This Farm is Juuuust Right
Red wiggler worms can live in a variety of different farms. There’s a more DIY route with 5 gallon buckets or empty tote bins, there are different styles of professional farms that operate on a tiered system, there are more expensive systems that are designed to do a lot of the work for you, and there are different types of outdoor worm farms. All of these systems have advantages and disadvantages, so it’s really all about picking the farm that will work best for your space and budget!
Outdoor Farms
If you have that old, broken mini fridge leftover from college, that would make an excellent outside
worm farm. Since fridges are already designed with insulation, it really helps keep the cold air out and the worms warm inside. The only thing they will need is a mixture of grit and bedding and food to get them through the colder months. You’ll want to avoid checking on them until it starts to get warmer to avoid any accidental casualties!
We also created an outdoor farm out of an old drawer and wooden scrap pieces as a lid. Although it was wrapped in a tarp and leaves, most of the worms inside of it died. Since it is not insulated like the fridge, insulation needs to be externally added, and having a larger population will help them make it through the winter!
DIY Worm Farm
Another type of farm is the make it yourself type. These are usually made with 5 gallon buckets or tote bins. The tote bins are nice because you can fit more worms in there, and you can stack multiple farms on top of each other, so it’s great for saving space. The 5 gallon buckets are smaller and hold less worms overall, but if you have a spacer between your different buckets, you can create your own tiered system. Each bucket can hold about 500 worms while each tote bin can hold around 2,000 worms. If you are using a tote bin farm or a single tiered 5 gallon bucket farm, make sure that you feed your farms on alternate sides to make it easier when it comes time to sift!
Tiered Systems
The next style of worm farms are the professional tiered systems. We have the Worm Factory brand that we tend to use, but they all operate with the same premise. They usually come with a stand, sometimes a small spacer that goes in the bottom and multiple trays to stack on top. These farms are helpful because you can feed your worms by level, creating an organized system. When one of your trays are ready to be sifted, simply feed the next bin down so the worms follow the food. This leaves the bin you are trying to sift with virtually no worms. This style also helps with worm population because you can keep adding more trays, which are available for purchase. We just recently purchased a few Can-O-Worms farms that are also tiered like the one pictured above, but instead of being square it’s a circular design that’s slightly larger.
Professional Farms (Not Tiered)
The last type of farm that we’re going to discuss is the professional tapered systems. These kinds of farms are the most expensive to purchase, but they are the least amount of work. Like all of the other farms, you still need to make sure they have adequate bedding, food and moisture levels in order to thrive, but you don’t have to worry about having a certain way you feed them. Because these are designed with a tapered bottom, the worms will stay up at the top of the farm where there’s more space. Even though worms aren’t very big and are used to burrowing, they hate being in confined spaces. We have a few different styles for these farms. We have the Urban Bag which was the cheaper of the two, but because it’s built on a PVC pipe frame, we were able to expand upwards and have two farms on the same set up. We also recently purchased a Hungry Bin Farm, which is a large farm that stays on the ground. Both have an access point at the bottom which is how you access the vermicompost when it’s sifting time.
If you’re just starting out, there’s no need to go crazy and buy yourself the top of the line worm farm that’s on the market. It’s always best to start small and accessible and work your way up to the larger systems. No matter which option you choose, you can’t go wrong when you’re feeding worms, not landfills!
