Page Index
- DIY Worm Farming (Vermiculture)
- Setting Up a Worm Farm with Your Children
- How to Get Started with Vermiculture
- Building Your Own Worm Farm
- Worm Dictionary
DIY Worm Farming (Vermiculture)
Vermiculture need not be carried out on a commercial scale, but as a very useful and interesting home project that can involve the whole family. For the moment, let us confine ourselves to investigating the benefits of DIY vermicomposting as a special hobby or even as a small scale commercial enterprise carried out from one’s own home and postpone any discussion of large scale commercial vermiculture farming until later. Don’t worry, your venture into worm farming is not going to be like opening your home to some sort of smelly Frankenstein monster. Worm composting is a very wholesome process; handled correctly, it does not create bad odours and moreover it gets rid of nasty wastes without adding to the burden of global warming.
An inexpensive DIY worm farm.
Setting Up a Worm Farm with Your Children
As we have already said, vermiculture can involve the whole family – the educational benefit of sharing a worm farm with young children is obvious, especially if combined with an organic vegetable garden. High yields of healthy fresh vegetables and fruit can be produced in a very small garden from the rich fertilizer produced by your worms. We all know that it’s a battle to get kids to eat healthy vegetables, but children who grow their own crops will always delight in eating them. What an investment in their future health! But equally importantly – worm farming itself is great fun!
How to Get Started with Vermiculture
As a potential worm farmer your first choice would be to decide, whether to make your own worm farm or to simply buy one of many convenient systems, readily available on the market. Ready made worm composters are usually supplied together with a starter pack of worms and also with operating instructions. These fancy “designer” composting kits can be obtained directly from manufacturers, ordered through the internet, or found at many garden centers, plant nurseries or similar outlets. However, although convenient and very user friendly – as specially created products, they are certainly not all that cheap .
Building Your Own Worm Farm
A more interesting and cost effective alternative would be to consider the challenge of building your own worm farm from scratch. Making a DIY worm composter (often miscalled an earthworm farm) is not rocket science and it is quite easy to assemble one to fit your own requirements. Your worm farm could be constructed from timber, brick or metal, but it is far easier these days, to adapt general purpose plastic bins from the local supermarket or hardware store for this purpose. Other web pages on this site give step by step instructions for making both a simple single bin composter or the neat three bin worm farm shown above. It is not at all difficult and making your own worm farm this way would save you money that could be used to buy plants or seeds for your garden!.
