Food waste from an average household amount to about 6 pounds weekly. Did you know these food scraps can be the best plant food available? Instead of paying your neighbors garden centers for expensive plastic fertilizers, you can create unlimited 'black gold' in your kitchen by using an army of tiny workers who never ask for overtime.
Bring Hummingbirds Right To Your Window!
Check PriceYour banana peels, coffee grounds, and vegetable scraps can be used in worm composting and turned into incredible plant boosters like worm tea and nutrient-rich worm castings which are also natures perfect fertilizer. Bonus: your worm bin makes no noise and takes up little space. With good management you will also be odor free.
Save this article for later so you don't lose it. Enter your email and I'll send it to you now—plus you'll get my favorite backyard birding tips delivered to your inbox.
Most importantly you will supply plant food to your entire garden and compost more than 50% of your household waste.
Reasons Why Worms Are The Most Valuable Employees In Your Garden
Red wiggler worms do more than break down your food scraps; they perform miracles. While food is decomposed in their guts, it is enhanced with helpful microbes and enzymes, as well as nutrients in a form that is instantly available for plant uptake. One pound of worms can eat and convert (and thus, enrich) up to one half of a pound of food scraps per day; in doing so, the worms excrete castings that are 5x richer in nitrogen, 7x richer in phosphorus, and 11x richer in potassium than regular soil.
Worm castings provide slow-release nutrition to plants that keeps feeding them for months compared to synthetic fertilizers which provide a quick sugar rush to plants but then a crash afterwards. Worm castings have beneficial bacteria and fungi that also enhance the structure of soil so plants are able to form stronger root systems and develop better resistance to diseases.
How To Set Up Your System for Worm Composting
Get an 18-gallon plastic storage container. Drill 20-25 holes in each of the four sides of the container about 2 inches from the bottom to allow for drainage. Then drill 20-25 holes in the lid to promote air circulation. To catch liquid, which will become worm tea, place a tray under the container.
Your bedding can consist of shredded newspaper, cardboard, or coconut coir. The materials need to be dampened so that they feel like a sponge that has been wrung out. Your bin should be filled to about halfway with this bedding – it is important to note that worms need materials rich in carbon to counterbalance the nitrogen that is in your food scraps.
Buy or catch 1-2 pounds of red wiggler worms from a fishing supply store, or order them online. Mix the worms into the bedding and then wait a week before adding food scraps. This will give the worms time to get comfortable in their new home.
Get our free Hummingbird Attraction Guide! Plus, we'll send you our best tips for attracting more birds to your yard.
The Ideal Diet for Worms: Safe and Unsafe Foods
Worms love your vegetarian kitchen waste including fruit peels, vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, crushed eggshells, and small amounts of bread or pasta. When you feed your worms, chop the scraps up into small pieces. The smaller the pieces, the quicker worms can break down the food. Always bury new scraps in the bedding so you don’t get fruit flies and smells.
Avoid feeding your worms meat, dairy, oils, citrus peels, onions, garlic, and spicy foods. These can attract pests, kill worms, or create bad smells. Also keep pet waste, diseased plants, and anything chemical treated out of your bin.
Worms should be fed once or twice a week, add only what you believe they did not eat from the last feeding. This is a perfect example of how beginners tend to overwhelm their worms – It causes food to rot, create bad odors, and upset the worms!
Harvesting Your Black Gold
In about 3-6 months, your bin will be full of rich, dark castings that may smell sweet and earthy. What we recommend to harvest your bin is called the \\"Light Method\\". Take the contents of your bin and dump it onto a tarp outside in the light. The worms will try to burrow down away from the light, leaving all of the castings on top. You can simply scrape off the top layer of the tarp, wait 10 minutes, then repeat this process until you reach the worms.
For continuous harvesting, take a look at the side-by-side method: move all material to one side of the bin and place new bedding and food on the other side. The worms will move towards the new food. After a few weeks, the worms will have moved and you will have easy access to collection finished castings.
Producing Liquid Plant Fuel from Worm Tea
That brown liquid is not just runoff – it is concentrated plant nutrients. To use worm tea dilute it with water (1:10 ratio) and water your plants with it. Do this every two weeks during the growing season. This liquid fertilizer gives your plants immediate nutrients and the beneficial microbes provide improved soil health around the roots.
To create an extra-strength plant booster, soak finished worm castings in water for 24 hours (1 cup castings to 1 gallon of water), filter it and use it right away. This worm casting tea has an even higher concentration of nutrients and beneficial biota than drainage tea.
Troubleshooting Problems With Your Worm Bin
Bad smell from your bin means that you are probably overfeeding or you are not mixing in enough dry material and giving the bin enough aeration. Stop feeding the bin for a two-week stretch, add some dry bedding, and make sure the drainage holes are not clogged. Fruit flies usually indicate that the food scraps are exposed – remember to bury new food scraps under the bedding!
When worms are trying to escape, you may have poor conditions. Test your moisture levels (it should feel like a damp sponge), check your temp (ideal is 55-75°F), and check your pH (too much citrus or acid foods can cause issues). White mites are normal and even help decompose material. If they are too overwhelming, reduce your moisture and feeding.
Management of Seasons for Year-Round Production
During the summer, keep the bins in cool and shaded places and watch the moisture levels. For winter, the bins should be moved to places that are heated or use insulation on the outdoor setups. Worms are less active when it is cold, so you should feed less and make sure the bins do not freeze.
Spring is the best time to expand your operation. Your healthy bins will produce baby worms that can be used to stock new containers. Fall is harvest time. You can use your finished castings to prepare garden beds for winter and spring planting.
Your worm composting system is an amazing closed-loop method to help you begin turning waste into wealth, while helping you connect to the natural systems that have fed and nurtured gardens for millennia. In a few months, you will have an infinite supply of the world’s best fertilizer, produced by the most diligent employees that you will never have to pay.
