Feeding Your Red Worms (Red Wigglers)
The wonderful thing about composting with Red Worms (Red Wigglers) is they will consume most anything organic. Red Worms in the conditions outlined in other articles in this website will eat approx. one half of their body weight per day!
An average size Red Worm Bin starts starts out about at 5 pounds of worms. 5 pounds of Red Worms will be comfortable in a worm bin with 5 square feet of surface area. Here are some realistic numbers what a worm bin of this size can consume.
- First month - 75 pounds of organics
- Sixth month - 450 pounds of organics
- One year - 900 pounds of organics
This does not take into account the increase in population that can double every 3 months!
The Red Worm Store recommends starting out with 3-5 pounds of Red Worms to begin a Worm Bin.
Red Worm Diet
Red Worms will eat most anything that is left over in the kitchen. Scraps from making a salad, trimmings from vegetables, apple and pear cores you name it. Worms are especially fond of banana peals and cantaloupe rinds.
You will find Red Worms love coffee grounds!
Your worms should never be fed dairy or meat products. And on a very limited basis anything citrus or acidic like onions.
There a great deal of opinions and experiences revolving how to feed Composting Red Worms. Some individuals just throw the garbage on top of the bin and call it good. There are worm farmers that like to cover the food up with bedding.
Here is a example of how I feed my Red Worms. I like to run all my organic matter in the food processor. This serves two functions. One it makes the pieces a great deal smaller and I find my worms consume the food faster. Second I don't have big chunks of garbage laying at the top of the bin all the time. I cover this with a very thin layer of well composted dairy compost. The worms work their way through this also. You can usually find bags of composted manure for less than 5 bucks at Home Depot or other hardware store.
Red Worms also will consume egg shells if processed properly. The proper way to make them edible is to dry them fully and crush them with a roller pin. This gives the worms grit to digest their food and helps lower the pH level at the same time.
Worms will also consume newspaper, office paper and cardboard if shredded. I have even gone as far as to feed my Red Worms newspaper after putting it through the food processor, they loved it and is a good idea to keep in mind if you have no kitchen refuse available. I have even heard that they enjoy toilet paper centers!
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