How To Make A Wormery!

Some children love bugs and worms, but others are scared or nervous around them - this is a great activity to enthrall those who are interested, and gently introduce worms to those who need some encouragement!  By setting up a wormery, you get to see what happens underground.  It's clean for us, safe for the worms and very interesting for the children.

You need to find the following:

• one large plastic drinks bottle - the bigger the better, the  2 litre ones work well
• one smaller plastic bottl
• water
• some clean sand (horticultural sand not the coarse DIY sand)
• some peat free soil

Steps

1. Poke some holes in the bottom of the large bottle so the water can run out.  Also, cut off the top of the bottle so you can place the small bottle inside.
2. Fill the smaller bottle with water and place it in the big one.  (This keeps the worms cool)
3. Fill the outside bottle with alternate layers of sand and soil so each layer is 4cm deep.  Pour in some water so it is damp.
4. Hop out to the garden and search for some worms.  Dig up a bit of soil and you should find some.
5. Put them carefully into the soil/sand area of the bottle and pop it somewhere dark (shed or under an empty bucket) for a couple of days.
6. When you get them out to take a look, you should see that all the soil and sand have been mixed up as they tunnel around.
7. After a few days let them out again, and then you can start again with some different worms.