Saturday Spot: The Worm Farm…

I think the time has come for a new garden project. Our recent visit with Justin Bonello reminded me that ages ago… and I mean ages ago, we were visiting Noordhoek Farm Village and we stumbled upon their worm farm.

And we were intrigued!!! Those worms were making such a noise, we could hear them chomping…

We were shown around: the layers in the box…

The worms…

Not to mention the amazing plants!!!

These well fed plants were wonderful for exploring…

Can say our garden is looking nothing like that this year… while our plants are growing they are really scraggily and could do with some help!!! Also it is time for our small patch of vegi garden to get a whole lot more productive!!! We ate our spinach crop in a couple of sittings and a visitor to the garden ate all our squashes, but I am sure if our plants were well fed we could produce a whole lot more vegetables!!!

After our visit to the worm farm we were so inspired that we went on to visit a friend who have had their own worm farm for the longest time, ever since forever and long before it was fashionable!!! Let’s take a look:

Three black crates, a tap popped into the bottom one to catch the drips…

And lots of holes drilled into the base of the two top trays.

Into the top tray goes your organic kitchen garbage!!! Not too much of the same thing and not too much acidic stuff…

You rotate your top two boxes… The Middle box has older refuse that has been chewed and processed!!!

When your middle box is good and compost-like you remove the compost for your garden and the now empty middle tray becomes the top box.

Here you can see the worms at work…

And here is your bucket of compost.

In the bottom tray the liquid waste gathers from the worms and you dilute that and sprinkle it on your garden… I am all ready to try it!!!

You can get plastic trays and taps at Plastics for Africa. In my efforts to discover more about worm farming I have found this online tutorial, which looks a little higher grade for my young ecologists!!! And the Norrdhoek Worm Farm has a great FAQ on their website, packed with useful tips and information.

Happy Farming!!!