Sunday, July 19, 2009
What to use for the bedding
I make the bedding from expanded core peat bricks (excellent moisture retaining spongy fibres), Sugar cane mulch, which is a bit like a bale of dry grass but flatter this just helps to fluff things up a bit, a good helping of beneficial bacteria in the form of homemade compost or finished castings or both, and then a generous amount of horse or cow manure. Mix these all together, no layering. Make it at least 30cm/12inch deep, to help maintain temperature. Don’t pat it down at all, it’s really light and spongy and will hold heaps of oxygen for your worms to breath. I have never used paper or cardboard in the bed but according to the reasearch i have done a small portion of the bedding could be paper, i guess you could substitute sugar cane mulch for paper but i recon i would put it through a shredder first.
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Do you have a picture of the expanded core peat bricks, sounds like the expandable pods I use to start plants from seeds. Don
ReplyDeleteHi Don,
ReplyDeleteYes. I beleive its the exact same stuff on a larger scale. It looks a bit like a house brick to start with you just add 9lt of water and 1 brick expands to about 1 bucket full of peat fibre. Its perfect for worms. I live in Australia and it is readily available in garden centres and hardware stores. Although last week i i cleaned out the entire stock of 2 stores here in Rockhampton. Be careful though there are two types available one with slow release fertiliser added and one without. I always make sure i get the one without for the worms. Its pretty cheap too at $1.75AUD per brick. I do intend to add photos to my posts but for now here is a link to the product i use.
http://www.brunnings.com.au/products/factsheets/easywetta%20CoirPeatBrick.pdf