Building and Maintaining a Simple Worm Bin

Feeding your garden with natural fertilizer may just start with you building and maintaining a simple worm bin.

red wiggler worms and worm bin with compost and bananas

When I decided that I wanted to try my hand at gardening I did a lot of research on the internet – watching YouTube videos and reading blogs. I thought it would be best to build an outdoor compost bin and worm bin first to set the foundation for my gardening journey. To this day, it was still a good decision in my opinion.

woman working on soil in raised garden bed

COMPOST, THE FOUNDATION OF GARDENING

Healthy soil is the foundation to any successful garden. Compost would become the source of maintaining my garden’s soil health. Another plus, is that I would no longer feel guilty for throwing away compostable items like food scraps, leaves in the yard, and much more.

woman placing food scraps in outdoor compost bin

Since we already built our outdoor compost bin, it was time to purchase beloved red wiggler worms and learn about vermicoposting next. I aspired to create a little urban homestead, so it felt like I was about to purchase my very first little livestock (worms!) to begin our homesteading journey. With some form of “livestock,” we could then actually say that we were creating an “urban homestead.” Compared to real livestock like cows and chickens, my little worm babies would require much less space, food to eat, and be the most low maintenance living beings to contribute to the well being of our urban garden.

PICKING UP WORMS AT A LOCAL WORM RANCH

I had pre-ordered a half pound of red wiggler worms and then patiently waited to receive the email that they were ready for pick up. It was exciting as we made our way to the worm ranch, Texas Worm Ranch, a local Dallas worm ranch or what I also like to call a “worm farm.”

One of the workers allowed me to tour a bit of their operations of how they harvest vermicompost (or better yet known as~ worm poo!) from their red wiggler worms. He also showed me what a worm cocoon looked like and how to identify them as they reproduce in their little bin home I created for them.

This was a really fascinating experience and I knew that I would learn a lot from these special creatures. I’m proud to say that I’ve officially been a worm mom for over three years and my worm babies still bring me so much joy! If you are on the fence about getting worms, my two cents~ just do it! They are such a great way to learn about sustainability, gardening, and healthy soil in general.

BUILDING A SIMPLE WORM BIN

I was able to get Nate’s help to prepare my worm bin for the red wigglers. We purchased plastic bins from Walmart and Nate drilled holes throughout the bottom, sides, and lid for the worms to be able to breathe inside their new home.

man holding up plastic bin with holes drilled all around it

Materials & Tools We Used

Plastic Bin: We bought a simple black tote at Walmart for a reasonable price. You can get one around the same size or even smaller. The worms will only populate the bin based on the size they are given. They are smart about that and will not overpopulate a smaller bin. But, if you want them to populate more for more vermicompost, then get a larger bin!
Cordless Drill: This tool was used to drill holes throughout the plastic bin to give the worm babies oxygen in their new home.
Compost: We purchased our compost from a local facility. You may be able to find something similar in your area. I hope so! I’m really glad they recycle our local yard waste into compost for our gardens. Or just visit your local garden store for compost as well! We’ve done this too.
Leaves: You can find these in your yard or neighbors yard. We don’t have many trees in our yard so are not able to collect as much on our own. One thing we did was ask our neighbors if we could take the leaves they placed in bags in front of their house for pick up to use for our garden. We never had anyone say no to that!

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Since we previously built an outdoor compost bin and it was partially finished through our layering method, I thought it would be good to have the worms finish the compost. Then they would also have a new home full of our very own homemade organic compost. So, I started to fill their home (plastic bin with drilled holes around it) with our unfinished compost.

woman holding plastic bin full of compost

The unfinished compost contained layers of organic food scraps, leaves, grass clippings, paper cardboard from toilet paper rolls, and coffee grinds (from a local cafe). It was really cool to see our food scraps like the avocado peeling starting to break down.

It also felt like the compost needed a bit of water. I’ve read that the materials (“bedding”) inside a worm bin should be as wet as a damp sponge. That seemed to be about right. However, in my experience, I’ve noticed that you really don’t need to make it as wet. That just by adding food scraps is sufficient enough.

It took me some time to find the right balance of how wet or dry the bin needed to be and how much I actually needed to feed the worms. They really don’t need much food and take a while to finish up a handful of scraps. I’ve been feeding them once a week and that has been working out well. That is another reason I thought it would be good to also have an outdoor composting bin. Since we create a lot of food scraps throughout the week and there was no way we would be able to dump that in the worm bin.

LAYERING THE WORM BIN

This is how I decided to layer my worm bin. First, add the bedding materials of unfinished compost. Then add some finished organic compost. I bought mine from a local composting facility, but you can also buy some at any gardening store. I have been doing that more recently. Create a small hole in the compost on one end of the bin to place the food scraps in. Place the worms next to the food scraps. Then cover the food scraps and worms with remaining compost. Finally place leaves on top of the bin as their covering.

After a week goes by, check to see if it’s time to feed them again. I add their food scraps on the other side of the worm bin. That makes them have to travel from one end of the bin to the other to get their food. I wonder if that would be considered~ worm exercise?! This gives them the ability to compost the entire bin. I added a bit of water to the bin the first time I created it. But after that, never had to.

If there is too much water or food in the bin, it can make it slimy and moldy. And sometimes the humidity in the bin can cause the worms to crawl up the sides and to the top of the bin. That concerned me at first, but then I would just place them back in their bedding and try to the keep the bin more dry. When it’s more dry there is no moisture or condensation for them to really enjoy crawling around the sides it seems.

There you have it! Your very first worm bin. I hope you enjoy caring for worms as much as I have and still do!

Side note~ After time, I stopped using unfinished compost from our outdoor composting bin. Since the outdoor bin attracts more bugs. I ended up having more critters in my worm bin because of that. That’s ok for the outdoors, but was not feeling it indoors!

Ezekiel 17:8

It was planted in good soil by many waters, to bring forth branches,
bear fruit, and become a majestic vine.

red wiggler worms and worm bin with food scraps

CHECK OUT OUR VIDEOS

Thanks for joining us on this journey! We hope that you will find inspiration watching us learn as we go while we’re attempting to renovate and rebuild this old small historic cottage mostly on our own~ while working full time jobs! Stay tuned for more progress updates ahead. Read more about us here.

You can also watch a video about this here.