Worms, Slugs and Unknown Bugs

The wormery was due for emptying today. So I got busy.

First up I took it apart. There are the three trays of compost – ready-to-use, worms in progress :-), and the new scraps layer. In the photo below the finished ready-to-use compost is in the yellow bucket.

Closer look at the end product of the wormery. It’s a little coarser than the shop stuff but it’s home-made and very ecofriendly, so who cares. It does the job of enriching the soil every bit as well.

Here’s the top layer which we’re putting scraps into now.

You can see coffee grounds and filter paper, egg shells, corks, teabags, tisane sachets and some chicken manure above. I may stop putting egg shells in as these take a long time to break down. However, the soil and plants don’t seem to mind them.

Here’s the base of the wormery. It fills up with a very soil-friendly gloopy liquid which you can tap off, dilute with water in a watering can and use to give your plants a treat.

Now onto bad things for plants. Here’s current public enemy number one. This one was in the polytunnel.

And so was this one. Not good.

They’re not being allowed to stay.

We must set up some slug traps as soon as possible to deal with these varmints.

And to finish, a rather nice photo, if I say so myself. Here’s a bee-like bug I spotted at the Pierres Jaumatres this afternoon. More about this trip soon …