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Compost clinic: When wormeries go wrong

Worms and compost in a happy wormery

Worm composters are very handy things to have around, because they’re great for turning kitchen waste into liquid fertilizer and a small amount of ultra-nutritious compost. Once they’re set up they require very little maintenance – you empty them perhaps twice a year.

However, sometimes things go wrong and some people get very upset when they find out they’ve killed their worms. Until now I could only sympathise – now I can admit that I’ve done it too.

I have two wormeries. My original Can-O-Worms has been in place for years now, and I have had very few problems with it. When I set it up I didn’t put the lid on properly, and the worms tried to escape overnight, but once they settled in they were fine.

My Waste Juggler is a more recent addition (although I’ve still had it for nearly 2 years), passed on from my in-laws after a couple of wormy catastrophes. One set of worms froze when the temperature dropped too low and another drowned when the tap got blocked.

Although worms and other creatures in compost bins outside can take care of themselves (by leaving the bin if they don’t like it!), worms in a wormery are dependent on your care. It’s important to remember that the same things that could kill us can kill them – freezing, drowning, overheating, suffocating and eating the wrong things can all polish them off.

Since I last checked on my worms, the temperature has soared and the worms in the Waste Juggler didn’t survive – I think they suffocated, as that wormery doesn’t have as much ventilation as the Can-O-Worms. When I opened the wormery I was faced by a smelly, slimy and fly-infested mess – the usual result of lots of nitrogen-rich stuff rotting with no air.

That was Monday morning, and as I was waiting for the Radio Oxford reporter to arrive, there wasn’t much I could do. I dug down through the ooze to see whether there was a layer lower down that was better, where the worms were still alive. There wasn’t.

Yesterday morning I had the joyous task of cleaning out the wormery and putting all that ooze in the outside compost bin with a generous helping of shredded paper to introduce some carbon and some air. Then I moved both wormeries into the garage, where they will be cooler for the summer.

As I sorted through the trays on the Can-O-Worms I found one which was also ooze – but the worms had managed to escape into other trays and therefore survived. I put some of the worms into the Waste Juggler to start a new population, and left the rest as undisturbed as possible.

Essentially I now have two smaller worm populations, and will need to be careful not to overfeed them in the next few weeks until they both start to multiply again. If any eggs survived in the ooze then they will hatch in the compost bin outside and live a life of freedom. I owe them that much, after I killed their parents.

Be nice to bees

I spotted a bee on the broad bean flowers yesterday (I think it was a bumblebee, it was pretty big). There’s also quite a lot of fruit flowering at the moment, including the largest tayberry, although the buds haven’t opened on the raspberries. The comfrey and the Welsh onions are both poised to flower, which will be the next course on the bee menu this year.

I haven’t given any real thought yet to providing an all-you-can-eat bee buffet from the first days of spring right through to autumn, but that might be what we all need to do to save the honeybees.

According to a nice article in the Guardian today (“10 Things to do to Help Honeybees”), edible and bee-friendly plants include all of the alliums, the mint family, other flowering herbs and all of the beans except the self-fertile French bean. The problem with the alliums, of course, is that you don’t normally want your onions, garlic and leeks to flower – unless you’re saving your own seed. Which is why the Welsh onion is a good one.

I have to admit that I am perplexed by number 7 on the list: “Remove jars of foreign honey from outside the back door”. While I understand the logic given in the article, I fail to see why anyone would leave jars of honey outside the back door. Is this some time-honoured way of feeding the bees in your garden? Or just sloppy recycling?

I’m going to sow some sunflowers later on, so there’s big blooms for bees in the summer. If you’ve got kids then there’s still time to pick up some free sunflower seeds at your local Wyevale garden centre, but the offer ends this week.

Radio Oxford

Fresh from my Radio Solent recording yesterday (you can use the ‘Listen Again‘ feature to hear the show until Sunday – I’m 40 minutes in) I have just been interviewed by BBC Radio Oxford – who came out to see the chickens and the garden!

That’s going out on tomorrow’s breakfast show, although I don’t know the time slot yet.

Don’t forget that if you’re having trouble tracking down a copy of Growing Vegetables is Fun in your local supermarket (because some have sold out already) then you can still order it online, direct from the publisher or from Amazon, or you can pick up a copy in WHSmith stores and Wyevale Garden Centres.

Green Thumb Sunday: New windowboxes

The winter-flowering violas in the windowboxes at the front of the house have been struggling to cope as the weather has improved. The curly parsley was doing better, but not well. So yesterday I composted the violas, planted the parsley out as edging for one of my raised beds, and replanted the windowboxes with tomatoes (Whippersnapper, I think, but there has been a slight labelling issue) and dwarf French marigolds.

Join Green Thumb Sunday or check out the other participants.

Horse chestnuts

My neighbour’s horse chestnut tree drops conkers into my garden each autumn. In previous years this hasn’t been too much of a problem, but this year I’m weeding horse chestnut seedlings out everywhere. This is partly my fault – I tried composting some. I cannot recommend it, as they stay intact in the compost all winter and then sprout as soon as you use it. And Pete and I had a competition to see who was best at throwing conkers into a bucket further down the garden…. But some of them have just rooted where they fell. Luckily they’re easy enough to spot and pull up at this stage.

