You will need to drain excess liquid from the worm farm every 2-3 days. This excess liquid is known as worm farm leachate. If you let the liquid build up, it can get into the lower trays and drown your worms.
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.
In nature worms can move to different areas, but worms in a worm farm cannot. Ultimately they end up living in a container full of nothing but worm castings, which is their own excrement, and they will begin to die if this is not replaced with fresh bedding and new soil twice a year.
Similar to over-feeding, there is tendency to over-water worm bins when getting started. This can lead to conditions that harm your red wigglers, or possibly cause them to perish.
Your worms can be left alone for about three to four weeks without any help. Before you leave, provide them with a freezer bag or two full of food scraps and distribute it evenly around the bin.
The molds that form on most vegetables are usually OK, but the molds on some fruit and bread can be problematic. If you're in doubt, try a small amount first and see if the worms are bothered by it. If not, then it's probably OK to use it, otherwise, you should put them into your backyard bin instead.
Banana peels are an excellent worm food.
So in order to keep a compost bin healthy, you need to mix and turn your compost to aerate it and allow oxygen to reach down the deep unreachable places. The aeration not only provides oxygen for the good bacteria, but it also kills off the anaerobic bacteria since they can't survive with oxygen.
There are flies or maggots in the farm!
Tiny little vinegar flies are occasionally present in worm farms (and compost bins) and are absolutely nothing to worry about. If larger flies or maggots are present, it is generally a sign that food (especially meat) is rotting rather than being eaten by your worms.
Make sure your worm farm is located in the coolest place you can find, and never place it in direct sun. On the shadow side of the house, in the garage or even in the laundry will work – where it will remain cool in the warmest months.
Can I add garden waste to the worm farm? Yes! You can add dry grass clippings and deciduous leaves to your worm farm, as long as you keep food scraps and dry waste balanced. Avoid adding fresh lawn clippings, evergreen or native leaves, and sticks or woody stems.
Grass clippings are a great addition to a traditional compost pile and worms will eat these as well in their natural setting, but in your vermicomposting system, they will heat up the soil and can kill all of your worms.
It's not only shredded paper your worms will love, they will enjoy many other forms of paper too. Chuck in your paper towels, paper packaging, cardboard, toilet rolls etc.
And, it is believed that eggshells help worms in the reproductive process. Eggshells are useful to vermicomposting bins because they help increase the pH of the entire bin contents to make it less acidic. This is not something the casual worm composting enthusiast needs to worry about too much.
Too little moisture will kill earthworms but they also need to be breathe, so too much moisture will cause them to drown. You may have seen worms on the surface of your soil or lawn during extremely wet periods when the soil gets is constantly waterlogged.
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!
The big rule to bear in mind when feeding worms fruit is to avoid fruit with citric acid. Fruits you definitely want to avoid include oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit and pineapple. Feeding these types of fruits can cause them to try to crawl away and it may kill them. So that's what they don't like.
Other foods worms like are crushed egg shells, avocado skin and poultry pellets. Avoid adding meat, fish or dairy products, garlic or citrus and onion peelings as these may produce offensive smells, attract pests and are not favoured by the worms.
Avoid feeding the worms large quantities of meat, citrus, onions and dairy foods. Some processed food also contains preservatives, which discourage the worms from eating it. These foods won't harm your worms, but they will avoid them and those scraps will break down and rot in the bin.
Composting worms, or Red Wigglers, are not picky eaters. They will happily digest a wide variety of organic plant material into nutrient rich worm castings. I put old lettuce in there, rotten vegetables, potato peels, fruit, grass clipping, and leaves, just to name a few. They especially love the fruit.
Worms love to eat coffee grounds, and that's great news for your garden. Add coffee grounds to your compost pile to help attract worms, which help speed up the process of turning food scraps into compost. You can also add coffee grounds directly to the soil, but you'll have to be careful not to overdo it.
Buy dechlorinated water, or dechlorinate tap water by boiling or letting it sit out for 24 hours to allow chlorine evaporation. Space. Worms like a nice full bin of bedding and food scraps, but even they can feel crowded. Make sure your bin isn't overly full of food, bedding, or even worms.
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!
Leaving your composting worms for more than 2 weeks
Add more worm bin bedding. Get a friend to check on them half way through your extended vacation. Ask them to feed your worms your normal feeding amount. This works best if you have a friend that is also a worm farmer so that you dont have to train them.
Worms can live for 4 weeks without fresh food.