock, this obsession with a feudal system way past its sell-by date. Aaaaagh!! Makes me want to take off in a converted mobile library with the Big Hairy One & Albert Whiskers.

Well, after that (& I honestly only watched about 2 mins), I needed to throw myself into something productive & soul-cleansing, so pitched into sorting out the wormery. Yes, it's full-on glamour 24/7 here! I admit to being a bit of a compost obsessive. We have 4 of the big dalek compost bins, but I also like to use a worm composter because it provides a pretty constant supply (except in the depths of winter) of free liquid plant food, as well as easy to access trays of worm compost which is high quality & great for top-dressing precious plants & shrubs. There are various money-saving methods of building a wormery, but I use the Can o' Worms unit, which I bought from Wiggly Wigglers over a decade ago. I paid around £80 for it then, but have found it's required very little in the way of expenditure since then because free alternatives can be found for quite a few of the recommended maintenance supplies. Our worm composter consists of 3 stacking trays which fit onto a drainage base with a tap for draining off free plant food (often called 'worm tea!). The idea is that you fill the bottom one with kitchen vegetable scraps & the worms start chomping those. When you've filled the first layer, you add the next tier, then the third & by the time you have filled that one, chances are that the worms will have scoffed their way upwards & the bottom tray will contain lovely rich compost for you to scoop out & use.

This is the compost I removed today, from the bottom layer, destined for a climbing hydrangea that looks in need of a bit of TLC.

This is the next layer up. The worms are making great inroads into this, but you can see that there are still scraps to be eaten before it's ready to use......

......and this is the top layer. There's already a big 'advance party' of  Wigglers getting busy in this layer. So, having removed the compost from the bottom layer, that tray fits on top & becomes the 
new top layer, to which I add more kitchen scraps every 2 or 3 days. The idea is to keep tempting the worms upwards so if I know I'm going to start off a new layer, I collect a decent amount of scraps for this purpose. 

You can see they've got all sorts of goodies here: egg-box, a slightly furry slice of marrow, carrot peelings, a teabag, flour bags (a particular favourite!), runner bean trimmings, potato peelings, etc. They also eat cardboard (avoid the laminated type as you end up with stringy plastic film in the compost), small amounts of coffee grounds & newspaper and joy of joys, BANK STATEMENTS! Yes, whoever thought there was an ethical use for those? Just put them through the shredder, layer them into the trays & watch them become food for worms. A certain sense of karma about that, I always think.

The liquid plant food is easily accessible from a tap in the base. It needs draining off every so often & can be kept in a container for a week or two until you need it. A little goes a long way as the recommended dilution rate is 1:10, so that's a lot of watering cans. If you forget to drain it off, particularly if there's been a lot of rain, you risk rather a lot of wiggly drownings, I'm afraid :-(

We don't buy anything to add to our wormery. We used to buy a product called 'worm treat' but didn't really notice any different in their performance. We occasionally bought a bag of lime mix for use if the wormery got too acidic (when it can start attracting little flies) but have found that adding crushed eggshell seems to have a similar effect. We don't buy anything as 'worm bedding'. We did use the coir brick that came with the original kit, but have subsequently used shredded paper or a bit of extra newspaper if we've needed to add more warmth. For moisture mats, which fit on top of the highest tray so prevent the contents drying out, we just use tough cardboard circles cut from old boxes or packaging. That's all they need. So, from everyday waste, we end up with an ongoing supply of free useful stuff for the garden. The original kit did include a starter batch of the red composting worms, but I've never bought any additional supplies. If the population drops a bit low (in an extremely cold winter, for example), I just replenish them with new ones from our ordinary compost bins. I like to think it boosts the wiggly gene pool a bit too! The only thing I would add is that you do need to be non-squeamish about handling them. If you are even slightly phobic about worms or still have nightmares about some vile lad at school who used to stuff them down the back of your jumper, then this would definitely not be your best choice of project. I'm fine with them.......it's the sight of an 'eight-leg' that sends me screaming in the other direction!

Forgot to add August's additional garden wildlife in my last post. Only a few different species from July: Blue-tit, great-tit, red admiral butterfly, juvenile robin, large bluey-green dragon-fly. 

Hope this wasn't too 'wormy' for anyone, & that you're all out enjoying this beautiful late summer sunshine.

C x