Today is World Fair Trade Day, and I’ve been having a quick look around for Fair Trade gardening products, but they’re few and far between. If you want outdoor candle holders or wind chimes then UKOrganics.co.uk can help you out. And the Organic Gardening Catalogue offers a kirpi weeder (I have one, they’re great) that, whilst not certified fair trade, helps to support an organic growing trust in India.

But if you’re a coffee lover then you can simply buy some Fair Trade coffee and use the grounds on the garden when you’ve drunk it!

Radio Solent

I’m being interviewed on Radio Solent on Sunday – on ‘The Good Life’ show with Georgie Windsor – to promote the bookazine.

If you live in Dorset and Hampshire and you’ve got children who love to garden, let me know – I may be able to mention them in the show! Send me an email or leave me a comment with their first names and what they like doing in the garden and which veggies they like to grow and I will mention them if I can.

If you’re outside the Solent area then you’ll be able to listen to the show online if you want to – I’m due on about 12.30, or you can use the Listen Again feature afterwards.

New camera

I loved my old camera, it did everything I wanted it to do, pretty much. But now it doesn’t and I’ve upgraded. I picked up my new toy this morning and have been snapping away in the garden today, learning how to use a camera that doesn’t do everything for you.

Broad bean flowers – stop and sniff, they’re fragrant!

The achocha is getting ready to climb

The nectarine has a good crop

Master Composter debut

I made my debut as a Master Composter yesterday, joining one of my MC colleagues at his work place to help out with a composting awareness stand at lunch time.

Given that his colleagues are mainly scientists, it perhaps wasn’t surprising that most were already aware of the benefits of composting at home. A few had questions and problems to resolve, but nothing out of the ordinary.

As you can see, I had to draw on my considerable artistic talents to describe a Can-O-Worms wormery to a Portuguese lady who was being deterred from composting by a bad back. The advantages of the Can-O-Worms (and other stacking worm composters) is that you manage the wormery by adding and removing trays, so you very rarely have to man-handle the whole thing. This lady was concerned about the tap becoming blocked, which is an occasional hazard with wormeries, but the bottom tray on the Can-O-worms is deep enough that the worms won’t rapidly drown – there’s time enough to find someone to give you a hand if you have trouble rectifying the problem yourself.

Epinard Fraise

One of these days I might just write a comedy detective novel and make Epinard Fraise the hero. I think he’d wilt in the summer heat and have a tendency to bolt at the first sign of trouble!

This morning I have sowed some strawberry spinach and leaf beet seeds – mainly for chicken food. There’s plenty of leaf beet and chard growing in the garden at the moment, and the chickens love it, but it was all sown last year and is likely to run to seed soon.

*And yes, I do know my strawberry spinach seeds are out-of-date.

A day for sunbathing

No doubt at some point I will make more than a passing reference to the fact that it’s Compost Awareness Week, but today I’m simply celebrating the sunshine.

Hen Solo loves sunbathing, perhaps because of her dark feathers. Princess Layer much prefers a luxurious dust bath.

Yesterday was wet in the morning, and sunny in the afternoon, and I brought all of the plants and seedlings I could move outside to catch some rain and some rays.

Growing Challenge: Room mates

When I went outside at 7ish this morning, to let the chickens out and check on things inside the Grow Dome, a heron was on the roof of the house two doors down. It’s a grey morning, it has been raining overnight, but what has tempted him away from the rivers I don’t know.

The 3 remaining calabrese plants are doing well. They have to share the Grow Dome with the tomatoes now, but it’s a nice deep bed.

Green Thumb Sunday: Blossom

(You might also enjoy the nectarine blossom from earlier in the year.)

Join Green Thumb Sunday or check out the other participants.

E for Excellent

A few days ago, easygardener gave me an E for Excellent award, and then even left me a comment so I’d know. But I forgot. 8(

But now I’ve remembered :)

Thanks easygardener!

It’s a bit early in the season to judge which garden bloggers are going to make it through the season, but to pass on the award I’ve chosen 4 bloggers who are always reliable and inspiring:

Daughter of the Soil, with beautiful photos and a passion for heritage peas. Rebsie has already been given the award once, so have a look at who she chose to pass it on to.

Horticultural, home of allotment wisdom.

Mas Du Diable, a long-established blog which is nonetheless new to me and a constant source of kitchen garden envy.

and

Calendula & Concrete, a kindred spirit from across the pond.

Pot washing

I went out into the Grow Dome this afternoon with a tray of seedlings that had overgrown the upstairs windowsill (mostly tomatoes) and badly in need of a drink, and the marigold seedlings I didn’t pot up yesterday.

I planted up one tomato (Gartenperle) and one marigold in the Grow Dome, and the rest are waiting to be planted out in windowboxes in a few weeks.

Having done that, I planted out my lettuce trial seedlings into one of the raised beds (there are only 5 left, 4 of them Brown Goldring).

After that I moved out into the garden to keep an eye on the chickens. There’s finally signs of life from both of the grape vines! And I’ve washed all my rootrainers (well, the ones that aren’t still in use) and left them to dry. The blue plastic crates are from the local farm shop – they give them away free in the same was as the unwanted cardboard boxes, and they’re endlessly useful because they stack.

My marigolds need potting on

The nice thing about sowing seeds into clear plastic containers (this one is a recycled food tray) is that you can see the root development. These marigold seedlings are in definite need of potting on, I should have done it a while ago but I forgot.

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May 14th 2008
7:56 PM GMT

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