I'm hooking into the big outdoors (595m2 section) these holidays and one of the things I'm interested in getting going is a worm farm but;
1/ I don't know why we want/need one
2/ don't know what to do
3/ where to get stuff from &
4/ what are Tiger worms and why they're important and what colour strips do they have

Any advice welcomed.

Do a search - there's a few topics on this in this forum
e.g. http://www.vorb.org.nz/ftopict-47484-worm.html+farm

And google. LOTS of info from NZ sites on there.

I've got a can-o-worms I started in Oct. Going pretty good now.

worm farms are cool, but, they dont like citrus...

my ideal set up would be a Bokashi system, and chooks... you get eggs, they eat everything except banana peels, orange peels and coffee grinds, which go into the bokashi bin... which eventually gets planted in the garden...

Whats wrong with compost?

Bigfoot wrote: Whats wrong with compost?

Hmmm...possibly a good question.
What do worms have over straight compost?

*cheers for the links.

worm farms break it down quicker, and provide you with that lovely juice for indoor plants and all the plants you have in pots on your deck. also, when space is limited, a wormfarm takes up heaps less of it.

Bigfoot wrote: Whats wrong with compost?

Compost needs to be away from the house or it is too wiffy. For townies like me that don't have a large section (townhouse on small section), compost is not practical, and Bokashi isn't etiher. I don't have the room in my garden to dig it all in.

The wormfarm is great. Sure, I can't put meat, citrus, etc in it, but it takes quite a bit of our other waste. So, it helps reduce what we send to landfill. And I get fertiliser from it... wees to water down and pour on my plants, and eventually worm castings (poos!) to put on my garden. The worm farm doesn't create as much solid waste as the Bokashi system would, so I think I will be able to use up the worm castings on my tiny garden.

I went to http://www.earthlydelight.co.nz/ for my worms and a starter kit for the can-o-worms.

I've just had my first batch of worm babies born into the can-o-worms.

Hi Mel.
Thanks. My research is continuing. I'm sorting out a design to make on without having('cause I like making things too) to buy one.

I spent a good hour and a half cutting up and mowing over the 5 +(smaller ones) banana trees I chopped down the other days.
They're all mulched good and proper now
I also dug out and moved our compost bin contents over to where the new one will be which will be closer to where the vege garden is going to go.
I found a lost potatoe peeler and one of the boys toys in the compost!!

I got the wood and built up my second, larger compost bin today and refilled both bins.
Now I just need to make a lid for the big bin and buy some blood & bone and some lime and we're set
I'm even thinking about asking a friend who lives around the road from us if we can come and collect his kitchen waste to get the bins filling up faster.

I've got your bog standard compost (outside, airated, wooden), but adding a kilo of worms to it definitely helped with the mulching factor. It's been running about a year (mostly with kitchen waste), but now that I've got the garden going, along with a lawn out the front, it's staying at a nice level of "almost full"

I reckon that soon enough It'll be ready to start spreading some compost around onto the vege garden, and I'll get a chance to see how prolificly the wormies have been breeding...