It's not only shredded paper your worms will love, they will enjoy many other forms of paper too. Chuck in your paper towels, paper packaging, cardboard, toilet rolls etc.
Paper and cardboard are a great cure all in the worm farm. Add equal amounts off paper or cardboard to the amount food scraps you are adding – this keeps the carbon content up and your farm light and airy.
Items you cannot compost in a worm bin:
Onions and garlic (a good rule of thumb is if it makes you smell, it makes your worm bin smell) Meat, fats, grease, bones or oils (no butter, lard, stocks, soups, etc) Plastics and plastic coated paper (like glossy magazines)
For most households, the most easy-to-find source of worm bedding will be paper and cardboard, which will need to be shredded and soaked.
Hi Al – the short answer is YES. You can definitely add materials like this to your worm bin. In fact they can be really helpful in terms of absorbing moisture and helping to keep the carbon to nitrogen ratio in the bin balanced.
Tea Bags: Yes! The tea bags will start to break down in the worm bin, and the worms will finish off the contents. The string and paper tab might not break down as quickly. You can rip them off before saving a tea bag.
Banana peels are an excellent worm food.
Be certain you are using dechlorinated water for your worm bin. City drinking water from your tap often contains chlorine, which can be harmful to your worms.
Over-Feeding Causes Odors
The worms' job is to eat the food before it gets super-rotten and stinky. If you add too much food at a time, they cannot keep up. Too much food can also push the air out of the bin, leading to foul-smelling anaerobic decomposition.
After worms are added, bedding should be kept moist but not soggy and the top 6 to 8 inches turned every 7 to 10 days to keep it loose. About every 6 to 9 months the old bedding should be replaced with properly prepared new bedding. To change bedding, remove the top 5 or 6 inches (where most of the worms are).
Yes, in moderation, bread, and in fact, all grain based foods, are worthy of your worms' processing power. Stale bread remains just as full of nutrients and building blocks for worm growth as the fresh stuff. However, these starchy foods can end up a gooey mess.
Put your daily newspaper to good use after it's read by using it as a worm blanket! To ensure it's breathable, simply fold 1-2 layers of the newspaper to the size of your worm farm and you have the perfect blanket.
When do I add the bedding? When you start your worm bin, and at each harvest time, fill or top off the bin to about three-fourths full with damp- ened bedding. Add a few handfuls of garden soil to provide bacteria and grit to help worm digestion. Maintain a 2- to 3-inch layer of dampened bedding at all times.
Avoid white office paper and printer paper, and newspapers with colored ink, junk mail, and envelopes that plastic windows – these will hurt your worms.
Worms hate: meat or fish, cheese, butter, greasy food, animal waste, spicy and salty foods, citrus.” The food-to-worm ratio is not precise, nor is the amount of castings they will produce. The rule of thumb is that a pound of worms will eat one to two pounds of food in a week.
Foods that Composting Worms Love
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. They especially love the fruit.
Worms love to eat coffee grounds, and that's great news for your garden. Add coffee grounds to your compost pile to help attract worms, which help speed up the process of turning food scraps into compost. You can also add coffee grounds directly to the soil, but you'll have to be careful not to overdo it.
As an added bonus, the worms also like shredded paper. “Vermicomposting is a great way to get rid of your junk mail. Just shred it and put it in the bin at feeding time,” he said. “Vermicomposting also is good for the environment because the worms eat a lot of what you would typically just toss in the trash.
Once every week, pour about five litres of fresh water into the Top Working Tray, which will flood down through the lower trays, ensuring the entire worm farm remains very moist. The sudden 'flood' will not harm the worms. Adding water is especially important in the hotter months of the year.
Worms can eat away food scraps in a matter of days when in the right conditions. Compost bins are great for those with bigger gardens and lawns. A healthy compost bin likes a combination of food scraps, lawn clippings and leaves.
Worms want an environment that is about 75 percent water. Newspapers should only take a few minutes to take up enough water to make proper bedding. Allow cardboard, such as toilet paper rolls and tissue boxes, to soak overnight. Don't use garden soil or mix fresh cow, horse, or chicken manure into the bedding.
Grass clippings are a great addition to a traditional compost pile and worms will eat these as well in their natural setting, but in your vermicomposting system, they will heat up the soil and can kill all of your worms.