Two minutes with Danny Katz: Is it time to scrap my worm farm?

Q: Years ago, we bought a worm farm. Thousands of worms have enjoyed munching away on our vegie scraps. But now that our council allows all organic material to be put in the green bin, I have a dilemma: to feed or not to feed my worms?
W.F., Seddon, Vic

A: For many years I enjoyed the delightful pleasures and megalomaniacal thrills of ruling over a backyard compost bin: my empire of dirt. My worms worshipped me: I was a God-like figure to them with my complex digestive system and highly evolved jointed limbs and rudimentary light-receptor eyes (as far as eyesight goes, I’m pretty much on a wormish level). And I was a benevolent God.

Each morning, I’d go out to feed my subjects: vegie scraps for the vegans, espresso grounds for the hipsters, fat trimmings for the meat-lovers, dryer lint for the elderly (warm and pre-chewed for their tiny mouths to gum on).

But late last year I abandoned my kingdom, partly because my local council also introduced an all-organic-material-can-go-in-your-green-bin policy, partly because my meat-loving worms started hanging around the back door (I think they developed a taste for flesh).

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Your question has made me feel guilty about my negligence, so this weekend I’m going to distribute my surviving worms around the garden. I’ll let them live lives of freedom and self-determination, giving each one 40 square centimetres and a millipede.

That’s what you should do, too: set your worms free. Meantime, it’d be great if someone set up a Worm Rescue website where you could post cute photos: “Hi, I’m Princess Potato-Peel, a cuddly hermaphroditic annelid, looking for love with all my five hearts. Allergic to onions, citrus and early birds.”

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