“Worms Are Friendly Gardeners”

We were very lucky today to have Leo from Why Waste come to visit. What was he going to talk about, we wondered?

Leo started off by discussing the carbon cycle while we ate our lunch. He talked about the things plants need to grow, where their food comes from (yes, plants need to eat too), and how that food is produced; and how we need to look after the soil and put nutrients back into it once we’ve grown and harvested from it. Then Leo started talking about WORMS. Some of us were disgusted. Some of us were excited. Some of us were just puzzled as to what could be so interesting about these slimy little creatures!

We soon found out. It turns out that worms are some of the best gardeners nature has ever produced. They can turn old leaves and food scraps into amazing, natural fertiliser, and they do it all for free!

Leo took a look at our school worm farms. They were in a bit of a sorry state, there was not much food and not many worms. He helped us figure out what the problems might be and how we could fix them. We started off by feeding the worms a whole lot of brown stuff – straw, dry leaves, torn up paper and cardboard, which provide carbon. Then a few of our lunch leftovers went in - banana skins and apple cores - for some nitrogen foods. And finally we gave them a drink (not too much though). By this time our bins were looking very different to when we first opened them up.

Now that we’ve learned how and why to look after our worms, we will be keeping a very close eye on them. Hopefully they’ll be feeling much happier and will start reproducing. The more worms we have, the more waste they’ll turn into worm poos. That might sound pretty gross but in fact worm castings are just about the best thing we could put on our gardens to replenish the soil and help our plants grow.

Thank you so much Leo, for sharing your time and your expertise. We really hope you’ll come back again soon.

Some facts we learned about worms today:

– If we put our food scraps into the worm farm instead of throwing them into the rubbish bin, we can get free fertiliser for our gardens AND make less waste to go to the tip.

– There are some food worms don’t like. Citrus and citrus peel, because it’s too acidic for them, and worms do not like acidic conditions. Bread, because it goes mouldy, and just like us, worms don’t like eating mouldy food. 

– We found some pumpkin seeds that had sprouted and started to grow inside the worm farm. We wondered why the worms hadn’t eaten them, and Leo told us it was because worms don’t like eating live things, and seeds and sprouts are alive.

– It’s not just worms who eat the food scraps we put into the worm farm. Microbes, tiny microscopic creatures we can’t even see, help break down the scraps, and the worms eat the microbes as well as the scraps.

– Worms need food, water and oxygen, just like us. But unlike us they prefer to live in the dark.

– Worm poos are called ‘castings’.

– Worms are hermaphrodites - every worm is both male and female.

– The worms in a worm farm are called tiger worms.

– New Zealand has 171 species of native earthworms, and the longest grows up to 1.3 metres long!

- We now look at worms in a completely different light. We’ve learned that far from being scary and disgusting, they are actually friendly, hard working little gardeners, and we owe them a very big thank you.