Hint’s and Trick’s: caring for worms

I have been using vermiculture for the last 20 years, and here are some of my practical tip’s and trick’s to look after your worms and get the best results.

Feeding:

Greens: Vegetable and fruit scraps, bread, pasta, coffee grounds and filters, teabags, dead plant matter from plants

Browns: Paper, junk mail (non- glossy), paper egg cartons, cardboard, dry leaves, manure

Eggshells: Dry them in the sun for a couple of days, add them crushed into your bins. The worms do not really eat the shells unless you crush it really fine, but once you harvest the worm casings and add it to your soil or compost, they deliver good calcium to the ground.

Bedding: Every month tear up sheets of newspaper and cardboard as thin as possible, soak in water for an hour and add to a corner of the farm.

Avoid:

Salty foods, citrus, spicy foods, oils (like those found in salad dressing), pre-packaged foods with preservatives, meat and dairy products because they attract flies and can cause the vermicompost to smell. Your bin should not smell bad at all, if so mix in some newspaper bedding, turn the worms and castings with garden fork and leave for week or two.

Hints in upkeep of your farm:

Keep a small bin on your kitchen work surface for the food scraps, try feed weekly – obviously, the more your bin grows, the more food you can add. To avoid over feeding see if your worms are actively eating the top layer of the last food and before adding more.

You can add big pieces of anything, it is always a good idea however to chop up the greens and browns slightly – breaking down of the particles is easier for worms to be able to eat it faster. They don’t have teeth, so pretty much suck on the food, by far the best is to put the food scraps through a food processor, pulp and feed.

Keep adding food to the top of the farm, lightly cover with some casings (the black stuff), but keep at top, they naturally like to live in the top layer.

Worms are extremely hardy and can go several weeks without any intervention, except: When the bin dries out/get to hot/they drown – therefore: Keep farm in the shade, harvest tea as below and create a permanently open drainage tap at the bottom with a small bowl/bucket under it to harvest the tea.

I harvest worm tea every second week by pouring water over the bin from the top. See that the tea flows out the exit freely (hence no blockages in the bin or wholes being filled). For more info: the internet is full of hints and tips or contact me should you want any added information.