DIY Wormthrough

Make Your Own Worm Home

Vermicomposting is such a great and easy hobby for anyone to start! With just a bit of space and a few tools, you could begin worm farming and harvesting your very own black gold. If you already have a compost bin for your kitchen, the food scraps you put in there will be able to go right into your worm farm.

What You’ll Need:

•        5 gallon bucket- 2 to 3 of them
•        A drill with a 3/32 bit for the lid and 3/16 bit for the bottom holes
•        A lid
•        Newspaper shredding/paper shreds/cardboard
•        Coffee grounds/ coconut core/ soil (any will do)
•        Optional: Circular saw or something you can cut plastic with and safety goggles

 Instructions:

Step 1: Drill some holes in the bottom and sides of one of your 5 gallon buckets. The bottom holes are for drainage and the holes around the side are for air flow. 

Step 2: Drill some holes in your lid. This also helps with air flow. 

Step 3- Optional: If you have three 5 gallon buckets, you can use one of those as a spacer. This step is not required, but it really helps for checking on the worms and keeps your bottom bucket from being completely submerged. To make the spacer, all you do is cut the bucket about a quarter of the way down from the top so you have the ring as one piece and the bottom of the bucket as another. Make sure you wear your safety glasses!

Step 4: Place the bucket without holes on the bottom, followed by the top spacer piece, then the bucket with the holes. This is now your assembled worm farm!

Step 5: Now that your farm is assembled it’s time to set up the inside! Using mostly paper shreds or any of the other bedding materials, fill your top bucket about half full. 

Step 6: Mix in your grit. This is the coconut core, or old coffee grounds or even soil. You want to include some of this because it really helps with their digestion. 

Step 7: Add your worms! If you don’t have food to give them right away, they will eat the newspaper and coffee grounds. They just won’t be happy about it. If you have a kitchen compost bin, that is the kind of food they like. Old fruits and vegetables, rotten produce, even veggie peels will all work. They like it when it’s chopped up nice and small since they can eat it faster, but you don’t have to feed them that. 

 

That’s all it takes to have your very own worm farm! Most of these materials you can get for free, so it’s such a great project. Our favorite part is seeing all of the food waste they can eat once the population starts growing. If you garden, the vermicompost is amazing for plants as well. We hope that some of you have found this to be informative and helpful in building your own worm farms!