The dirt on wonder worms

I am embarking on my new hobby as a small-time worm farmer on our inner-Sydney apartment courtyard. I have bought a tough, opaque $65 plastic worm farm, which stands almost as high as my hips but was lightweight enough to bring home on the bus from the council-run Watershed sustainability shop in Newtown.

Then I spent 20 minutes with my hands in water, breaking up the supplied coir-fibre brick from a Sri Lanka coconut plantation, which will be my new slithery friends' moist bed. Wazza the cartoon worm on the package smiled as I soaked: he looked resplendent in overalls, straw hat and carrying his pitchfork, declaring it's "fun to recycle".

I can withstand my urbane friends' wry reaction to my wriggly visitors given that, of the 234 kilograms of household waste on average each of us throws out a year, almost half is food. Rather than rot away in landfill, much of that food could be converted to fertiliser.

At first, I stack two of the three rectangular black buckets on top of each other - one working tray with a perforated base above, and a collector tray below complete with a tap to deliver, ahem, "worm juice" for the pot plant and apartment common garden.

In six weeks, I'll be adding a second storey with a perforated base and encouraging my worms to move upward, and from the vacated first tray I will collect the worm castings - horticulturist-speak for worm poo, rich in fertilising nutrients.

In the heart of Redfern, the gardener and worm-seller Graeme Endean lifts the lid of one of the nine worm farms in his backyard: beneath a layer of wet newspaper, his worms are munching away on cooked and raw fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grinds and vacuum-cleaner dust.

The slight, white-haired and passionate permaculturist, who once lived on a commune near Wauchope - he left because "I found it a bit hippie-ish" - had even thrown in an organic chicken he had used to make stock. The worms will eat all but the chook's thighbone - though meat, he cautions, is mostly unsuitable for worm farms, given the potential for odour and vermin.

Some say you should avoiding feeding worms acidic fruit and onion, but Endean insists they are not so fussy. I'm inclined to take the word of an ecologically-minded man who only puts out a half-filled small green bin of rubbish to be collected every six to eight weeks.

Some new worm-farm owners have trouble understanding when and how to swap their trays over, so Endean has been drawing a prototype all-in-one rotating worm farm that he hopes he might eventually sell to cafes, which would require only the turn of a lever to change trays.

Worm farms might one day be chi-chi enough to move indoors given Endean's vision of a "funky Japanese chrome design". Until then, the retail plastic worm farm - or home-made contraptions consisting of boxes - are consigned to outdoors or perhaps laundries, given their utilitarian look can be a jarring contrast to slicker, flashier appliances.

I take my 1000 worms home and tip them into my worm farm, and our jack russell-maltese cross, Oscar, looks at me quizzically. I have this sudden visual of coming home from work and finding the farm tipped over and Oscar with worms dangling from his scruffy face. But the worm farm is sturdy.

I start small with my worm farm scraps: chopped banana peel, a camomile tea bag, some strawberry tops and the grease paper insert from an olive oil container.

That night, I cannot resist lifting the lid. There is so much movement at the station. This worm mogul is open for business.

Graeme Endean runs afternoon courses in his backyard on permaculture, waste reduction, reducing food miles to lower your carbon footprint and advanced worm farming. Light organic lunch is served. Inquiries 93180157

Source: www.smh.com.au/news/environment/the-dirt-on-wonder-worms/2008/06/10/1212863646387.html