Worm Farms

Today in Room 8 we made our own mini worm farms!

Materials: 3 ice-cream containers, scissors, a hammer and nail.
What we did:
1. We had to cut a big whole in two of the ice-cream container lids.
2. We punched 4-5 holes in the bottom of two of the ice-cream container bottoms.
3. We have three containers all together: on the top layer we will have a container with a lid and holes in the bottom, on the middle layer we will have a container with holes in the bottom and a lid with hole. On the very bottom we will have a container with no holes in the bottom and hole in the lid. This was a bit tricky to get our heads around!!

So....What will be in each container?
In the top container we will have food scraps.
The middle container is where the worms will start then they will crawl up through the holes to get to the food. Their castings will be left behind in the middle container (and will be used later to fertilise our plants). Liquid will drain from the middle container through the holes at the bottom into the bottom container (this liquid is also a great fertiliser for our plants but is very strong so we need to add water to it).

Now that we have made our worm farms we need to start thinking about exactly what food scraps we can and can not put in it. Worms do not like citrus fruits (oranges, mandarins, lemons) or onions - why do you think this is? Can you think of some food scraps or other things we can put in to feed the worms?

Take a look at this mini video of another room's worm farm. What will we be doing differently with our worm farms?