I'm making my own worm farm / compost conditioner. I have once been given a bottle of Tumbleweed conditioner. It is easy to guess what the ingredients are:
- "Specially selected blend of natural minerals", some kind of rock dust. From the colour of their product I'm guessing it is the Zeolite that is produced in Australia
- "Balances pH levels in your worm farm and Compost Bin", that would be Calcium Carbonate, so garden lime would do
- "Neutralises acidity", same as above
- "Helps worms digest larger quantities of food waste", something that can be used as grit for the worm gizzard: rock dust and garden lime are perfect for the job so no need to add anything else
- "Helps reduce odours", by neutralising pH the garden lime already contributes to reduce odours. Zeolite also has odour reducing properties thanks to its microporous surface, it is widely used as a thin layer over compost piles to reduce smell and capturing volatile nitrogen
- "Assists in the control of pest infestations", both garden lime and Zeolite do this by reducing odours. Potentially adding some Diatomaceous Earth would help too as it is a natural pesticide, however it has two caveats: it only works when dry and can kill beneficial worm farm critters such as rollie pollies
So there I went making my mix. I'm not sure about the ratio but I want my homemade conditioner to be effective as a pH neutraliser and with trace minerals less is more. So I made a mix of 3 parts garden lime for 1 part Zeolite.
The garden lime:
The Zeolite:
The mix:
You can obviously use the two product separately, but I want to simplify my life so that I only need to add one thing every time I feed the worms. How I would use it? I usually add about 2 to 3 handfuls of garden lime for about 3 kg (6.6 lbs) of food scraps, so I will be adding about 3 to 4 handfuls of the mix.
This mix is now available in my shop: Worm'ditioner worm farm conditioner
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A day in a worm farm on Oct 13, 2016
by Quoc-Huy Nguyen Dinh