A Guide To Feeding Worms

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Now that you know WHAT worms eat, it’s time to wriggle a bit deeper into the optimal methods of feeding them.

1. Properly Prepare Scraps

Despite how efficient these guys are at chowing down, they actually don’t have any teeth, so they can’t eat anything until it starts to decompose. Breaking down your scraps (by shredding, pureeing, freezing, soaking, or even microwaving to room temperature) prior to feeding helps expedite the process.

Make sure food scraps aren’t too far gone. Worms like to eat food scraps and other things as they’re beginning to decompose, so don’t give them anything too rotten or it’ll just stink up your bin.

2. Get The Volume Of Worm Food Right

How much you should feed worms depends on how many you have. For a new bin, your worms will take a couple weeks to mature and reach max consumption, where they can eat up to half their body weight in a day. For perspective, 1000 red wigglers (the recommended amount to start vermicomposting) weigh about 1 pound, needing one half-pound of food daily.

You don’t necessarily need to weigh your worms or their food. Worms will tell you when they need to eat more. When their last meal is nearly gone, it’s time to feed them again.

Keep in mind it’s better to underfeed your worms than overfeed them. Leaving too much food in your compost bin can cause the food to rot and cause “protein poisoning”, in which your worms will start to look sickly and discolored. Prevent this by “pocket feeding” or adding smaller amounts of food to rotating sections each day or two.

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If the health of your bin is optimal, the worm population can double every 60-90 days, meaning you’ll need to account for that gradual increase in amount of food, keeping a balanced carbon to nitrogen (C:N) ratio.

A successful vermicomposter should see a C:N ratio between 20:1 and 35:1. A 30:1 ratio is key; brown carbon rich materials are greater and green nitrogen rich materials are lower. That’s a lot of fancy number talk for a simple rule of thumb: strive for equal parts green and brown.

3. Cover The Worms And Their Food With “Bedding”

Shredded paper works great. This maintains moisture and encourages your worm to come to the surface. Otherwise, they’ll stick toward the bottom of the bin, where it’s darkest and coolest.

4. Maintain Your Worm Bin In Between Feedings

Specifically, be on the lookout for potential problems. For instance, your bin might be too moist or too dry. A dry bin is easily fixed by adding water. An overly wet bin, however, must be remedied by adding dry, carbon rich materials to absorb the water. If you’ve added a lot of watery food, like lettuce, melon or cucumber, make sure to balance it with some paper.

Temperature is another thing to be mindful of. Keep your bin a cool location out of direct sunlight to prevent your worms from getting too hot. If this happens, worms will cluster toward the bottom, eating less food, slowing their reproduction rate, and even causing death if bins gets over 95°F or 35°C. That said, don’t let your worms get too cold either, or they’ll huddle together and consumption will decrease.

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Pay attention to smell, too. A healthy worm bin should smell earthy. If it smells rotten or vinegary, chances are you’ve either added meat or dairy, or have too much acidity in the bin. Some acidity is naturally produced during microbial fermentation, but too much can burn worm skin. You can correct the pH levels by removing any uneaten food and adding neutral pH materials like eggshells and paper.

If you notice unwanted guests—like fruit flies, rodents, potworms, centipedes, and earwigs—it probably means you’re adding something you shouldn’t.



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