Ms Carll and Mr Marr are worm farmers and breed the underground garden companion primarily for waste disposal. The worms are bred on the couple's Brooklyn Road property and sold to restaurants, farms, orchards, keen gardeners, pet shops and poultry farms which can all use the worms. It all began 18 months ago when Ms Carll began looking for something to fill her time. She has an interest in organics and a love of gardening but found potting mixes too expensive and decided there must be a cheaper way. So by using household scraps and thousands of worms she is making her own potting mix from vermicast or worm poo.
Worms also produce a liquid fertiliser in the form of worm wee.
Ms Carll, a trained secretary, bought her first lot of worms 18 months ago to experiment with, and joined the New Zealand Earth Worm Association. Her worms are not just used for disposing of rubbish, they produce two very valuable byproducts. Both by-products are valuable to gardeners and can be bought from worm farmers. Worms live ideally in conditions with a temperature between 17 and 27 degrees, and when it's too hot they move to cooler spots in their composty homes, or vice versa. The worms the Carterton couple are breeding aren't the big red worms found in the garden but the type known as tiger worms, which live closer to the surface under cow manure and mulches.