Have you seen our terracotta worm composters? They are made by our friends in Tunisia who make our beautifully shaped ollas.
We love simple but effective solutions, and this is a brilliant way of dealing with kitchen waste. I tried a worm farm once but it took quite a bit of attention and although I love what worms do, and totally respect them and their wormy work, I have to admit that I don’t like being too up close and personal with them.
With the terracotta worm composter, you don’t need to get worms through the post or make sure they have enough bran or syphon off the “tea” or anything. This eco-friendly composting solution is a worm bin alternative that lets the worms do the work. Just bury the terracotta composter, put your kitchen scraps in and leave them. The worms in the soil will sniff them out, worm their way in through the wormholes, devour the scraps – technically they devour the bacteria that devours the scraps – and off they go back out into the soil again. They aerate the soil and they will do little worm poos as they go. So they recycle the food waste into natural fertiliser AND distribute it around the garden.
Why not just chuck the food waste in the bin? You probably knew this already, but it’s good to remind other people who don’t know this yet - when food rots down in the household waste in the absence of oxygen it produces methane. Methane is a significantly more potent gas than carbon dioxide, by a factor of 80 on a 20-year timescale. While methane only lasts about 12 years in the atmosphere compared to centuries for carbon dioxide, it traps roughly 28–30 times more heat over 100 years. By using vermicomposting for your food scrap composting, you're actively contributing to methane reduction.
So the worm composter is good for your garden and good for your environment. This sustainable gardening approach provides excellent soil enrichment It has a volume of 14 litres which isn’t huge for a composter but it’s surprising how quickly that amount of waste disappears. A lot of customers have a couple of composters on the go at a time. To be honest, anything bigger than 14 litres would be a bit of a job to bury. Remember, this is different from composters like our slatted plaswood composter, which relies on a mix of waste to rot down over a period of time. This worm composter is for the worms and bacteria to do their thing and disseminate it around the garden. Over time the composter will fill up with worm casts which is a lovely rich soil that you can scoop out and use in your plant pots.
We pack this in A LOT of wool to protect it in transit. You can use this wool as mulch, as stuffing for cushions, put it in bird feeders for the birds to peck out bits to line their nests with, use it for craft projects...there are a multitude of uses!
The worms are less active in the winter but now that the days are getting longer and the soil warms up a bit, they will be raring to get back to business.
