Yes, you absolutely can have a worm farm in your nice, clean home.

Worms – specifically, red wigglers (Eisenia foetida) – can eat half their weight daily in food scraps and transform them into nutrient-rich “castings”. Use the castings to boost your garden soil.

Worms will be delighted with your veggie and food scraps as well as coffee grounds/coffee filters, tea leaves/bags, egg shells, shredded paper and cardboard.
They don’t like: grass clippings, salt/salty food, hot spices, meat, poultry, dairy, pineapple.

     Worm bin

You can keep your worm farm in a closet. They come with fitted tops so there’s no fear of a massive worm escape.

Read more about setting up and maintaining your worm farm in our earlier posts:
Worms – a gardeners best friend and…
Worm food

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What makes for a good worm buffet?
In general, any plant based waste with the noted exceptions:

* Pineapple (it has an enzyme that can dissolve your friendly worms…ouch!)

* Citrus and high acid veggies such as onions (worms aren’t too acid friendly. You can use small amounts of acidic scraps.Worms prefer their environment pH to be between 7 and 8).

* Green grass clippings (grass produces ammonia which can kill off the worms and also generates a lot of heat).

You also never want to feed them:

* Salt or salty foods
* Hot spices
* Meat
* Poultry
* Dairy

Wet newspaper blanket to keep worms and bedding moist

Worms will do well with vegetable and fruit scraps.
They can also eat tea bags & leaves and coffee grounds & filters in moderation as these are generally acidic.
Torn up and soaked newspaper, egg cartons and cardboard.
Cooked and crushed egg shells – these add calcium which worms love. They’re also alkaline helping to offset acidity of other materials.

An easy way to turn raw egg shells into cooked egg shells is to set them on a tray and pop them in a 300F oven. Won’t take but 10-15 minutes until they’re crispy. To crush them you can run a rolling pin over them or any number of things such as a coffee mug, bowl…

Adding ground food scraps – this is pulp from the juicer – to one half of the worm bin

You only want to add new food when the worms are nearly done their last portion. Either, spread it over the entire top 1-2 inches at a time or you can just alternate between each half of the bin.

Unfold wet newspaper.

On one side of the bin, dig down about an inch or so.

Add food then cover back up with the bedding to discourage flies.

Add the food then cover with the bedding

Not mandatory but…Worms can eat more if its cut into 1/2 inch strips or better yet – ground up in a food processor. Since worms have very small mouths and don’t have teeth – think baby food. The smaller size also allows air through making it easier for them to move through the pile.

You can also mix food scraps with higher carbon materials such as hydrated coconut coir, shredded newspaper, brown leaves, napkins, coffee filters or straw. These materials will add aeration and speed up decomposition.
Note: faster decomposition does create more heat, so be mindful of overheating.

Maintenance

Worm farms shouldn’t smell bad. In fact we have friends that keep their worm farm in a closet in their house. And yes, they are clean people.

If the farm does smell, it’s likely due to bacteria build up from uneaten food. You can stir the food around a bit with a garden fork to aerate it. You can also add a little garden lime which is alkaline and aerates.
To avoid odors, only add about a 1-2″ layer of food at a time. And don’t add new food until the prior portion is mostly eaten.

Worm farms generally don’t attract insects. If a farm is too acidic and dry or in an area with a lot of ants, it may get infested. In this case, you’ll need to clean the ants out. If it’s too dry and acidic, add more water and shredded newspaper or crushed up cooked egg shells.

If it’s near an ant horde, either relocate the bin or use some ant evasion measures such as smearing petroleum jelly around the entry points or surrounding the worm bin with a “moat”. If the bin is on legs, you can sit each leg in a container of water.

Keeping the bin moist keeps their appetite strong. Add water when necessary, though not so much at one time to flood the bin. Also be sure that any excess water can drain out. Our worm wranch has a handy spigot. High water food scraps such as lettuce and many fruits can be as much as 80% water content. Having a lot of that in your food mix will decrease any need to add extra water. It’s also best to use non-chlorinated water.

With the proper care, you will be turning kitchen scraps into black gold that your garden will cash in to bushels of veggies for your table!

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We’re all familiar with worms in the soil, most typically Earthworms.

But worms are multi-faceted squigglers. You can corral them and assign them to composting – “vermicomposting”.

Worms live to eat organic materials, excrete worm castings and reproduce rapidly. You can corral them in a dark, moist “farm”, feed them some throw away scraps and they couldn’t be happier.
In return, they’ll turn those food scraps into nutrient dense soil that you can use in your garden.

Done correctly, it’s very clean and efficient… and rather easy.

When worms are in the ground, they aerate the soil – digging tunnels and allowing air to get to plant roots. They also fertilize the soil.

When you set them up in “worm farms”, they’re happy to eat half their body weight a day and double their population every few months.

