So you have built or purchased a worm bin and bought a few worms to get your composting journey started. So what is next? Your first step is food. Ensuring your worms have enough food is an important part of ensuring your worms are getting the needed nutrients in order to survive. You also need to make sure that you are not giving them too much food as well. What we do at Hollis Farm is feed our worms every few days. (If you are wondering what you can or can’t feed your worms then sign up for our email subscription, if you haven’t already, to get yourself a FREE copy of our downloadable pdf file “What Can I Put In My Worm Bin”) Some ways to ensure you are giving them the right amount of food is by keeping the food close to the top of your worm bin so that you can see how quickly they are eating it. Your worms should be able to eat everything that you have given them in about a week’s time. Now you also don’t want to give your worms too much food. An easy way in determining this is by looking to see if the food is rotting or starting to smell. If this is the case, then you have too much food in your worm bin.

Your next step is water. Worms need a damp environment to survive. If you dig down into your worm bin it should feel like a damp sponge. If the dirt feels dry, then add water to your bin. If the dirt is dripping with water or there is a puddle forming in the bottom of your bin then there is too much water. If you have too much water in your bin then you can add dry material to help soak up some of the excess moisture. Some things we like to add to our bin are dry leaves or cardboard.

After you have figured out a good water and feeding schedule then you don’t have to do a whole lot after that to take care of your worm compost bin. Compost worms like to do their work in silence and in complete darkness. You may notice that when you go to feed your worms they start to scatter and burry themselves deeper into the bin when the light hits them. So keep your visits short and to the point so you don’t disturb them as much. They will eat, mate, and breed more efficiently the less that they are disturbed.

The last thing you have to watch for is the compost they are living in. The whole point of having composting worms is, of course, getting compost! A composting worm can only live in its poop for so long. So how can you tell that your worm bin is ready for some new bedding? The dirt in the bin should be completely broken down. There should be no food scraps or yard clippings left in the compost. The dirt will be very dark, almost a black color, and won’t have any smell to it. If your dirt is how I have described it then you are ready to harvest the compost and give your worms some fresh bedding. So how do you harvest your compost? The way we have our bin set up at Hollis Farm is we have the bottom of our bin partly open using PVC piping. We then scrap the bottom of the bin, where the ready-to-go compost is, and then sift out the worms using a sifter so that we can harvest the dirt and let the worms go back into the bin. We do it this way to make it easier to continue feeding the worms on top of the bin and harvesting the compost at the bottom of the bin.

This is really all of the basic information you need in order to get your worm bin up and running. Composting worms do not need a lot of maintenance similar to other farm animals. If you have any questions, send us an email and we will be happy to assist you in any way we can! Happy Worm Farming!