Question 1

What to do if there are maggots or insects in my Bokashi Bin.

Accepted Answer

Obviously these must have entered on your food waste in some form so the first step is to add your food waste more regularly to avoid this issue. If they are there the best option is to bury the whole lot in your soil and restart.

Question 2

I Have Ants In The Wormery, What Should I Do?

Accepted Answer

Whilst ants don’t harm the worms as such, they will take the worm eggs—this will obviously affect future generations, so you need to get the ants out.

An effective treatment is Diatomaceous earth (DE) Powder. it’s non-toxic to kids, birds, and pets. And yet it effectively sorts out ants in your worm bin. As they move across the powder, it sticks to their feet and legs only to get into their joints and exoskeleton.

Buy DIATOMACEOUS EARTH here: https://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/products/diatomaceous-earth

If you can find and remove the queen, the rest should follow her. Watering the wormery, to keep it damp, often encourages ants to evacuate the kit.

You can help keep ants out by smearing some Vaseline on the legs of the wormery.

Question 3

What can I do about slugs in my wormery?

Accepted Answer

Slugs can be a challenge in your wormery so good to address them

Food Competition: Slugs do compete with worms for food resources within the wormery. Significant numbers of slugs can reduce the efficiency of your composting process by consuming a large portion of the organic material intended for worms.
Competition for Food: Larger slugs may predate on worm eggs and juveniles, potentially reducing worm populations over time.
Balance: A few slugs might not pose a substantial issue and can contribute to decomposition. However, an overabundance can disrupt the internal ecosystem of your wormery.
Disease and Parasites: Slugs can carry diseases and parasites that may not affect them but could impact worms or the plants where the compost is used.

Action:

It’s a good idea to check your wormery at night, to gauge slug population and activity.
Directly removing slugs can be effective for managing small populations.
Putting the legs in water or using copper tape can prevent slugs from entering the wormery.
Avoiiding excessive moisture can help deter them so adding a layer of cardboard is helpful.

Question 4

What Should I Do If I Have A Tray Full?

Accepted Answer

Once you fill one tray and it looks like worms soon will not have anything to eat, load the next / new tray above the old one. As there are holes in each tray the worms just migrate through these into the tray above. Prepare the new tray in the same way as you did the old tray.

Please note if you are using a moisture mat this needs always to go on top of the freshest waste – so if you are adding a new tray remove the moisture mat put the new tray on top of the waste in the existing tray and add waste into the new tray and the moisture mat on top of the fresh waste.

The worms will go up and down through the holes – you will see evidence of this with tiny specs of dark specs of compost. One thing to note is that sometimes as the worms work through the waste and reduce the volume which then means the compost sinks inbetween the trays meaning it’s more difficult for the worms to work their way up and down so it’s worth checking for gaps every now and again and if there are it’s simple just pop a bit of waste into the gap.

Once you have reached the top of the top tray (which will take some time as the worms reduce the volume on a daily basis) then most of the worms will have left the bottom tray and this compost can be used. Empty it out and then this tray can be used to go on top of the working tray so that the worms continue working their way up and you are rotating the trays.

There is bound to be some worms in the compost that you use – this is fine but if you want them all back in your wormery – just expose the compost to light and skim off the compost. The worms move away from the light and so will form a pile which you can pop back into your worm bin.**

We sell additional trays for urbalive composters here https://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/collections/spares-and-extras

Buy Our Composting Worms
Shop Our Wormery Products
Complete Video Guides To Worm Composting

How can we help?

Most popular

Win With Wiggly

Wiggly Catalogue Request

I Want My Worms

Wiggly Composting Quiz

Vote for your favourite birdfood!

What to do if there are maggots or insects in my Bokashi Bin.

I Have Ants In The Wormery, What Should I Do?

What can I do about slugs in my wormery?

Wiggly Wigglers Satisfaction Survey

What Should I Do If I Have A Tray Full?