Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
What can you do with earthworms? Some people use the
creepy crawlers to catch fish. But others put worms
to work making compost. Compost looks and feels like
good soil. Gardeners and farmers add it to soil to
make plants grow better. You can make compost from
food waste at home with or without the help of
worms. How the worms help is by first eating and
processing the food. It comes out the other end of
the worm as rich compost. Kim Gabel from the
University of Florida Extension service in Key West
says worms known as red wigglers are the best
varieties to use. You need a container to hold the
waste and the worms. The size of the composting bin
depends on how much compost you want to make. You
need about a kilogram of worms for each half a
kilogram of daily food waste that you add.Kim Gabel
says the bin needs holes so the worms can breathe.
And they also like to be in the dark, so cover the
bin to keep out the light. One thing worms do not
like is very high temperatures. Kim Gabel lives in
the warm climate of southern Florida. She keeps her
worm bin indoors. Unpleasant smells can be prevented
by controlling the amount of food waste added to the
bin and avoiding meat or bones. For composting with
worms, you need bedding that is moist but not too
wet. The amount of water you add will depend on the
bedding material you use. Kim Gabel uses newspaper
cut into strips about two and a half centimeters
wide. Add two handfuls of soil for every half square
meter of bedding material and mix well. Spread the
worms over the bedding. The worms will start to
wiggle their way down. Remove any worms that remain
on top of the bedding after two hours. When you feed
the worms, place the food about two and a half
centimeters below the surface of the bedding and
cover it. The worm's waste, or castings, should be
ready to use as compost within two to six months. To
remove the compost, you can push it all to one side
of the bin. Place new bedding and food on the other
side. Within a few weeks the worms will move to the
new bedding. Now you can remove the compost and fill
the empty space with new bedding. For VOA Special
English, I'm Mario Ritter. For more gardening
advice, and for more programs and activities for
English learners, go to voaspecialenglish.com. We're
on Facebook, Twitter and iTunes at VOA Learning
English.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
