More about growing vegies on a worm farm

In the last post I outlined how to build a worm farm.

Here you can see one of my recycled planting tubs, which is also a worm farm, now ready for seed planting. It's not a new worm farm, but one that has been growing summer crops, which I removed and replaced with extra mulch (dried clippings and straw).















On pulling the mulch aside, we can see some happy descendants of the original Red Wrigglers with which I started my first worm farm several years ago.

Note the richness of the compost, fertilised with nutritious, pH neutral worm poo. In their travels through the tub, the worms have also been keeping the soil well aerated and the drainage is still working well. If harvested, the drainage water from a worm farm makes excellent natural liquid fertiliser. A great way to re-harvest your kitchen rinse water!

I've gently pulled some trowel-fulls of soil aside to give the worms some extra kitchen scraps (no worms were harmed in the making of this blog!), and then added a layer of seed raising mix over the top, to plant my seeds: some rocket, a few lettuces, (quick crops) and silverbeet (which will be slower and stay in the tub while the quicker crops will be finished and replaced).

Rather than smothering the seeds with mulch, I cover the top of the tub with an old scrap of shadecloth to keep both the worms and the seeds cool, moist and shaded.













After watering daily for a few days with a watering can (no need to even pull the shadecloth aside, just water straight through), some seedlings are already starting to appear (see photo below, but you'll have to look closely!).
When they're big enough, I'll take the shadecloth away, put mulch around them, and take a photo so you can see how they're going.