6. Before placing compost worms into the feeding station, add some bedding material 5cm deep – castings, shredded cardboard soaked in water, wet newspaper and/or moist coir all work well.
A good ratio is 75% top soil/peat moss and 25% shredded newspaper or cardboard. You'll need enough to fill the bottom of your bin to a height of ~4 inches. If your bin will be outside then we recommend a bedding depth of 24 or more inches so the worms have room to dig if temperatures get too hot or too cold for them.
A good rule of thumb is to mark off a 3' x 6' area and dig 18" - 36" deep. You can start smaller and shallower if you wish but it doesn't require much effort to dig a deep bed. The deeper the bed, the more worms and compost you'll have.
For worm composting, conditions are generally ideal with a carbon-to-nitrogen (C:N) ratio of between 20:1 and 35:1. Always remember, you can never add too much worm bedding on top. When in doubt, add more paper!
About every 6 to 9 months the old bedding should be replaced with properly prepared new bedding. To change bedding, remove the top 5 or 6 inches (where most of the worms are). Harvest the worms remaining in the bed.
Worms like red wigglers need a damp, but not wet, environment to thrive. The ideal amount of water in a worm bin is just enough to produce 1-2 drops of water when you squeeze a handful of bedding. Think about your yard or a local park, if you dig down a few inches the ground is usually moist but not dripping wet.
If you have a worm blanket – paper, old blanket, underlay – keep it damp but not wet in hot weather. It is also good practice to moisten cardboard and paper with water when you add it.
Worms hate: meat or fish, cheese, butter, greasy food, animal waste, spicy and salty foods, citrus.” The food-to-worm ratio is not precise, nor is the amount of castings they will produce. The rule of thumb is that a pound of worms will eat one to two pounds of food in a week.
Too little moisture will kill earthworms but they also need to be breathe, so too much moisture will cause them to drown.
If you see large amounts of food, you are probably overfeeding. Under ideal conditions, worms can eat their weight in scraps per day. So if you have 1 pound of worms, you can theoretically feed them 1 pounds of scraps. However, we recommend you play it safe by feeding an amount they can handle every 2 or 3 days.
You can just put in air holes and leave the bottom intact. However, in my experience I have found a worm bin with drain holes keeps the worm compost from getting too soggy much better than a bin with a solid bottom. The liquid that drains out of the worm bin is very high in nutrients. It is sometimes called “worm tea”.
Depending on growing conditions, worms may take up to six months to attain full size. An actively growing worm bed will yield 4-5 pounds of worms per square foot of bed space per year. Worms may be fed a variety of organic matter, including fresh manure, kitchen waste, and ground livestock feeds.
A worm's skin is photosensitive and therefore they need a dark environment. Because worms have no teeth, they need some type of grit in their bedding that they can swallow and use in their gizzard to grind food, much like birds do with small stones.
In the bottom, place an 8cm (3¼in) layer of moist 'bedding material' such as old compost or coir if it is provided by the supplier. This creates a humid layer in which the worms can burrow and begin to digest their food. Add the composting worms. Cover with no more than 8-10cm (3¼-4in) layer of kitchen waste.
Once every week, pour about five litres of fresh water into the Top Working Tray, which will flood down through the lower trays, ensuring the entire worm farm remains very moist. The sudden 'flood' will not harm the worms. Adding water is especially important in the hotter months of the year.
To remedy this, simply add a few layers of fresh, slightly moist (or dry, if the bin is very wet) bedding material. A moist worm bin can be a stinky mess, and result in drowning death of your worm herd.
Worms don't like to live in the rotting food and they also don't like living in their old poo. This is why it is important to keep up your additions of kitchen roll and shredded cardboard etc, so they always have a sanctuary to crawl to.
Banana peels are an excellent worm food. Keep an eye out for fruit flies though!
Worms will eat anything that was once living, Leftover vegetable scraps, fruit and vegetable peelings. Tea leaves / bags and coffee grounds.
Unlike other pets, you can leave worm farms unattended for weeks at a time. Worms will happily eat wet shredded paper for up to 6 weeks!
Or why the worms are eating the blanket you bought for them? Worms think they are delicious! A worm blanket is made from a natural fibre, which worms will feed on like everything else.
You will need to fill your worm farm about three quarters full with worm bedding for the worms to live in. Items such as potting mix, soil, hay, compost, dead leaves, pet bedding, coconut fiber or shredded cardboard or paper can be used as the bedding. The bedding needs to be porous and moist.