DID YOU KNOW?
We only have around 30- 40 years of fertile soil left in the UK? And golabally optimistic estimates are around 60 years.
The problem is that modern agricultural practices take out more from the soil than they put back in, leaving it depleted of the nutrient that plants need to grown. And as 98% of our fod comes from the soil, this should be causing more of a stir than it is.

The answer though is simple. And according to today's guest Anna de la Vega from The Urban Worm, it’s worms.
Worm farming is a double whammy (in a good way)  – it’s a brilliant way to deal with our food waste (which if sent to landill releases methane and nitrous oxide, both of which are highly potent greenhouse gases) AND it creates amazing quality compost containing all of the essential nutrients that plants need to grow ,which is super concentrated meaning you only need small amounts.

In lots of countries it’s being done an industrial scale, but here in the UK we are lagging behind a little. No doubt been distracted by a certain B word…
But worm farming is something that we can all do on a household scale, even if we don’t have a garden. We can use our little worm pets to munch away on our food waste, so a worm farm is an ideal solution to food waste if you don’t hve a council food waste collection and don’t have a garden for a compost bin.

Food waste is a massive issue when it comes to the climate crisis  - indeed if food waste were a country it would the 3rd biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after the USA and China. So it’s something we should all be working on. Obviously we should all be looking to minimise our food waste by meal planning, having a healthy disregard for best before dates, and dishing up sensible portions, but there will always be a certain amount of unavoidable food waste, no matter how anal diligent we are about it - things like banana skins, egg shells, tea bags etc etc.

In this episode we chat all things worms, and Anna gives us the run down on setting up our own wormery, what to do and what not to do, and how to keep our worms happy.
I’m super inspired to set my own now, and I hope after listening to this that you will be too!

Enjoy!

Useful links

• The Urban Worm
  - Website
  - Facebook
  - Instagram
  - 20L mini worm farm kits
  - How to set up a mini worm farm
  - Wheelie bin worm farm DIY kits
  - How to set up a wheelie bin worm farm
• Compost worms from Yorkshire Worms
• Can o Worms from Wiggly Wigglers
  
• A Beginners Guide to Wormeries

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