Beginner's Guide to using Red Wigglers for Composting

If you've decided that worm farming is something you want to do, this post is for you!

Or, if you're just looking for more information about how it works still, this other post may serve you better.

But if you are ready to get started using red wigglers for composting, this guide will help you to confidently say "Yes, and I know exactly how to take care of you best" if your loved ones ever ask you the viral question;

"Would you love me if I was still a worm?"

Jokes aside, let's get into it!

For most composting with Red Wigglers, the ideal temperature is 77 degrees Fahrenheit, or 25 degrees Celsius. This is the most efficient temperature for food consumption rate as well as reproduction rates. 

Red Wigglers will still do well around 60-80 degrees, but their efficiency will diminish beyond that range. 

It is better to be too cold than too hot.

See the chart below for an illustrative representation of temperatures effect on red wiggler's efficiency.

Note that this is the internal temperature in their bin or environment, which can be warmer or cooler than ambient temperature.

Humans have gone months without food (almost a year actually!), weeks without water, but can only live for a matter of minutes without air.

The worms have a similar priority list.

We'll talk about red wigglers nutrition requirements later, but in a worm bin there is a direct relationship between the amount of water and the amount of air.

Your worms (and the necessary beneficial microorganisms) need access to enough water to be hydrated, but also enough air to breathe - so we'll talk about air and water together.

Lets talk about sponges.

Did you know a sponge is never "empty"?

Its just a matter of if its filled with water or air.

Think of a totally sopping wet sponge. It is holding as much water as it possible can, or, in other words, it is at 100% moisture.

If a red wiggler were inside of that sponge, its skin would be in contact with only water and no air to breathe. It would suffocate!

Lets help that worm out. Give our imaginary sponge a squeeze. A stream of water should leave the sponge, and as you let go of the squished sponge it goes back to its normal size, absorbing the air around it, and now the spaces that were holding water are now holding pockets and channels of air.

Now, if a worm were in the sponge, it now has plenty of moisture in contact with its skin to keep it moist, but also some channels/pockets of air to access oxygen.

You want your worm bin to be like this wrung out sponge. The bedding (we'll talk about this soon!) the worms live in is like the sponge. We want it to be about 60-80% of the way to being totally saturated so worms have water stay moist, but leaving the other 20-40% as air so they can actually breathe.

Red wigglers will survive down to about 30% moisture, or as high as 90%, but the best moisture content in a worm bin is 60-80%. 

It might take some time, but you'll get the feel for it. 100% moisture is obvious - it will be very waterlogged or even dripping water. 0% moisture is obvious too - it will be bone dry. 

You may be able to mentally picture how it would feel if it were 60-70% of the way to being totally saturated and dry or wet your bin if/as needed.

Other "tells" that your bin is at a good moisture level include:

1. An earthy, forest-like smell.
2. A lack of pests like flies and gnats
3. A fluffy, spongy, or crumbly feel, like a healthy soil
4. Happy, healthy worms

Signs that the bin are too wet are the opposite.

You'll see a lot of attempts online to make "hard and fast" rules on how to feed your worms, but there's so many variables and it doesn't really work like that.

I'll try to just focus on the principles behind some of the rules so you can become self reliant.

Remember the red wigglers's hierarchy of needs;

Food is pretty much the least important thing.

So, you shouldn't ever be adding so much food that it jeopardizes the worm bin's balance of water and oxygen. (At least not without balancing it out with new bedding if/as needed.)

So basically, you're good to keep adding food if:
1. The bin isn't getting too wet
2. The bin isn't heating up
3. Other organisms such as pests or excess mold aren't taking advantage of excess available food.

Don't add new foods throughout the entire bin

Until you are familiar with the type of food you are adding and how the worms/bin will respond, don't add the food throughout the entirety of the bin. This allows the worms, if they don't like the material/conditions you've created, to just go to a different section of the bin (whether horizontally or vertically). If it has been added throughout the entire bin and something has gone wrong, their only option is to escape the bin as a whole. It is a good idea while you are still learning to always leave a portion (a third or so) of the bin free of any actively decomposing food as a safe space for the worms if you make a mistake elsewhere in the bin.

This also allows you to figure out if a food/type of organic matter will be okay for your red wigglers. You can ask your worms directly by adding some of the food in a small area in the bin. If they don't like it, worst case scenario is that they'll avoid that area and not touch the food. If they swarm it right away, they like it.

Maintaining Stable Conditions

You need to make sure your bin stays aerobic. Organic matter that will contribute to aerobic conditions in any quantity is considered bedding. Other organic matter would be considered food. The majority of your bin should be bedding, or finished worm castings/compost, at any given time. 

