Wednesday, July 22, 2009

How to make a cheap home made worm bed


I wanted to expand my worm population and needed to find a way to make a cheap worm bed which had the facility to collect the runoff and was going to big enough for my expanding population. I tried to get some ideas from the internet and couldn't really find anything to suit my needs. It needed to be easy to put together too. So....I created my own design. My friend was so impressed she built one, and now my neighbour is showing great interest too.
You will need

4 x Besser bricks
2 x lengths of wood about 2 metres long
A sheet of thick plastic or similar about 70cm x 2 metres
3 x Bread trays
9 Fencing pails or similar treated wood
Enough breathable weed mat to line the bottom and sides.

You will get more of an idea from the photo but basically the two lengths of wood act as supporting beams and just sit on top of the besser bricks. You then place the bread trays upside down on the beams push the beams out as far as the bread tray will allow and then take the bred trays off. Be sure not to let the wood slip from it's position, You will need something to hold it in place while you nail on the plastic sheet. Now you need to make the plastic hang down in the middle to form a trough which slops to one end for the water to run off. Then just sit the trays back on and but them together. You could hold them together with zip ties if you want but they are not really going to move around much. Next you need to build the sides of the bed. Construct like a little fence. Just hammer with nails or screw it to make it nice and strong as this will need to withstand the weight of the bedding material. Make this the same size as the bread trays and just either sit on top or best to attach it somehow. We broke the bread tray a little in each corner and inserted a supporting post. Next, line with weed mat and you are ready to go. (Put a bucket or container at the end to catch the valuable liquid fertilizer run off.) Once finished and loaded with worms (i put 2kg in mine) keep covered with shade cloth and or a tarp to keep off sun and rain.

If any one decides to build one based on my design i would love to know how it went.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks a lot for the article, this guide was extremely useful for me to understand how to make a cheap home made worm bed. Thank you

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