“Renovating your bathroom?” people asked as we crammed an unwanted bathtub into the back of our tiny Honda Civic. No, we’re doing something much more fun than that! We’ve just finished making a bathtub worm farm system for our wriggling backyard buddies. We’re keen to get the worm castings cranking, and this bathtub will produce plenty of castings, in addition to the ‘can of worms’ system we have out the front. We’ve found the small ‘can of worms’ system has been perfect for starting out.

Worm farms are fantastic for recycling food scraps, and they produce the ultimate soil improver – rich, black worm castings. Worm manure beats all other animal manures hands down, and it has no odour, so your neighbours will love you as they won’t be running to shut their windows when you spread it around!

You need to introduce ‘compost worms’ to your systems, as the worms you find in the garden are way too laid back to be munching through lots of food scraps, unlike the hard working compost worms. About 1,000 worms (250grams) is a good amount to start out with, but it depends on your set up.

A brilliant, practical book about starting out with worm farming is Jade Woodhouse’s ‘Worm Farming – Our Saviour For The Soil (www.simplynaturalorganic.com). There are a few local worm farmers in Wollongong, who sell worms and worm casting – we’ve found Max Norden from Wormifert (0414 733 823) really helpful.

Happy worm farming and thanks wormies!

We’re super stoked to have finished our gorgeous garden path, which has been creatively recycled from our huge old concrete driveway. Where the massive driveway was we now have a smaller driveway more suited to our needs, a water tank, and a gorgeous area planted out with a few citrus, a macadamia, davidson plum, and other fruit trees. By breaking up the hard surface area, we’re also improving the water quality of our local creeks by reducing runoff, minimising risks of local flooding and making sure we get maximum absorption of water on our block for our garden to thrive.

We’ve filled the gaps in between the concrete blocks with soil, and are establishing the very low growing groundcovers brahmi and pennyroyal to hold the soil in place. The path is wide enough to get a wheelbarrow through with ease, and by carefully positioning the pieces with rocks and soil underneath, we’ve been able to create a level surface.

The path meanders from the front gate, down the side of the house past the water tank and nursery to the front door of the future chicken and duck house – which is our next project!

Purple carrots, black Russian tomatoes, yellow zucchini – having a nursery to grow your own seedlings means you can grow wonderful heirloom varieties that are often hardier, easier to grow and far more exciting than conventional varieties available at a typical nursery retailers. It also means you can have seedlings that are vibrantly healthy and ready for planting right when you need them.

We just built our nursery out of recycled materials – the frame is made from old hardwood timber fence posts while the shelves are preloved ACR fencing. The nursery faces northeast to give them as much sun as possible. Sheeting on the south and west sides protects them from strong winter westerlies and southerly winds, while sheeting on the roof shields them from heavy rain and hail. We’ve also wired the north and east side to protect them from hungry cabbage white butterflies and birds. For those hot summer days, white shade cloth can be rolled out over the roof to keep them cool and stress free.

An automatic timer waters them at the end of each day with water from our water tanks. And the floor of the nursery slopes slightly so that water runs off into the water loving blueberry patch – brilliant!