Down in the farm, worms eat organic material, digest it and excrete the digested material – called “castings”. Castings are the worms version of composted manure – plant-ready soil richer in nutrients than commercially available top soil or potting soil.

– Castings are pH neutral. They won’t burn plant root systems the way fresh raw animal manures can. Compared to potting soil castings have about 5 times more nitrogen, 7 times more potash, 3 times more calcium and several times more phosphorus and potassium.

– The nutrients are water-soluble so they’re immediately available to plant roots. And castings hold 2-3 times their weight in water… keeping moisture in the soil longer.

– Worm castings have a high amount of humus which helps create channels within soil that better hold water and allow air to pass through.

– Additionally, worm composting produces a liquid – leachate – commonly called “worm tea”. You can use this as a plant fertilizer too – best to dilute it in water – about a 4:1 ratio.

Build or Buy?

You can build your own worm farm without a great deal of work.
Plastic or wood are the best materials. Of the two, plastic tends to be easier to work with and maintain.

The container itself should be wider than deep. A good size is 2′ wide, 3′ long and 1′ deep. It should also be dark, so if you’re using transparent plastic, cover the outside with some light blocking material.

You’ll need to provide for drainage… drill 1/4″ holes into the bottom about every 3 inches.

And You’ll want to elevate your farm off the ground to allow air flow. You can put a tray under the bottom to catch any liquid (leachate) that drains off.

If you’re not ready for the science project build your own, you can buy a ready made, designed for worm composting, worm farm. They generally come with removable panels and leachate tray, making them easier to maintain.

Worm farm

Here’s our worm farm.
The base collects leachate. Open the spigot in the front to drain it off.

There’s one tray going with Red Wigglers. When that tray gets full, simply pop another tray on top that one. Put new food on the top tray and the worms work their way up.

The top closes securely and has a number of vent holes which aren’t clearly visible in the picture.

Setting Up the Farm

Start with the bedding material. Use shredded and moistened newspaper – black and white pages only.
Moisture in the bedding helps the worms breathe. However, avoid too much water (sopping wet) as the worms will drown.
You can also use peat moss or coconut fiber. (soak in water first and squeeze out to pull out some of the acidity).

Sprinkle in some garden soil or aged compost – a couple handfuls.

Add Worms

Which worms are best… Red Wigglers, more properly known as “Eisenia fetida”.
Red Wigglers have voracious appetites, are prolific reproducers and do ok in high density environments. They’re more surface seeking worms – so they eat upward. Whereas earthworms tend to tunnel downward.

You can get wigglers by mail (an Internet search will pull up numerous vendors), tho you may want to check locally first to avoid the trauma of being transported for the worms. If you can buy them nearby, you can get them in their new home quickly.

Start with a pound of worms… generally about 4,000.
Dump them in with the top off.
Like vampires, worms don’t like light so they’ll quickly start burrowing down into the bedding.

Harvesting

When you can no longer detect the bedding, it’s time to harvest the castings.

Never smash it down… that will suffocate your worm friends.

The commercial worm farms come with trays that make this quick and easy. You put a new tray on top the full one. The worms will make their way up and after a few weeks you can take the full tray out and put the castings to work.

If you built your own farm…

Because worms eat up and leave castings behind, you’ll find that most worms are near the top (top 4-6″) and the castings are on the bottom.

The easiest way to harvest the castings is to do a partial harvest. (You can do a complete harvest by picking all the worms out and putting them in new bedding… with thousands of wigglers that’s quite the task).

With a partial harvest you want to lure them to one end…
Put food only at one end. The worms (or most of them at least) will head for the food.
After about a week, remove the casting from the other end. This will give you half to two-thirds of the casting.

Then remove the rest of the material (castings, any remaining food and worms). Set them aside temporarily in a container.
Thoroughly clean out the bin and set up new bedding. Add your worms (with the rest of the material) into their freshly cleaned home.

Farm Operation

Worms do need oxygen so be sure your bin is not air tight. You can use a tight lid, just drill some holes in the lid, or the sides of the bin close to the top.

Red Wigglers like the thermometer set at 72-75 degrees Fahrenheit. They’ll tolerate a range of 50-90 degrees (10-30 Celsius)… this is inside bin temperature not outside ambient temperature.

If the bin gets too hot you can: put it in a shaded and well ventilated area, keep it a little more wet, freeze the food before adding it in, sit a few frozen water bottles in the bin.

If the bin gets too cold the worms will decrease their activity (eating and reproduction). Worms won’t survive being frozen, tho cocoons will… and they’ll hatch after they thaw out.
To warm up the bin you can add more carbon materials such as leaves and newspaper. They generate more heat when decomposing. You can also cover the bin with a blanket of sorts.

Red Wigglers reproduce rapidly. Tho no need to worry about worms spilling out of the bin. They self regulate their reproduction rate so they don’t over-populate their space. Interesting concept, eh?

Calcium helps reproduction. You can add crushed cooked egg shells to their food mix.

Happy farming!

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