Worm Bin – Cheap & Easy Compost

Well, our worm bin was VERY cheap & easy because our brother-in-law gave it to us! But I did watch the process and am pretty sure it was relatively cheap and easy for him, too.

You need:
1. a plastic (dark, not clear) 5 gallon container
2. red worms
3. newspaper, dirt and (optional) dry leaves
4. something to poke holes in the bottom of the bin

Shred the newspaper into 1-inch strips, put it in a bucket with water & add leaves. Dump this into the bin (into which you have poked several drainage holes in the bottom), and dirt and mix it all together. The dirt is important because the worms need grit to be able to digest everything else. (We skipped adding dirt because ours is from an already-established bin and there was compost as well as broccoli in the bin).

Put the bin somewhere out of the way, where you don’t mind worm drainage, where it is cool and dark. Ours is outside under the deck for now; in winter we will have to bring it inside because the type of worms used are tropical and would not survive the cold. Set it on bricks or scrap lumber, something to keep it a few inches off the ground so that it can drain. Don’t put it too far from the kitchen, though, because you’ll want to add food scraps regularly.

Now just remember to feed the worms…any vegetable matter, fruit, coffee ground & tea bags. NO meat, dairy or oil. When you add the scraps, bury them; this will cut down on the chances of having stinky rotten food scraps in a pile on top that would attract fruit flies. “The size of box and amount of worms are deciding factors for how much food should be put in the box. Remember the 2:1 ratio for worms. Two pounds of worms is needed for one pound of food per 24 hours. The surface area of the box should be 7 square feet if 7 pounds of waste in one week is consumed.”

The worms will break down the scraps and make very rich compost. We plan to use this to make “compost tea” which is a liquid fertilizer that has extracted the nutrients from the compost. Except that, as explained here, what many people call compost “tea” is really just compost extract. I’m not sure how much better the “tea” is than the “extract” but we’re pretty much just going to soak the compost in water for a few days and go with whatever we get, no aerators involved.