The art of making a worm bed is really simple. Having one comes in handy when you get the notion to suddenly go fishing. You will have worms right there ready for you. Also, the worms can make a great soil which is good for putting in pots or even spreding in the garden. The soil from worms can be real rich and makes your plants thrive in them.
Finding a container might be the hard part. Find something that won’t attract a lot of heat for summer time conditions. If it’s made of metal, then it might draw too much heat, which will be bad for the worms. Also will make you water your warms more.
If you have a 5 gallon plastic bucket, that will work great. To start off, just add a little bit of grass and leaves to it. Then add a small portion of dirt, just enough to cover the grass and leaves up. Then sprinkle in some table scraps. Don’t use any meats or cheeses. Just use your fruits, vegetables, and bread products and it will do great. Then add some more dirt to your mixture, filling the 5 gallon bucket about 1/3 full.
Now your ready for some worms! Just go to your favorite spots for getting or finding them. Look for cool, shaded areas that stay damp. Also, after a rain the worms will generally come to the top of the ground, and finding them this way is easy too. No hurries and spending all day looking for your worms. Yes, the more you have the quicker your worm bed can get started, but it’s ok if you only find a few. Just throw them in the bucket, and look for more later. Going back to the places you find them every 2 or 3 days is a good idea. They are a ton of worms in the ground, and when you take some out, others will come replace them in a couple of days. Afterall, the first worms were there cause the conditions was right for a worm.
Now once you have spent some time collecting worms. It’s important that you continue to add table scraps and dirt to your bucket. Just small portions of table scraps and dirt as you go. No need to rush the process. Once you get your bucket close to the top, then you will have a good supply of worms. You will also have some great dirt in there, considering you have at least 50 worms in the bucket, and have had this project going on more than 3 weeks. It’s fine if you have hundreds of worms too. Once you do get near the top, and 3 weeks has passed. It’s time to change your dirt out. Use your worm dirt for the flower pots and garden.
Go get some fresh dirt, grass, leaves, and table scraps and mix them up. This time you want to fill the bucket half way up. Just depending on the amount of worms you have. If you have more than 200 worms, consider filling the bucket up 3/4 full. Once you have the new dirt in, just add the rest of the dirt and table scraps about 1 week later. After you have waited 1 week on filling your 2nd bucket up with dirt. Then you have got a successful communtity of worms and you now have plenty to go fishing with.
You can then think about adding a 2nd container to help control the population, or just keep some of the worms out every time you change your dirt. Changing your dirt in a 5 gallon bucket every 2 weeks with a full colony of worms is a good idea. Use the dirt from them, and keep them happy with new dirt. Now worms will stress just a bit on these changes, and it does hurt the reproduction process slightly. So try to ease them in and out , with not much disturbance. It’s ok to keep some of the old dirt in there when changing it out. Good luck on your next worm bed, and have some fun with it!