Avoid certain types of foods

Generally you'll want to pass on feeding citrus, meat, dairy, spicy foods, salty, greasy, or oily foods. The red wigglers can and will eat these foods, but it may take a longer time for them to do so, and other undesirable organisms might take advantage of the available food in the mean time. 

Bury Food

By covering food with a small amount of bedding (1/2 inch to 1 inch), red wigglers will be protected from any light coming into the bin that would scare them away from the food, the food won't dry out, and it will help hide the food from bugs such as fruit flies.

Fruit and Vegetable Skin

Although you don't need to do this, the worms will be able to eat a watermelon/grape/apple/any fruit with skin much faster if the skin has been punctured or the red wigglers are able to access the "flesh" inside.

Man, that sounds morbid without context. But, when I feed my worms zucchini, for example, I don't just put it in whole. You'll want to expose the inside somehow. Breaking or cutting it in half, cracking it open, or cutting a chunk out of it will greatly decrease the time it takes the worms to eat all of it.

Microbial Populations

The more microbes and more microbial diversity, the better. The microbial population should establish itself after the first few weeks (and is really only a concern as you first start), but you can always improve it/add to it by adding little inoculums of healthy (KEY WORD) soil/organic matter from healthy soils. I often go to parks, forested areas, or healthy garden soils. Just take a small amount of material (half a cup) and toss it in the worm bin. Be aware that you're adding anything else that might be in that handful - like any bugs. This usually isn't a problem because if you're not fostering an environment where bugs will thrive then they will go away, but you might introduce some roly-polys, or springtails, or millipedes that will live alongside your worms in small, normal amounts if your worm bin isn't totally unmanaged.

Avoiding Overfeeding

There are a few things that limit how much food to add at once. You don't want to create anaerobic conditions from excess water, you don't want to start thermophilic (hot) composting, and you don't want to add so much food that the worms can't eat quick enough so other organisms start flourishing on the extra available food. Whenever you make one of these mistakes you can always remove the food you added to help resolve it, and if you are following the practice of only adding food in certain areas of the bin then its an easy fix. Read on to learn more about all of this.

Excess Moisture from Fruit and Vegetable Waste

As you are adding water-rich foods, like fruit/vegetable waste, they will release their water into your bin as they decompose. If too much water is released it can waterlog the bin and create anaerobic conditions. You will eventually need to add more dry bedding to counteract the excess moisture if the bin starts to get too wet.

Overfeeding and Pests

Ideally the red wigglers will be the main macro-organism eating your food. However, if some food waste hasn't been eaten by the worms and there's plenty of excess food that other organisms don't have to try to outcompete the worms to eat, you may start to see mites, mold, or other unsightly (but usually not inherently bad) organisms start to feed on the material. The key is to just provide enough for the worms - as long as you make sure its worm-edible, nothing is going to be able to outcompete the worms. Burying the food of course will help with this.

Overfeeding and Thermophilic Composting

If you add too much food that is too high in nitrogen the rapid microbial growth can cause the material to heat up - which can kill your red wigglers. Be aware of the general Carbon to Nitrogen ratio of the food you're adding. The higher the nitrogen content, the less of it can create heat. In situations where you are feeding them higher nitrogen material (such as coffee grounds with a 20:1), if you add it in small concentrations (only a small amount at a time/spread out more thinly) it will help prevent the heating up effect. Materials like fruit and vegetable waste are usually around 35-40:1 carbon to nitrogen and aren't so prone to heating up unless you have added a lot. If you are following the first step of not adding food throughout the entire bin the negative effects of this will be mitigated though as the worms will just avoid the hot areas - as long as it doesn't heat up the entire bin.

Surface Area

More surface area means more microorganisms can colonize the material and more room where the worms can start to eat. Again, this is not necessary, but will help a lot. You can increase surface area of the food you add by breaking/cutting it apart - most commonly and easily done with a blender.

The Unknown..

If these other things are provided for and the worms aren't eating it, its probably for a good reason. Red wigglers are very tiny but very advanced soil testers. It may be too acidic for them (citrus), too spicy (peppers), or have some chemical - natural or unnatural - that they don't like. Maybe there is some sort of herbicide, or salt, or something on the material. Its hard to say and I would have to leave the detective work up to you to figure out what it may be.

At this point you should be good to go! Follow these principles, maintain aerobic but moist conditions, don't overfeed, and you'll have a stable worm farm taking your trash and giving you treasure for years to come.

And when troubles arise, check out our "Troubleshooting and Maintenance" section!

Happy worming!