#worm compost

1) Give ’em a home

Tumblr user NRDC has an excellent guide on how to make a worm composting bin.

2) Acquire ’em

It’s often hard to tell worm types apart, so it’s best to purchase worms for your compost rather than trying to find them in nature. If you don’t have a local supplier, you can order worms online. It takes about a pound of worms, which is around 1,000 individual worms, to process a half pound of food a day.  I have heard quite a few good reviews about Jim’s Worm Farms, but have not tried them myself.  Otherwise, it is simple to buy them from your local pet store or bait shop.

3) Feed ’em

Here’s a quick chart by NRDC on what you can feed your worms.

You feed your worms with your kitchen scraps. However, that doesn’t mean you can give your worms everything that comes out of your food. You should stick to organic leftovers such as fruits or veggie scraps, grass clippings, bread, beans, and more. Worms don’t have teeth, so chop these materials into chunks that are easier to process.  You can also blend or place the foods in a food processor.

Put in the Worm Bin:

Fruit Scraps

Vegetable Scraps

Paper

Squash and Pumpkins

Eggshells

Coffee

Tea Leaves

Bread

Pasta Grains

Animal Manure (not dog or cat!)

Lawn Clippings (make sure it hasn’t been sprayed with pesticides)

Don’t Put in the Worm Bin:

Salty Foods

Spicy foods

Oils

Foods with Preservatives

Meat

Dairy

4) Breed’em

It is easy to cultivate a massive worm population in a very short time period. An adult red wiggler worm can produce 2 to 3 cocoons every week, and each cocoon can hatch up to 20 baby worms.

When there are too many worms in a particular space, red wigglers tend to slow down their breeding so that their home does not become overcrowded. This helps them to avoid depleting the available food supply.  But, if there are too few worms in an area, the mature breeders will have difficulty locating each other, and reproduction will be hampered.

The best population is a half pound of worms for every square foot of surface area in your worm bin. A bin that is two feet long by one foot wide would have a surface area of 2 x 1 = 2 square feet. One pound of worms would be the perfect amount of worms to stock in this bin if you are trying to breed your worms.

Worm cocoons have the ability to survive in conditions that would kill off the rest of their colony. By focusing their efforts on cocoon production when death may be near, the worms ensure that the colony will carry on into the next generation even if none of your living worms are able to make it through the dangerous conditions.

You are able to harness this natural instinct by allowing your bin to become “slightly” dangerous for a short time. That means you can let it dry out a bit more than you normally would, or you could temporarily move the bin to a less insulated location.  Once you notice an increase in baby cocoons, return the bin to normal conditions so the babies have the best chance for survival.

5) Harvest ’em

The vital job of composting your organic waste and turning it into soil is really all your worms need to do to earn their keep.  But if you would like to make money off of them, there are two ways.  One, you can sell the worm’s compost and casings, or you can sell the worms themselves.

If you just created a worm compost bin, don’t expect castings to be ready for harvest immediately. The worm bin needs to get established, and be routinely fed and fluffed for a few months first. This gives the worms time to eat, turn things over, and break down food and bedding into worm castings – their poop.

A week or two before you want to harvest the worm castings, stir and spread the contents of your bin out in the bottom. Next, feed the worms exclusively on one side of the worm bin during that time. Bury the food (and if needed, any new browns/bedding) in one far corner, with plans to harvest worm castings from the opposite side. The worms should migrate there to eat, leaving the other side of the bin hopefully worm-free. If there is a lot of existing food matter and worms spread evenly throughout your worm bin, it may take a little longer to accomplish this.  (If harvesting large amounts from a bin that is 4-8 months established, you can also dump the whole thing on a tarp.  The sun will warm the pile and the worms will go as deep as possible to escape.  You can then scoop off the top.)

Using a small trowel, scoop out the finished castings from the “resting” side of your worm bin into a bucket.  However, depending on how well broken-down the material in your worm bin is, or how well the worms migrated to the opposite side of the bin, you may need to pick through the material a little by hand. Sift through the castings and throw back large pieces of food matter, lumps of shredded paper or other bedding, and as many worms as you reasonably can. If the worm castings are clumpy, break up the large chunks.  You can also harvest and then sift them with the aid of a simple screen.

6) Sell ‘em

As always, your best chances of selling your worms and worms casings are going to come from your marketing (Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace), farmer’s markets, and small businesses.  Call your bait stores, your small gardening shops and greenhouses, and exotic pet stores.  Even if they don’t want to sell your products directly, they may allow you to hang a flyer on their poster board.