Permaculture Worm Farm Pathway

We have a shadehouse in which I raise a few hundred farm trees every year, plus all the vegetable seedlings we need year round to raise in our food garden.

I used to hand water it, but to save watering time, Graeme has set up a sprinkler system for me. Only trouble is, the system also waters the pathway... what a waste! When you are living off record low rainfall collection, this is unacceptable.

Now, I've also been wanting to raise compost worms in a much bigger way but was worried about the amount of water that would use up. Eventually my old brain worked out an ideal Permaculture solution to both dilemmas: why not use the pathway in the shadehouse to run a worm farm?

This was easily achieved and here's how:

The beds in the shadehouse are confined by large bricks. I simply found some single bed frames on the side of the road and lay them along the recessed pathway. The space created under them by the bricks became our worm farm.

I feed the worm farm every few weeks with free horse manure scabbed from local small farmers, (plus masses of feathers from a big chook kill, litter from raising baby chickens, etc) by just tipping it along the pathway and raking it around until it falls underneath. Formerly this stuff had to go into compost as my worm farm was too small to take it all in.

It's working well and I never have to remember to water my worms! Once it gets cranking I will have heaps of beautiful castings to add to my garden and could also run chickens in there to get a free high protein feed now and then :P

Under ideal conditions earthworms reproduce rapidly. Grown on horse manure, one square meter can yield 1.7 kg of earthworm protein a year, enough to exceed the protein needs of 1 hen.