Small Farms

If you’ve ever wondered how a worm farm works, here’s the short version of how to start one.  You won’t need acres of farm land.  In fact, you can even start this in your basement.  Of course, if you want to do this large scale to sell at some point, you’ll need more room and more compost.  To start a simple worm farm, the following are the basics:

Worms - use small red worms for your worm farm.  Night crawlers don’t do the job very well.

A large container - wood or plastic is best.  If you’ll be doing this indoors, plastic is best because it will retain moisture.  The basement is best for your worm farm because the worms like to be in a dark environment.  You’ll need a lid, but not an airtight one.  Worms need oxygen to live.

Bedding - aside from compost, worms like newspaper - the black and white pages.  Shred the newspaper by hand or use a paper shredder.  Sprinkle water on the newspaper until it is moist, not sopping wet; too much water will drown your worms.  Spread it around inside the container then add some garden soil (not potting soil).  Add some crushed up egg shells.

Food - worms eat half of their body weight each day.  They like to eat vegetable scraps and starchy foods.  They don’t like citrus, coffe grounds or tea bags.  If you do put any of these particular foods in their container, use more egg shells it will help to balance the soil.  Worms don’t like acidic soil.  The ideal soil pH for worms is 7 to 8.  Don’t feed your worms meat, poultry, dairy or anything with salt.

Temperature - 45 to 85 Fahrenheit

Trowel - you’ll need to use a trowel periodically to aerate the soil.  Carefully dig around in the soil, lifting and turning it over slightly.

Doesn’t sound too hard, does it?  As you can see, the materials you need are few and the end result will be some rich soil to use in your garden or for your indoor plants.  The next step is harvesting the worms or castings, and I’ll cover that in tomorrow’s post!

~~Charlotte

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