New Bin - How much do I feed them?

[Darryl]

The amount of food scraps fed to worms can be confusing (it was for me) to new worm herders. After all, most books talk in weight and poundage but often times a beginner does not have scales or any other visible guide to show them "about" how much food to feed to their new stock of worms. Also, how much you begin feeding them also depends upon how many worms you started out with. For explantion, let's assume that you start with a pound of composting worms. For a pound of worms it would be good to start with maybe a full cupful of food scraps, maybe slightly more. Lift up some of the bedding material and bury the scraps in one of the corners of your bin (assuming you are using a bin). Each day lift the bedding where you buried the food to see if any worms are where the food is at. The amount of time that it takes for worms to start feeding on the food varies but they should start feeding within several days. Once you see worms start to congregate in the food, then you need to feed them again. Do NOT wait for the food to be completely eaten before you feed. I made the mistake of always waiting for the food to get eaten before I fed them again. This resulted in me actually not feeding my worms enough food and because of it my worms never reproduced very fast. When you feed them the second time, bury the new cupful of food in a different corner of the bin. Each day check on the new area where you placed the second feeding and as soon as you start to notice a number of worms where you placed the food, then feed in another corner for the third time. Keep repeating this process and feed them slightly more food when you have noticed that most of the food from previous feedings has been consumed. Instead of a cupful try maybe 1 1/2 cupfuls and when you see that they have eaten most of it, then go to 2 cups. Slowly increase the amount of food that you feed to them and don't suddenly increase the food from say one cup to eight cups. If you overfeed your worms your bin will start to stink, and even worse, bad bacteria will form that will kill your worms. However, if you slowly increase the food that you feed them then your chances of overfeeding them are slim. If say, you start a new bin out with 3 pounds of worms instead of a pound, then start with 3 cups of food instead of one and go from there. It takes time, experience and patience to get the hang of worming but you will soon get better at feeding your worms. Of course, these are just general guidlines because there is no rule as to how much to feed your worms. Every bin will process slightly differently. There are lots of variables in a bin system such as the type of bedding you are using, the type of feed, and other conditions that determine how fast worms will consume food. However, this guidline will help any beginners to know about how much to start feeding their worms from day one and get them off to a good start.

[betho]

Oh great, I needed this today, was going to feed for the 2nd time. So if you recommend to feed a cup and then say 3 days later they are congregating to that food so you feed another cup in a different spot, then you wait until they've consumed most of cup 1 and feed them another cup? Just wanna make sure I get this right, I just waste so much in kitchen scraps and cringe when it goes into the trash so I want to have them multiplying as quick as possible, could only afford 1# right now.

[Darryl]

Bethany, a good way for beginners to feed their worms is by feeding in the corners (if you have a square bin) and feed in a clockwise direction. Start with any corner, then on the next feeding go to a corner that is next to the corner you just fed.

Regarding when to feed...... What I mentioned in the first post was to try starting out by feeding them a cup of scraps (if you started with a pound of worms). Once you see quite a few worms wiggling around in the food, then you can feed your second feeding in a corner where you have not yet fed them. As soon as you feed them the second feeding, you can forget all about the first feeding for the time being. After you feed them their second feeding you will want to be paying attention to the food from the second feeding. After about three days or so, when you have noticed quite a few worms feeding on the second feeding, then you can feed them their third feeding. You can then forget all about the food in their second feeding. Once you have fed them their third feeding in a new corner of the bin, then in a few days you should again see the worms start to gather in the third feeding. Once that happens feed them their fourth feeding in the last corner where food has never been placed yet. Now here comes the trickier part..... After you have fed them their fourth feeding, you simply watch the food in the area of the fourth feeding just like you have been doing. When you notice the worms starting to feed on the food in their fourth feeding, then you should check the areas where you fed your first, second, and third feedings. Most all of the food in those areas should be gone, or close to gone. If it is, then on your fifth feeding, you can slightly increase the amount of food, say to 1 1/2 cups.... If however there is still lots of food in those areas then you should wait for a few day until you see a large portion of it get consumed in those areas before you feed them the fifth feeding. Also if that happens, you should not yet increase the amount of food that you feed them.

