Working with a worm gang
By Ed Mitchell 8th December 2010
Well done to James Machin who has been up to all sorts to do with worms and composting and has found a deal where Initiatives can buy a few worm composting devices and get one free to give away…
He has organised a ‘group purchase’ with a UK manufactured worm compost system with Worm City with which any of you can compost your kitchen waste and start growing your own food – particularly useful for city dwellers. With the group purchase you buy 5 and get one free – which can be used, for example, by groups as prizes in raffles or similar, for fund raising. Contact Ronnie for more information. James has put quite a comprehensive ‘starter pack’ of information relating to the subject of worm composting kitchen waste in video form on his Youtube channel. Here’s a taster:
Here’s the full outline from James:
The question is, how do you get everybody, everywhere, to decide to do something positive to help cool down the Planet?
The first thing is to find something useful that absolutely everybody can actually do, without much effort, and that preferably leaves participants richer. Ok – This is a tall order, but before we look for that something we can all do, lets decide what exactly we want to achieve. Well, one thing that most people don’t know is that almost half the total excess carbon in the atmosphere used to live in the soil, in the form of organic matter. This is how Mother Nature used to give the soil fertility. However, since the so called Green Revolution’ in the 1960’s most of the world’s agricultural land has been fertilised by the addition of petrochemical fertilisers, and most of the carbon (organic material) that used to be in the soil, is now up in the atmosphere, insulating the planet. So, a great thing to do would be to put carbon back into the soil in the form of organic material.
Ok, next we need to find that magical ‘something’ that absolutely everybody can easily do that will put the carbon back in the soil. The logical starting point is to identify some form of carbon that’s readily and freely available to us all, that we can all easily put back into the soil.
What about Kitchen waste?
It’s organic material, we all have it, and kitchen waste normally ends up in some landfill or other, where it converts itself into powerful greenhouse gasses. So, kitchen waste is definitely a suitable starting material, and if we manage to stop the stuff getting to landfill we’ll be ahead of the game right from the start!
Ok, so how can we convert our kitchen waste into the soil fertiliser – easily?
Well, the solution is in fact, incredibly simple – it’s a question of… ‘Working with a Worm Gang’.
The Gang works for you for free 24/7 – and converts all your kitchen waste into what is universally recognised as the very BEST fertiliser in existence.
From there on in you have lots of options. You can put your newly created fertiliser on your garden if you have one, and grow your own food. (Healthy, organic food)
If you don’t have a garden you can take the worm created compost, mix it with some regular soil, and use it on your terrace, or the roof or even window boxes – in fact anywhere with a bit of sunlight.
You might like to start growing something like vegetables, or herbs, spices, or even perhaps medicinal plants. And if you do have absolutely nowhere to grow anything, well why not cooperate with someone local who does have a bit of space, and use your compost there. You might well find yourself eating your own fantastic food in the house of your new friend and co-grower, maybe start a local community of growers.
And if enough of us do get a Worm Gang and do lock carbon back in the soil (ex kitchen waste) we’ll all be reducing our personal carbon footprints, and together, you never know, we might just make the difference that we owe to our kids.