If you've decided to start a worm farm, you need to know a little about worms.
The first thing is that you can't use the worms from your garden. The garden worms live in dirt and do not adapt well to a worm farm.
You need to get specific compost worms. You can usually buy them from the hardware store where you bought your worm bin. You can also get them from other worm farmers or from commercial worm farmers. Maybe you have some friends with worm farms. They could give you some to start with.
The most common types of worms for worm farming are Red Wrigglers, Tiger Worms, Indian Blue worms. These varieties are all compost worms, and will thrive on your food scraps. They are top dwellers who live in the top 6 inches of bedding material. They can eat their body weight in scraps each day.
Compost worms eat dead, decayed vegetable matter. You can find them in manure heaps. They don't eat fresh food so all the food scraps you feed them will have begun to rot before the worms start to eat them. If you want to speed up the process, you can place food scraps into a plastic container for a week or two before feeding them to the worms. The process of decomposition should be well started by then.
The quantity of worms you need is about 1 kg of worms for every 500g of food waste. When you add food scraps, you should bury them into the bedding material so they don't attract flies.
Do not use meat, dairy, orange or onion scraps because they can make your worm farm smell unpleasant and attract flies and other unwanted pests.
The worms like a moist but not wet bed. It will smell bad if it is saturated. You should have a tap at the bottom to release excess water and worm waste. Drain off the excess moisture and do not add any more until the smell has gone.
If you find your worm farm still smells unpleasant you are probably overfilling it. Wait until most of the scraps have decomposed or been eaten before adding any more.
Worms are useful and fun. You are helping the environment by disposing of your waste responsibly. You may even find you enjoy farming worms and scale it up a bit. You can breed them quite easily and you don't need a lot of time or equipment. They are a great project for kids, educational, environmentally efficient and fun.
The first thing is that you can't use the worms from your garden. The garden worms live in dirt and do not adapt well to a worm farm.
You need to get specific compost worms. You can usually buy them from the hardware store where you bought your worm bin. You can also get them from other worm farmers or from commercial worm farmers. Maybe you have some friends with worm farms. They could give you some to start with.
The most common types of worms for worm farming are Red Wrigglers, Tiger Worms, Indian Blue worms. These varieties are all compost worms, and will thrive on your food scraps. They are top dwellers who live in the top 6 inches of bedding material. They can eat their body weight in scraps each day.
Compost worms eat dead, decayed vegetable matter. You can find them in manure heaps. They don't eat fresh food so all the food scraps you feed them will have begun to rot before the worms start to eat them. If you want to speed up the process, you can place food scraps into a plastic container for a week or two before feeding them to the worms. The process of decomposition should be well started by then.
The quantity of worms you need is about 1 kg of worms for every 500g of food waste. When you add food scraps, you should bury them into the bedding material so they don't attract flies.
Do not use meat, dairy, orange or onion scraps because they can make your worm farm smell unpleasant and attract flies and other unwanted pests.
The worms like a moist but not wet bed. It will smell bad if it is saturated. You should have a tap at the bottom to release excess water and worm waste. Drain off the excess moisture and do not add any more until the smell has gone.
If you find your worm farm still smells unpleasant you are probably overfilling it. Wait until most of the scraps have decomposed or been eaten before adding any more.
Worms are useful and fun. You are helping the environment by disposing of your waste responsibly. You may even find you enjoy farming worms and scale it up a bit. You can breed them quite easily and you don't need a lot of time or equipment. They are a great project for kids, educational, environmentally efficient and fun.
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