My Worm Farm Is Not Producing Worm Tea

A lack of worm tea/liquid can sometimes indicate a problem. It is important to take a closer look and figure out what is going on.

Before we start, I want you to think of the ground beneath our feet. The earth in which earthworms are naturally found. It’s dark and it’s moist.

Moisture levels are very important when it comes to maintaining a healthy worm farm. If left untreated, a dry worm farm can eventually send your worm friends to wormie heaven. Earthworms breathe through their skin and when their skin dries out, they die.

In saying that, it is important to remember, worm tea takes a little while to start flowing and the amount of worm tea produced by a worm farm does vary from farm to farm.

A lack of worm tea is not necessarily always a bad thing. Sometimes, a lack of worm tea can simply mean that your worms are working in a well-balanced environment that is not too wet or too dry. This means that no “excess” moisture is seeping down into your bottom layer, but the worms are still happy.

It is important to note, that not only is a dry worm farm detrimental to your worm’s skin, but a dry worm farm may also attract infestations of other bugs such as ants and springtails. If you are seeing ants or teeny tiny white bugs in your worm farm and you are not producing much worm tea, this is a sure sign that your worm farm is too dry.

In my experience, heat and a lack of moisture, are the top 2 worm killers!

It’s All About Balance

Maintaining a healthy worm farm almost always comes down to balance. The balance between wet items and dry, moisture-absorbing items.

Examples of “wet” items (Nitrogen rich)

Fruit and veggie scraps
Grass clippings
Spent flowers
Leafy plant trimmings
Foliage of weeds
Coffee Grounds
Tea leaves

Examples of “dry” items (Carbon rich)

Paper
Cardboard
Wood shavings/sawdust
Dried leaves
Cotton fabric (it’s hilarious to pop a pair of jocks in the worm farm and let the children see them eventually disappear)
Newspaper

How to check moisture levels in a worm farm

Find the bravest member of your team or family, who doesn’t mind playing with some good old worm poo. That might be you!!

Next, pick up some worm castings or soil and squeeze it together. Does it clump together? When squeezed, does a little bit of moisture ooze out? If not, this means your worm farm is too dry.

Quick Fixes

Check for a blockage or draining issue. The first step I recommend, when working with my clients, is to check your worm farm for any blockages. 1 layer at a time. Scoop the worm castings to the side until you see the bottom of that specific layer. Is the liquid draining through well or are there pools of liquid anywhere? Is the worm tea able to pass through all the layers relatively freely? Remove any clumps of food, avocado pips, blobs of paper etc. that may be causing the blockage.
Once you have checked for blockages, give your worm farm a good water (about 2 litres). Make sure to keep the tap open so that you can see if the worm tea is slowly flowing through. If your worm farm contains a liquid tray, or a “toilet” as the kids like to call it, excess liquid will drain through. There is no need to worry about the water getting logged or drowning your worms. If after you’ve added a big splash of water to your worm farm, and you’re still not seeing worm tea, you may need to add a little more. It is likely that the moisture-absorbing items in your worm farm absorbed all the water that you just added in.
Buy a worm blanket. A worm blanket is usually a piece of hessian fabric that is placed over the food scraps in your top working tray. As mentioned previously, worms love dark, moist environments. A worm blanket helps to lock in that precious moisture. I like to tell my clients that their worm blanket should always feel like a wrung out tea towel. It’s a great way to check moisture levels quickly and easily.
Add some “wet” items to your worm farm. Fruit and veg waste is almost 90% liquid. Your worm farm may need a good old veg boost! As your worms break this food down , by eating it and pooping it out, the liquid will eventually percolate through the worm poo and end up in bottom layer.
Find Shade. Worms enjoy living at temperatures of about 15 to 25 degrees Celsius. If the worm farm heats up to 30 degrees or over, they will try to escape and end up in the toilet (bottom layer) or even start to die.

If you are looking for resources to support learning about Earthworms, my resource packs are fantastic!

Spring Planting Guide for Educators

Yay! We say “see ya” to chilly and windy winter days and “hello” to the sunny and warm days of Spring. Now is a wonderful time to get children out in the garden to start preparing for the arrival of this wonderful new season. Often our children, staff and families are disconnected to our seasons and sometimes forget to celebrate and focus on the arrival of a new season and all the magic it comes with.

