Make a Wormery
Lots of children are fascinated by worms so what better way to keep them entertained than by building a wormery.
What you need:
- A 2 litre empty plastic bottle with the top and bottom cut off so it is a cylinder – the top can be covered with duct tape to prevent cuts.
- A plant pot containing soil or compost
- About 10 Earthworms
- Dark paper, cardboard or material to keep out the light
- Crushed chalk or pea gravel
- Sand
- Soil or compost
- Dead leaves
- A marker pen
First you need to find the worms. There are several ways of doing this you can:
- Turn over stones, look under dead leaves or dig bare earth.
- Stamp up and down – worms are supposed to respond to vibrations
- Pour water over an area of grass so that it is soaking lay a black bin bag over the top of it and wait 30 minutes, worms should start to appear on the surface
- Put a gardening fork into a grassy area of ground and rock it backwards and forwards for 15 minutes
Once you have some worms put them into the soil of your plant pot and then place the cylinder over the top and fill it with alternative layers of soil, sand and chalk/gravel marking the layers with a marker pen. Break the dead leaves up into small pieces and place them on top.
Cover the cylinder with black paper or material to keep out the light and make sure that everything is damp not wet. Leave it for a couple of days and then have a look to see what the worms have been up to.
Remember to keep your wormery cool it should be made up of approximately 85% soil and 15% other materials. Once set up the wormery can be kept for one or two weeks but any longer than this and the worms might die. Don’t forget to put them back where you found them.
