How to Use Worm Towers in Your Garden
I’m rounding off my compost series with one of my favourite composting options - the worm tower!
The worm tower is a fabulous built-in option for those who have raised garden beds. It’s basically a 40-50cm length of wide piping with holes in it that you bury into the ground. You add your composting worms & their bedding directly into the tower and then add food scraps into the tower for them to feed on. As the worms move in and out of the tower (via the holes), they leave their castings directly into your garden bed, whilst also aerating the soil at the same time as they move around your garden bed.
The idea of the worm tower first came from the permaculture world, it’s one of those things permies love - letting nature do its thing without you having to help out all too much. We’ve had two worm towers in our garden for over a year now and they’re doing great without us having to do much. Last month, I added a third worm tower in to another section of our garden so that it too can benefit from the wonders of in-situ vermicomposting.
Worm towers are great for those with raised garden beds and want an easy way of composting food scraps. However, they are quite deep so you’d need to be able to dig them into your garden beds easily.
Whilst some people prefer to DIY their worm towers by cutting up bits of pipe & drilling holes into them, these days, there are plenty of affordable pre-fabricated worm tower options available as well. My first two worm towers were by Greenlife and the most recent one I put into our garden bed is the Tumbleweed Worm Buffet from Bunnings. Both work just the same - if I had to compare, the Greenlife one is a bit longer and thinner whereas the Tumbleweed one is a bit shorter but wider.
To set up a worm tower, all you need is a worm tower, a location, some worm bedding & worms!
First, find a suitable location for your worm tower. This should be somewhere in your garden amongst your plants, so that the worm castings can help feed the immediate garden beds. You can place your worm tower anywhere in your garden bed - whether it be in the centre, or in the corner. The beauty of it is that it’s light and small so you can simply move it around if you need to!
Once the location is established, dig a hole deep enough for the worm tower to fit snuggly so that all the holes are covered by the soil, but the lid sticks up just above soil level.
Add in some bedding for your worms. You can either add a coconut fibre block or layers of wet paper, straw or other carbon materials.
Then add your composting worms! A pack of about 500 worms should be plenty for each worm tower. I used the rest of of my packet to add to the worm population of some of my other garden beds.
Give your worms a few days to settle in and you can start adding your food scraps! Remember, worms don’t enjoy citrus, garlic & onions, but most other fruit and veggie scraps are ok! Do make sure to pop the lid back on each time so you don’t have other wildlife making a mess in your worm tower.
As the worms feed off the decomposing matter, they excrete nutritious castings which feeds the surrounding soil!
I hope you find this post helpful and happy vermicomposting!