I can't afford to buy a commercial worm farm and am thinking of ideas for found items to make it from. Do you think bathtubs are good? I would like to see photos of peoples interesting wormfarms.
Cosmic, Bathtubs are probably better than anything you can buy. Easy to set up, you can 'work' both ends and they drain beautifully. floot
cosmic, i ahve a pic on our site of one we made out of a 1/2 of a 44 gallon plastic drum. but our worm farm now looks like a garden, as all our composting and worming goes on in the garden right where the end result benefits are needed. len
At the moment we're making an experiment with wooden frames directly built on the future beds or beds that have been used. The frames have the width of the beds. We have to try different heights and if it is better to stack two or three or only one.
I have bathtub, on ground and these plastic drum jobs. The drums are the easist to look after and produce plenty of liquid. The worm juice is put into the complete drum on the left and mixed with seaweed and comfry. The shade cloth wraps around the whole setup to keep it cool. Click to enlarge photo.
Sorry for confusing you. I have a bathtub(raised) and another worm bin on the ground and the one pictured.
Brilliant Floot. I dont know how you picked it but yes it is a a native bee hive. Collected it from a fallen tree. It is working well although a little slow during the cold weather.
I have the containers from my wormfarm sitting on the ground and put my kitchen waste and sand covered in wet newspaper in it slowly but surely it has built high levels of local earthworms and functions well,. basically save money you do not need to buy/use "special worms"
Yeah, the earthworms are a different type of worm to the ones you buy. I was given one of those on ground worm farms but you can't get juice from them.
We finally finished our bath worm farm https://photos.permaculture.org.au/thumbnails.php?album=82 It took two weeks to try and find the bath. We wanted to try and get a giveaway bath as we figure there are heaps of ugly baths laying around in peoples yards so why pay for it. We got the weekend shopper last weekend and saw a giveaway clawfoot bath. Perfect! This would make an attactive worm farm. We went and picked it up and were quite shocked at what good condition the bath was in and still had the clawfoot....as giveaway! We got it home and decided it was too good for a worm farm. As happy as we were with a new bath, we still had no worm farm. We knew of a bath in a property near by so went to see if it was still there. The bath, after two years, had been moved into a fenced area but the owner was there so we asked about it. Apparently someone was meant to be picking it up and to come back later in the week to see if they don't. Alas, they came and took it. Sooo, yesterday we try the weekend shopper again but there were no giveaways. We found one for $5 but a drive which will cost nearly $10 in petrol. After phoncalls to salvage yards we figure driving to the $5 or $15 bath is our only option for getting a bath today. The bath ends up being an avocado green which works for me in the garden. Scott really wanted it to sit on a nice base instead of a pile of bricks. We decide to use our futon base to make the stand. The pictures are the result. We are really proud of our worm hotel. Now we have a plan of setting up the clawfoot in the laundry to have hot, deep baths.
We used some plywood to build our worm bin. Put some 2x4 legs on it to keep it up away from ants (legs in trays of water) and that leaves space to put a bucket under to collect the leachate. On the vermicomposting forum I frequent, they make a point that the liquid that leaches out of the bottom of a worm bin is not really worm tea but simply a sign that the bin may be getting too much liquid. I have not really decided what I think of that comment though. I've heard of worm bins built from old dresser drawers, plastic storage bins, tires, bee hive frames, old trunks, just about anything you can put stuff in. The wood bins will breath more than something like plastic or the bathtub but so long as you keep the bedding fluffed up every so often, it should be great.
Muddy and Cosmic: Thanks for posting the pics! As always, they're worth a thousand words and really give a feel for your work in context! Muddy, I wondered about the "box" mounted under your worm shed...Floot constantly amazes me with his powers of observation and depths of insight! Cosmic, your worm set-up is great....and I can't even see the avocado color of the bathtub! :lol: Finding a free clawfoot tub in good shape was a stroke of luck...those things are very expensive up here. Thanks to all for the info on your worm farms! 9anda1f
Hi there, Would anyone out there either have a good recipe(instructions) for a bath worm farm or be able to point me in the right direction? An old friend of mine gave me one once (thanks Kaz) but, despite all my searching I can't put my fingers on it. It has been about 10 years since I had to part with my old one and seeing as though i've been globe hopping ever since I have well and truely forgotten. We built a worm farm using a bath that someone kindly dumped on our fromt lawn =) Actually, it's almost exactly the same as the one Cosmic posted up. Great minds hey? If anyone could help I'd really appreciate it. Regardeners, Jodi
worms, worm farms and wormeries... Well...here's a link to an articlewith pictures of my mini worm farm, and various other examples in existence. My worms are doing great...but I think you could eliminate the jar, and just put in a little tap in the bottom blue-crate, because it tends to make more juice than the jar can keep up with. Having said that though, my favorite worm farm in the article is the pic I took of Joe and Trish's bathtub worm farm on Rainbow Valley Farms in New Zealand. They've got a classy woven lid on the thing, and have it on a nice stand with nice wood-carvings. If I had Joe's woodworking skills (and tools) I'd make one as close to this as possible. If the highlighted link above doesn't work...here's the whole address... https://permaculturetokyo.blogspot.com/2 ... worms.html
Old fridges and freezers work well too, lying on their backs, once they are degassed and the motors removed makes them lighter to move about and they are insulated. Just need to take the sealing strip off the door to allow some ventilation, and cut a hole in an approriate place for drainage. Just another option. Jackie K