What to Feed Your Composting Worms

What to Feed Your Composting Worms

Before winter hit, I brought my composting worm bin into my basement so they wouldn’t freeze to death.  Well fast forward a few months and I realized that I completely forgot about them. Oh no! I ran down there, tossed the lid off my worm bin, and low and behold, they were doing GREAT! Granted, they had eaten a majority of the organic material that I had previously put in there, but they seemed happy and healthy. So i wanted to take this opportunity as I replenished they’re food sources, to talk what to feed your composting worms.

A handful of healthy red wiggler composting worms!

Foods that Composting Worms Love

Composting worms, or Red Wigglers, are not picky eaters. They will happily digest a wide variety of organic plant material into nutrient rich worm castings. I put old lettuce in there, rotten vegetables, potato peels, fruit, grass clipping, and leaves, just to name a few.

I added a thin layer of old lettuce and potato peels to my vermicompost bin

They especially love the fruit. It seems when I put a combination of different materials in the worm bin, they preferentially eat the sweet stuff first. If you have an old banana laying on the counter, cut it in half and bury it in the worm bin. Your worms will love it!

Bananas are a worm bin favorite!

Exceptions to the Organic Materials

You should avoid putting citrus fruits in the worm bin, as well as garlic, onions, and peppers. Composting worms will avoid these at all costs due to the high acidity. It’s best to reserve these items for your regular compost pile.

Don’t put peppers, onions, or garlic in your worm bin

Other Things to Keep Out of the Worm Bin

Make sure to stick purely to plant based materials in your worm bin. Don’t put any meats, fats, oils, or dairy in there. These types of foods have a tendency to go rancid, which leads to horrible smells and also attracts unwanted critters who may try to bust your bin open. (You don’t want to put these in your normal compost pile either for the same reason.)

Don’t put meat or dairy in your worm bin because these will go rancid

There are other methods of composting non-plant materials like Bokashi composting, but that is slightly more advanced and not something I’m qualified to speak on. For now, my meats, dairy, and fats go in the trash.

How Much to Feed Your Compost Worms

You may have heard that compost worms can eat their entire body weight in a single day! Well maybe this is true, but the reality is, these worms weigh almost nothing so they eat very little.

Remember how I said I didn’t feed my worms for about 3 months? That’s about how long it took them to digest a couple of handfuls of fruit and veggie scraps.

A couple handfuls of fruit and vegetables will last your worms a while

So instead of relying on your worm bin as a viable means of composting all your scraps, you should treat it as more of a fun experiment and feed them sparingly. Don’t just keep piling scraps on top of scraps in your bin, because this will lead to food rot if your composting worms can’t keep up.

Conclusion

Worm farming is a great project for anyone who likes to get their hands a little dirty. The end result is nutrient rich worm castings that your garden will absolutely love. The key to a successful worm bin is to just take things slow, feed your worms sparingly with a proper diet, and be patient. So give it a try, start a worm bin, and let me know how it goes!

For more information on how to actually build a worm bin, set up proper habitat, and introduce your worms to the bin, check out my other articles below.

Happy Worm Farming!

Cody

Thistle Downs Farm

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