We’ve been considering setting up a worm compost bin for a while (see January to-do) list, but were initially put off by the cost of buying a commercially available product. The bins cost upwards of £40 and the worms cost in the region of £20 for a 1 kg bag.
However, as with most things for the garden, it’s fairly easy to improvize and make your own by using whatever is at hand. Gardening is a great hobby if you’re interested in recycling and re-using items that would otherwise be thrown away, and this approach is certainly being applied to the creation of our worm compost bin. It’s fairly experiemntal at present and has been made out of some old plastic crates that stack on top of each other to create three separate worm chambers. Small holes have been drilled in the bottom of the top two crates to allow for drainage and prevent the worms from drowning. The bottom crate is sealed and will be used to collect the worm fluid that will be diluted and used as a liquid feed.
Up until last week, sourcing the worms was proving to be the most expensive part. We tried the Internet, but 1 kg of brandling worms (the type recommended for worm compost) costs in the region of £25. We tried our local fishing tackle shop to check if they were cheaper, but they were charging £23 for a bag of earth worms. Everything we’ve read indicates that brandling worms are needed for worm compost but, even if earth worms were any use, we’d rather dig them out of the garden than pay £23 per bag.
Luckily, we discoved that brandling worms have colonated our compost heap, so we’ve managed to pull a few dozen to start the bin off. However, we need around 500 worms for it to work efficiently so it’s going to take a while to start working properly. Nevertheless we thought it worth posting a quick update and will get back with more detailed instructions on ‘how to build a worm compost bin’ once the details have been finalised.
