..not just any worm

...but Dendras. These are special large composting worms which are about 10cm long. They are stripey, like the Tiger Worm, but twice the size and they apparently eat their own body weight ( over a gram) of food a day

I am still a novice with my wormery, which I bought this summer, and so was a bit anxious wondering how they had coped while I was on holiday. When I checked them this morning I found these Dendras starting to eat into the fibre matting which lies on top of the vegetable waste and so I realised that I had not left them quite enough food to keep them going. Eating the matting is not a problem as it will eventually become a food source for them, but I would quite like it to last a bit longer so will give them more veg waste tomorrow. The other composting worms I have are Reds, which are smaller and eat more slowly, but the benefit of these is that they supposedly reproduce a lot quicker than the Dendras so it is useful to have a mixture of both types. Between them they managed to produce 1 litre of liquid fertiliser during the ten days I was away. I dilute this down (1:10) to produce an absolutely fabulous liquid feed for all plants and during the summer it gave a real boost to my flagging sweet peas in particular.

The walk this afternoon was a joy as it coincided with a fairly spectacular sky where the sun became visible just in time to be seen sinking behind some dark voluminous clouds giving them a bright, shiny golden edge. It then proceeded to sink further giving a soft pink hue to the remaining higher clouds.

Thanks for the stars yesterday - much appreciated.