Heart of the Garden

Worm bins are a great way to compost your kitchen scraps. As a “green” component of the green/brown compost ratio, your kitchen might produce too much “green” waste to upset the ratio in your outdoor compost bin. Since most people I know don’t have huge basements for a giant worm farm, I’ll focus on the prefab stackable “upward migration” bins.

I think I bought mine here. But you can always make your own in a 5-10 gallon plastic bin.

Step One: Put your junk in that box
The best way to start is with a handful of 500-1000 red worms (Eisenia foetida) and a big chunk of half-processed bedding taken directly from someone else’s worm bin. It’s good to get a starter cocktail of microbes for your new roommates. I got my starter worms from possibly the nicest and most earnest worm enthusiasts in the universe. He blogs at www.westchesterwigglers.com

Put the worms with some bedding in the bottom tray, the “processing tray” (above the layer with the spigot.)

Step Two: Add a bunch of bedding to a second tray and stack it ontop of the processing tray
This is your bedding tray, where they go to hang out between food binges. Add shredded newspaper, shredded cardboard or egg cartons (enough to cover about 1/3 of the entire mass of the bin) to the top tray. Spray the bedding so it’s about as moist as a wrung-out sponge.

Step Three: Don’t feed them for about a week
So they can acclimate and do their paperwork. After a week, give them a handful of kitchen scraps along with more bedding. Bury the food under a heap of bedding in the processing tray.

Living Conditions
Worms need moisture and air circulation. Don’t flood the bin lest you create an anaerobic vacuum! Also, the temperature should be between 55-77°F.

Feeding

The worst thing you can do besides letting them dry out is overfeed them. Too much food will cause the bin to heat up and wipe out the whole condo. One rule of thumb is; do not add more food if there’s still food left over from the last feeding.

Two pounds of worms (about 1,000 worms) will eat around one pound of food per day.

I like to save up kitchen scraps throughout the week in the freezer, then feed them on Saturdays (after thawing the fibrous mass.)

Always add an equivalent amount of bedding when you feed your charges.

Harvesting
You can expect to harvest the castings from the bottom tray around every 2.5 – 6 months. Make sure the worms have migrated up to the upper trays and scoop it out.

Now you can take the empty tray and turn it into the bedding tray at the top. Depending on how the old bedding tray looks, you could add more food to it to advance it to “processing tray” status. And add a bunch of bedding to the new top bedding tray.

Add your castings to potting soil, use it as a top dressing for your veggie garden, or you can make worm tea with it. The brown water that collects at the bottom tray with the spout is not exactly worm tea. As long as this liquid doesn’t stink, it should be okay to add to your soil. But real worm tea requires oxygen to activate the microbes. I’ll post about making worm tea with an aquarium bubbler soon.