Webbcrafts

Sorting the Worms from the Compost

Working Worms

Today I sorted my worms from the compost that they have made for me.

I provided old cardboard in the form of tubes from various sources of paper, and a huge quantity of used tea bags, both conventional black and herbal.

No Worries

Throughout the winter I checked on them occasionally, gave them extra tea bags or a blanket when it really got cold, and they worked. Thanking me by producing the most nutritious compost ever available, and staying with me.

A potted Mahonia fed on worm compost gives me berries for wool dye

Worm Bolt

It is not possible to keep a worm if it doesn’t want to stay, and when there are thousands that don’t want to stay it is indeed a spectacle.

They didn’t Like Scrap Wool

When I first started keeping worms my intention was to have them compost the waste wool that cannot be spun. Duly I gave them the wool as part of their bedding, and they left in huge numbers. I only spotted the flight by accident, and managed to keep a small amount by quickly finding another container and changing their habitat to cardboard. They then chose to stay, and have been with me ever since, which has been eight years now.

Grateful for Worms

I was destined to keep worms from an early age.  On reaching the age of  eight my parents and I holidayed in the country, and I collected an enormous number of worms and put them in a jar, but I didn’t have a lid. On being called to eat I wondered how to stop the worms from crawling away. The solution I felt was to turn the jar upside down then they couldn’t leave me.

On returning to the spot some hours later there wasn’t a worm left, and I was so embarrassed that I didn’t tell my parents what I had done, feeling that I should have known that they would burrow.

These beans are just a few weeks old and budding already

Mutual Admiration

I now know that if you give them what they need, the reward will be well worth the wait.

Free Fertilizer

Who knows if we will be able to rely on manufactured fertilizer always being available? And why not be organically self-sufficient anyway, it saves a great deal of money and the resulting vegetables are sweeter for that.

A luscious pot of Mange Tout Peas