Introducing the Pres. 'Comer Wormery!

On May 1st, Craig Benton from Composting Ireland, came to our school with a present.

He brought a wormery, which he had made especially for our school to use.

With the wormery, came about 500 worms! Yes, 500 worms!

These worms came all the way from a farm in Co. Donegal.

Craig had told us to have some things prepared before he came. We had gathered up 6 big sacks of leaves, newspapers, some clay from the garden, a bucket of fruit and vegetable peels, and lots of shredded paper.

We were ready!

A small group of dedicated helpers assembled to work.

Firstly, Craig talked to everyone about how important worms are to the environment. The worms will turn the organic waste (banana skins, apple cores etc) into really good quality compost that we can use for our plants in the school garden.

Did you know that worms have FIVE hearts?!

Into a big, big sack, the crew tipped all of the leaves.

They then added lots of the shredded paper to this.

Craig told the helpers to mix these really well. That was a tough job, but everybody made a great effort.

Meanwhile, another group of helpers filled watering cans with water, and poured this into a deep barrel.

Craig then asked the group to add armfuls of the leaf/ shredded paper mixture into the water barrel.

It was good fun to do this! Then Craig used a big pitchfork to mix the wet and dry materials together. Once mixed, he drained it a little, before adding this mix to the wormery.

Now the wormery was filling up with this wet mixture of leaves and paper.

It was beginning to look like a great home for worms!

Craig asked a capable helper to spread a layer of clay over the wet mix. This was layered up - wet leaf mix, then clay, wet leaf mix, then more clay on top.

Craig gave everyone a worm to hold in their hands. They felt slippery and cold. They wriggled and wriggled!

Craig then added the worms to the wormery. We watched them burrow and wriggle into the leaves.

Once the wormery was filled almost to the top, Craig explained about how to add the food scraps, weekly.

The first section was 'fed' in week one, and we will feed the 2nd section next week, and so on.

Once all 4 sections have been 'fed,' we will return to section 1.

Afterwards, Craig placed a layer of newspaper on top of the leaf mix. He then watered the newspaper. We know that if the newspaper is dried out, when we check the wormery, that we need to add water.

A stick was placed over section 1, to let us know which part of the wormery has been 'fed!'

Lastly, Craig closed the wormery, and locked it!

We are collecting scraps for the wormery in a bucket. It has a green lid, you will see it beside the wormery.

A big thank you to Craig for helping us to look after the school's environment and for making such an impressive wormery for our school.

We hope that 6th Class pupils will paint the wormery before they leave for secondary school.