One of the problems I had when I started worming is that I fed them solid scraps and it caused me to misread the amount of food that they were eating. Don't get me wrong as there is nothing wrong with feeding your worms solid scraps. However, some solid food scraps are hard and don't decompose very quickly. Because of that fact some of your solid scraps may not get eaten within a few days so you may wrongly assume that your worms are not eating very much food, so you may decide to back off on the amount you feed them. However the truth of the situation would probably be that your worms are hungry but they can't feed very quickly on the hard food scraps. Personally, I elect to blenderize all of my food scraps as it helps the worms quickly consume the food scraps.... Just my personal preference.

[betho]

This helps a lot. I did notice they were eating my rotten fruit a lot quicker than the potato chunks I first fed them! I am getting a food processor soon and so I think I'll be able to blend the food at that point. Right now I keep the food in a coffee can in the fridge. Should I just be leaving it out? Or should I just blend it as I feed?

[not signed in]

Hi betho. I freeze mine it helps with the plant cell break down. The only draw back is you have to defrost and drain if you have small bins. makes it nice and soft for the worms. Then i precompost in 45 gal digestor and wait a week and feed works well but you can down size to a coffee can. The freezing really helps. You dont have to use the digestor.

[theinfamousj]

Guest, you don't actually have to defrost and drain. When I freeze, I divide it into food-units and freeze them in separate (grocery store) bags. Then, I just dump the creative icecube into the bin and cover it with bedding. The worms avoid the freezing foods until it defrosts on its own, and the excess moisture, if there is any, helps keep the moisture levels up in my bin.

So far no problems. Though they do group to the non-frozen foods faster.

[Darryl]

Bethany, you can go about feeding them whichever way works best for you. Vermicomposting, and worm farming are the types of things that require lots of "experience". Now don't get me wrong because all of the facts, literature, books and forums help and are valuable. However, lots of the things you will discover can only come from experience and feeding is an aspect of vermicomposting that you will gain knowledge in as you practice doing it. Also, another thing to realize is that techniques usually need to change as time passes. For example, you may blend food scraps for 1 or two bins without problems but what happens if you ever get lots more bins? Then you may have to switch to a large grinder or other device that can grind lots of scraps at a time. So, the way you do things today may not be the way you do things tomorrow. However, for now with a small number of worms, then blenderizing is an excellent choice. You may have to add small amounts of water to the scraps as you blend them in order to get them to blend properly so just be careful not to get too carried away with the water. As was already mentioned, you can freeze your scraps. Personally, I never freeze scraps. I have performed many experiments with bins and I have noticed that composting worms quickly attack food that has been sitting out for extended periods. Of course, like just about everything else in vermicomposting, there are both positives and negatives to this method. The negatives are that leaving food out attracts pests and fruit flies. However, you can minimize this effect by the use of good containers with tight lids. Also I blenderize my food BEFORE I put it into containers to sit out. Then, whenever I feel like blending up some more food, I can then add it to the blended food that is already in the container. The more of a variety of food that you can feed your worms, then the better the vermicompost is going to be. Suppose that one day you blend up some rotten bananas and you throw the blended food into a container. Then the next day you may blend up tomatos and then you can add the blended tomatoes to the blended bananas in the container and stir them together. Simply keep adding things to that container and before long you will have quite a variety of substances in there. Yes, it's gross and discusting but the worms will love it. I use large 5 gallon buckets with airtight lids to store my blended food scraps in. You can leave food scraps or food puree sitting in containers without lids but you will quickly get fruit flies and other pests. So containers with airtight lids work good for this purpose. Or, you can also blend food each time you feed them. However, I leave my puree sit out so that it gets full of all kinds of bacteria/yeasts. The funkier it looks the faster my worms seem to dive into it.

theinfamousj, you made a good point about not defrosting the food. This would especially work great for areas where ambient temps are high.

[Jay Blair]

theinfamousj said:

Guest, you don't actually have to defrost and drain. When I freeze, I divide it into food-units and freeze them in separate (grocery store) bags. Then, I just dump the creative icecube into the bin and cover it with bedding. The worms avoid the freezing foods until it defrosts on its own, and the excess moisture, if there is any, helps keep the moisture levels up in my bin.

So far no problems. Though they do group to the non-frozen foods faster.

This also helps control bin overheating when combined with aeration of the bins.