So how can we get ready for Spring?

Each garden task we need to undertake while preparing for Spring gardens can be made into wonderful learning activities and sessions.

Prepare Your Soil

Throughout Winter, your plants have been “feeding” on all the abundant nutrients in your soil. Now is the time to replenish your soil and give it a bit of a freshen up.

Prepare your soil by digging in compost and animal poop (manure). These items will ensure your new plants have the nutrients they need throughout Spring. Also, make sure the soil is well watered. Applying a 5cm layer of mulch over your new soil is also a great idea. Mulch stops weeds, retains water and keeps your plant roots cool as the weather warms up. Try this DIY Mulch recipe with your children. This recipe uses items that can often be found around your centre and ticks that important “sustainability” box.

What To Plant with Children

When it comes to gardening with children, you want to plant things that grow relatively quickly and things that are quite interesting and colorful. For example Rainbow Silverbeet grows quickly, is oh so colorful and can be continuously picked. On the other hand, onions take up to 8 months to grow and most of the growing happens underground (not that exciting for little green thumbs). Planting the “right” items in your gardens is the key to an interesting and effective gardening program.

Below are some great ideas for small and large spaces:

Small Spaces

Fruits and Veggies

Strawberries
Rocket
Silverbeet ( these come in wonderful colors)
Lettuce
Spring Onion
Capsicum
Eggplant
Radishes

Herbs

Chives
Thyme
Sweet Basil ( Great for seed saving activities – Google “Seed Saving Basil”)
Dill
Parsley

Large Spaces

Fruits and Veggies

Passionfruit
Sweet Corn ( be sure to plant in “blocks” )
Zucchini
Pumpkin
Cucumber
Artichoke

Herbs

Mint (when planted in the ground this creeps and ends up everywhere)
Rosemary

Check our these packs to support all of the wonderful learning that is taking place in your garden.

In The Veggie Patch

Large Spring Pack

Critically Reflecting On Your Sustainable Practices

The tangible components of sustainability, such as recycling, setting up compost bins and growing veggies, are already readily adopted by many Educators. But how can these sustainable practices be even more deeply and authentically embedded into our learning environments, routines, and programs? And how can we ensure these are not just ‘ticking a box’ but truly adding meaning and value for the children in our care. The answer is through regular and ongoing critical reflection.

Critical reflection can be used to help facilitate transformative change in early learning settings. It guides decision making, raises awareness of outside factors and prejudice, and creates objectives for ongoing development as Educators and as a service.

So where do we start?

Undertaking a “Nutmegz Sustainability Audit” or completing a KWHL Chart can be a fantastic starting point when reflecting on your sustainability practices. You can download our Nutmegz KWKL template for free. From here you can identify your strengths and weaknesses, set goals as a service, and add to your Quality Improvement Plan (QIP).

Where to next?

Not only is it important to reflect on your practice daily, getting together as a team to critically reflect is a valuable opportunity to improve your team’s practice.

The following questions can be used to guide individual or team critical reflections within Quality Area 3:

How do our current practices fit with our new understanding of sustainability in our curriculum?
How can we foster each child’s capacity to understand, care for and respect their natural environment?
How your does our own understanding of environmental responsibility influence our sustainable practice?
Are the sustainable routines at our service embedded authentically and are they meaningful to the children?
How can we embed culture and celebrate important cultural days sustainably?
In what ways do Educators role model caring for the environment for the children?
How can we access additional information, professional development, and strategies to support children in taking an active role in caring for the environment and contributing to their sustainable future?
How could we involve families and our local community on our sustainability journey?

As skilled Educators we view children as capable and competent. Therefore, it is so important to document the children’s voice and ideas when it comes to sustainability too. In older age groups this can look like focus questions at mat times, small group forums, collaborative floor books and long-term investigations. With our littlest ones it can be a little more challenging but through careful observations we can take jottings of their curiosities and interests too as we aim to notice the ways they want to be included in the sustainable practices at your centre.