Whether you’re using your worms for fishing or gardening, taking care of your colonies is a vital aspect of maintaining a healthy, long-lasting wormery. With the right care, your earthworm population will double in size every two to three months and provide you with a lifetime of bait and compost.
Feeding Your Earthworms
Earthworms can eat half their weight in food every day, which makes them excellent composters. At the beginning of your wormery, you’ll want to limit feeding to best preserve your worm population. Adding more food than your worm population can handle will cause excess food to putrefy and cause an unpleasant smell.
Start with around a yoghurt cup full of scraps a week to begin and increase proportionally to the number of worms as the population increases. As for what to feed your worms, they really like the following:
• melon
• carrots
• squash
• tomatoes
• banana
• apples
• pumpkins
• cucumber
• berries
In moderation, worms will also eat:
• onion
• garlic
• citrus peel
But try and limit these foods, as they can irritate the worm’s skin.
Housing Your Earthworms
The ideal habitat for worms is easy to maintain once you’ve got the hang of it. Try and keep your worm habitat at 15-25C and sheltered from strong winds and rain.
Maintaining Moisture Levels
Worms do best in damp conditions – not too wet, and not too dry. Compare it to the moisture levels of a wrung-out flannel. If it’s too dry, mist the wormery with water. If it’s too wet, add more cardboard and paper to absorb the moisture. Your worms will thank you by thriving!