Kitchen Garden Forum

Help! - Urgently need to redesign my wormery!

I got around to harvesting my first lot of compost this w/e and found that the bottom of my bin - is unsatisfactory! I thought I had no worms left, but they were nearly all in the sump! They seemed to be fine (I read yesterday that Tiger worms are quite able to tolerate the wet for longer) but this set-up makes harvesting much harder: I have a large plastic refuse bin in the garden, it has a slatted wooden board about 6" from the bottom, and a tap just under that (we couldn't put the tap any lower cos of the curve in the bin) but I see now that the worms can drop below the board but they can't get back up!

Anyway, I can't imagine how to change this, I've read several forums on building your own but when I try to find out how to alter mine I just get confused!! I need to do it quickly as the poor worms are living in a large plactic bowl of food and compost, covered at night to prevent them going AWOL!! How should I set up the base above the sump? Or should I give in and buy ready-made, and if so what sort?


Any help greatly appreciated!

Incidentally, the board seems to make a great home for a pot-worm nursery but I think this also tells me that my wormery is too acidic - egg shells next?

Dear Bella, i haven't got a wormery, but could you use a fine netting on top of the slatted wooden board, this would allow the liquid to pass through but should stop the worms from entering the sump.

Maybe something like ground cover fabric or that green fabric that scaffolders use round the scaffold.

Could you not drill some holes in the bottom of the wormery? Some liquid would be lost but at least it shouldn't get too wet. Maybe you should introduce some torn up cardboard, egg boxes etc to keep it a bit drier and if it's too acidic, why not sprinkle on some lime?

We have four dustbins with holes drilled in the bottom and in the sides which we fill with all vegetable bits, greenery from the garden (though no rooted or seeding weeds), cardboard, occasional crumpled up newspapers, thin layers of grass cuttings etc When a bin is completely full, I move on to the next, but in summer the stuff seems to rot down pretty quickly and by autumn we always have a lot of good compost. It's not a real wormery, but appears to act like one, though we don't drain off any liquid.