This DIY experiment will show you how to make a worm farm and give an understanding of the decomposition of food waste. Making your own worm farm is a great project for the classroom or to make at home with your kids.
This project is suitable for any year level to develop good recycling attitudes and understandings of how helpful worms can be in processing our food waste. It is a simple, cheap, kid-friendly, non-smelly, curriculum-integrated, money-saving worm farming project–the ultimate in recycling. Opportunities are provided for research into worm life cycles as well as their place in the food chain.
Making your worm farm
There are many ways to make worm farms and many commercial systems available. We created a kitchen scraps monster based on the 2-bucket worm composter. This requires materials and processes that are easily accessible.
You will need
- 2 (or more) x 20-litre buckets (these can be old buckets you have at home – but ensure they are clean)
- 1 x bucket lid (you can use the original lid, or make a simple wooden top for easy handling)
- Mesh or shade cloth
- A drill
- 10mm spade bit and 5mm drill bit· Waterproof glue (or glue gun)
- Fine sandpaper
- Scissors
- Water
- Spray-paint, craft paint, googly eyes, pipe-cleaners and polystyrene balls
- Newspaper
- Kitchen scraps
- Red Wiggler Earthworms (approx. 100 worms)
Method
1. Using the spade bit, drill holes around the outer top part of the bucket.
2. Use the sandpaper to roughen up the surface around the holes in the inside of the lid.
3. Cut 8 squares of the screen or shade cloth (large enough to cover the holes – roughly 4 x cm).
4. Put glue around each hole and stick your squares or strip of the mesh over each hole – ensuring they are completely stuck down. Set aside to dry.
5. Switch drill bits and then drill a series of holes in the bottom of 1 bucket.
6. Spray the buckets on the outside with a plastic adhesive spray-paint.
7. Have fun with your scraps monster and decorate it with googly eyes and pipe cleaner hair and painted polystyrene balls.
8. Place this bucket inside the 2nd bucket.
9. Place the worms in the top bucket – if you have bought your worms from a worm farm supplier, they will come in a layer of peat moss – add all of this into the bucket.
10. Add a layer of kitchen scraps.
11. Add a layer of wet newspaper, and top with more vegetable matter.
12. Top with more wet paper, or cardboard (torn up pizza boxes work well).
13. Add more kitchen scraps each day and always top with a layer of wet paper or cardboard.
14. Cover with a lid and leave in a cool, shaded area, so that it doesn’t dry out.
15. Once the food waste reaches the level in the bucket where you can stack another bucket on top of the worms, without squashing them, you can add another bucket – with holes drilled into the bottom. Just be careful not to add more than ±20 cm of kitchen scraps, because the worms can get crushed under the weight.
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