Wormeries

Am interested in buying a Wormery and would appreciate any thoughts and tips. Thanks

I haven't got any advice but will be interested in any replies as I'd love to have one

I have had two or three, they are so simple to use. You can sometimes get second hand ones. Easy to set up. There are some things that cannot go in, potato peelings for instance. I think bigger is better as the smaller ones can get too hot/cold. I have given up now as the trays are heavy and need swapping occasionally, but then I am seventy six. Happy to answer any questions directly if that helps.

We’ve had one for years and it’s still going strong. It’s great for getting rid of peelings, banana skins, most kinds of food apart from meat and fish which could attract vermin. The worms don’t like onions and citrus fruit, apparently, but will eat them if there is nothing else. Also they don’t eat seeds, which makes sense or we’d never get anything to grow in our gardens. Having said that, the worms in wormeries are not the same kind as garden worms. You get a starter pack of them snd then they keep the population growing in the usual way. You get compost in relatively small amounts and need patience if you want to get the worms out of it and back into the wormery. You also get liquid from the wormery and it is a good plant food to add to watering cans or for house plants (needs to be diluted).

Go for it Sunny82z! It’s not difficult and it’s a good way of using some food waste.

We put potato peelings in ours, midgey. I didn’t know that you shouldn’t, but I suspect that different makers give different instructions. I also suspect that the worms are pretty tough!

Don’t get the liquid on good clothes, as it stains!!

Bit of a mixed picture, I would like to replace my council Brown bin as the badger keeps attacking it and I thought I would have some good stuff for the garden??

It might depend on where you live. I had a wormery in NE Scotland but it never really got established. I think the climate was too cold, which was the same for the food digesters the council wanted people to use. Those are half-buried in the garden but people were finding the food in them was still completely recognisable even after 18mths.

Don’t know which part of NE Scotland you were in, SueDonim (love your name!), but we are in N E Scotland and have a perfectly well-functioning wormery and a Green Cone food digester that does the job of getting rid of meat, fish and anything else which is unsuitable for the wormery or the compost heap. Our brown bin is therefore available for the kinds of weeds which we don’t want on the compost heap.

Things may rot down more slowly here than in S E England, but everything goes in the end.

Oh, interesting, Wheniwasyourage (love your name, too!). I’ve just remembered that one reason the digesters wouldn’t work is that the top later of soil was so shallow in our area, you couldn’t get it sunk low enough.

I was quite sad that the wormery didn’t get going, as I felt like they were my little friends!

I've had a wormery for a long time and I really love it! I'm in the southwest of the UK and in the summer keep it cool and warm enough in winter just by layers of cardboard on it. It's much quicker producing compost than a compost bin, and it's very rich. The liquid is excellent as fertiliser diluted. The only veg you shouldn't put in are onion and citrus; I haven't had any problems with potato peel. Also no meat etc., but cooked veg is fine. Give it a go!

Thank you all so much for your comments. Somebody did tell me that the worms do like to escape?

Don’t think so - they can’t get out round the lid or the tray edges of ours anyway.