Care Guide - Red Wigglers (Earthworms)
Keeping earthworms is fun for kids and can be useful for composting! Here are our tips for raising a colony of red wiggler worms.
Habitat
Red wigglers get along easily and the amount you can have in a habitat varies based on the size of your worm bin. If you have a small bin, around 5 gallons, you can start with about 500 worms. If you have a larger bin (ours is 17 gallons), you can get 1000-2000 worms. It is better to start with a lower amount in case they have trouble adjusting to their habitat and try to escape. Red wigglers are fast breeders and self regulate, which means they can speed up or slow down their breeding so that they do not overpopulate the bin. They do this by figuring out how much food is available in the space.
When you get your worm bin, you should drill holes in the lid and at the top of the sides of the bin for ventilation. You should drill holes in the bottom for drainage in case of excess water. You should put in enough shredded cardboard to fill up half the bin. You can put in soil as well (not potting mix) but it is not necessary. Dampen the cardboard just enough so that when you squeeze it no water drips from it. Worms need moisture but not too much! You do not want your cardboard to be soggy.
Worms will slowly break the cardboard down over time, so you do not need to replace it too often. The cardboard soaks up extra moisture which is important because worms can drown if there is too much water. The cardboard is also a great source of carbon to balance out the nitrogen that worms produce when they break down the food waste. You should use cardboard that has no colored ink. We recommend toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, and egg cartons. We rip them into pieces about the size of a penny.
Diet
We recommend ½ lb of food per day per pound of worm weight. Not all worms like the same food, so be aware of what your worms are finishing and what they are leaving behind (ours do not like artichoke leaves). Basically, almost everything that is organic (not processed) is ok for worms. These are things like fruit and vegetable scraps. We freeze our compost ahead of time when it is fresher, before it gets too rotted or moldy.
However, worms cannot eat acidic or spicy foods. This includes any citrus, tomatoes and peppers. It is also recommended that you don't put onions or garlic scraps in the bin, as they can make the bin smell, which will attract unwanted visitors to your worm bin. Worms can eat stems and pits, but the harder they are the longer it takes for them to break them down. Additionally, do not put anything in the bin that is too oily, such as avocados.
One important addition for the worm bin is egg shells! Grind your egg shells as fine as you can. The shells are grit for the worms, which help them break down the food as the shells act as little teeth (which worms don’t have!).
Behavior
Earthworms are harmless and can be held by kids. Red wigglers are relatively small, but not too fast. They can be a bit messy due to living in dirt/shredded cardboard and eating food scraps, but this mess can be easily contained in the bin.
Worms produce castings, which is a fancy word for worm poop. These castings are full of nitrogen and act as a natural fertilizer so they are a great addition to your garden if you have one! The castings look like soil, so you can remove them from the bin when you start to notice an amount pile up. We suggest checking for castings after about a month when you first get the bin. To remove the castings, sift them through the cardboard. Be sure to not lose any worms in the process! The babies can be very small.
What you’ll need
Plastic bin with lid (5 to 20 gallons depending on how many worms you want to keep)
Drill to make ventilation holes
Cardboard, paper towel rolls, egg cartons, etc.
Dirt with NO fertilizer (optional)
Egg shells
Fruit and vegetable scraps
