Thank you to The Children’s Kitchen who kindly donated a Wormcity Wormery to the school.
Firstly, we put the coir blocks in a bucket of water to soak and expand to 3 times its size. Whilst it was rehydrating the children helped to construct the wormery by screwing the different parts together. The children covered one tray with wet paper towels and then added some of the wet coir (it was now like compost). We then very carefully added the worms. These are special composting worms not worms from the garden. After another layer of wet paper towels, the children sprinkled some worm food onto the top. For a few weeks we will have to feed the worms until they have settled into their new home and acclimatised to their surroundings, after which time we will be able to feed them with the fruit/vegetable waste left over from snack.
We have been visiting the worms every day to see if they like their new home. They are quite shy and prefer to hide in the damp and dark. We are all very interested in them.
After a few months the wormery sump will collect any liquid residue (called leachate). As it passes through the wormery it becomes charged with nutrients and will make an excellent plant feed for our garden.
For further information on our wormery: Wormcity Wormery Frequently Asked Questions –
- Worms can eat half their own weight of waste each day.
- Worms don’t have eyes and they are photosensitive (don’t like light).
- Worms can live up to 2 – 3 years.
- Worm have muscles all round their body, and others that run the length of their body. When the circular muscles tighten up, the body becomes thinner and longer this movement squeezes their front end forward the other long muscles squeeze together and help move the rear end of the body towards the front end.
- A worm’s mouth is big enough to grab a leaf and drag it around. Worms do not have teeth.
- Worms do not have lungs but take in oxygen through their skin and it goes straight into their bloodstream.
- A worm is a hermaphrodite (both male and female).
- A worm has an anterior end (head) and a posterior end (tail) and has 5 hearts. If you look closely you will see many rings around the body called segments. Each segment has 4 pairs of hairs protruding from which help the worm to stop.