Invite some of your worm friends over to your brand new worm hotel! Create a living ecosystem called a vermicomposter and learn how worms can speed up the composting process of the vegetable and fruit scraps from your kitchen — making rich, natural fertilizer for your garden.

Activity Type:

Project

Age:

7 years old (with adult supervision) to adult

What You Need:

• 3 x 2-gallon or 5-gallon pails

• 1 x lid for a pail

• Drill & drill bits (1/8” & 1/4” )

• Red wiggler worms

• Newspaper

• Carbon-based material — cardboard, wood chippings, grass clippings, or recycled egg cartons

• Food scraps

• Water in a spray bottle

• Optional: a small amount of garden soil, gardening gloves, screen material, erasable marker.

What You Do:

Step #1

Using a drill and 1/8” drill bit, drill holes into the sides of two of the pails. Spread out the holes from top to bottom and all around. This helps provide aeration for your vermicomposter.

Step #2

In your third bucket, drill holes that are 6 inches from the top of the bucket. Keep all holes above the 6-inch mark and don’t drill any lower than that. This is where any liquid will be caught at the bottom of the vermicompost. Add the lid to the bucket and drill air holes into it as well. (Approximately 20-30 holes)

Step #3

With the ¼” drill bit, make 15 to 20 holes into the bottom of the first two pails (NOT the liquid catching bottom pail). Remove any dangling plastic pieces from the holes and empty all the plastic bits from the pails. When completed, put one of the pails into the liquid catching pail. This is your first working pail for the vermicomposter.

Step #4

In the first working pail, cover the holes in the bottom with 2 sheets of newspaper to cover the holes and spritz lightly with water. Do not soak, only moisten! This is to allow liquid to go through to the bottom pail but prevent worms from falling into the bottom pail.

Add Two Sheets Of Newsprint To The Bottom

Step #5

Add shredded newspaper and other carbon-based material to create bedding for the worms. This helps keep the temperature and moisture levels at the right spot for your vermicompost.

Shredded Newspaper In The Vermicomposter

Step #6

Add the worms, also add the bedding and casting (compost) that the worms came in.

Step #7

Add a very small amount of food scraps and cover with carbon material. Allow the worms to adjust to their new surroundings for about a week before adding more scraps.

Store your worm hotel in a room temperature, darker location such as under the kitchen sink or in a laundry room. Make sure to put the lid on tight. Optional: You can add the screen material to the lid to help prevent flies/bugs from entering your vermicomposter.

Step #8

After a week or so, you are ready to start adding scraps regularly. Make sure to add the right kinds of foods and not too much at one time. When adding scraps, dig a small trench on one side, add scraps and cover with more bedding or carbon-based material. Avoid using dirt for this (but it is suitable in a pinch). Leave for 1 to 2 weeks until all the scraps are processed. If they are not processed in 1 or 2 weeks, you have overfed your worms. When adding more scraps, add to the other side of the bucket and move around the spot you add the food scraps.

Step #9

As the worms start to process your kitchen scraps, they will produce more and more castings (compost). As the containers starts to fill, it is time to add the 3rd and final pail to your vermicomposter.

Step #10

Add the third pail on top of the vermicomposter. Add some carbon rich shredded newspaper to the bottom, spritz with water, add scraps and more newspaper, wood chippings (small amount), egg carton or shredded cardboard.

Step #11

The worms will work their way up into the new working layer of your vermicompost over time and leave all the castings in the first working layer to be harvested. You can add a fourth bucket in time and rotate the 3rd and 4th buckets for easy harvesting.

Reaping The Rewards:

You will end up with liquid in the bottom bucket, called “worm tea”, this liquid is an amazing fertilizer. Dilute the worm liquid with water and use in your indoor plants and garden. Mix your worm castings (processed food, worm poo!) into your vegetable soil and see how great your yields are.

Tips For Best Results

Do not use meats, bones, processed foods, dairy, spicy foods, highly acidic, oily, or non-foods in your bucket, and minimize grains. Stick to vegetables and fruit as well as things like coffee grounds, tea leaves, and blended eggshells for grit and texture.

Cutting your scraps into smaller pieces helps speed up composting time and is better for smaller buckets.

Your compost bin will not smell if you are feeding them the right types and amounts of scraps, but if you do find there is a smell, then the microorganisms in your vermicompost have gone from aerobic to anaerobic, and adding more carbon rich scraps, such as shredded newspaper should help return the microorganisms return to an aerobic state

Keep your vermicompost in a place in your home that is darker most of the time (laundry room/crawl space/cupboard) and in a temperature of 13 to 25 degrees Celsius. If it is too cold or too hot, your worms will slow down their consumption. Ideal Moisture: 60-70% moisture is ideal, if too soggy add more carbon-based material. Spritz with water if you think the vermicompost is too dry.

Taking It Further:

Vermicomposting – the use of worms to convert organic waste into fertilizer.

Compost Castings - a convoluted mass of soil, mud, or sand thrown up by an earthworm or lugworm on the surface after passing through the worm's body. Castings are also known as vermicast, worm manure or worm poo.

As the worms eat through the compost in the worm bucket, the leftover worm waste(castings) is an optimal soil enricher. Red wiggler worms are the best choice for quickly converting food scraps into fertile compost and can eat about half of their weight in food every day. Tiny sensory cells in their mouths alert the worms when they have found the more nutritious scraps. When food enters the mouth, the pharynx acts as a suction pump to pull the food into the digestive tract. It travels through the esophagus, into the crop. After the food has been crushed in the gizzard, it travels to the intestine. The intestine takes up most of the length of the worm. This is where nutrients are absorbed. At the end of the worm is the anus. Dark, earthy material called “worm castings” are excreted. Worm castings are alive with soil-friendly bacteria and valuable nutrients.