When I first started vermicomposting nine years ago, I had no idea what to feed Red Wiggler compost worms. I read books and researched best practices and then it was a matter of trial and error over the years.
For the last few years we’ve had a system in place for what to feed our Red Wiggler compost worms for happy, healthy vermicomposting worm bins!
Red Wiggler composting worms are the ultimate recyclers. You can feed them a wide variety of organic matter and they will process it into amazing compost, or what some folks call “Gardener’s Gold”.
Once you get your worm bin set up and get your Red Wiggler composting worms, it’s important to keep a regular feeding schedule to keep a happy, healthy worm bin.
It’s also important to not overfeed the composting worms. Read this explanation of how much food composting worms can consume to avoid the mistake of overfeeding your Red Wigglers.
Before you know it, you’ll be harvesting beautiful compost from your worm bins!
Feeding Red Wiggler Composting Worms When Vermicomposting
The food we feed our composting worms is very important since adding harmful foods can cause problems in your worm bin.
I strive to feed our composting worms only organic, non GMO food scraps since ultimately the compost they make will be used in our gardens.
It’s best to tear or chop the food into small pieces since it will speed up the process for the Red Wigglers to turn it into compost.
The best foods to feed Red Wiggler composting worms are:
-Compostable paper products like newspaper, non-shiny paper, and paper egg cartons
-Leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach, kale, and chard
-Coffee grounds, spent tea leaves and tea bags with biodegradable bags
-Non-Citrus fruit scraps, rinds, pulp, peels and cores
-Washed and crumbled egg shells
-Raw non-acidic or non-spicy vegetables like cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkin, carrots etc
-Cooked vegetables (with no sauces, salt or fat)
-Unsweetened cereal, pasta, rice and crackers that are not heavily salted or sweetened
What NOT to Feed Red Wiggler Composting Worms
There are very specific foods you should not feed your Red Wiggler composting worms. You don’t want to take a chance of harming the worms or having them decide to bail out and escape your worm bin like we had happen when we first started out!
Composting worms don’t like to eat these:
-Citrus fruit and citrus rinds
-Garlic, onion, shallots and leeks
-All varieties of peppers but especially the spicy ones!
-Salty foods
-Dairy products
-Meat products
-Fats, oils, sauces, salad dressings
-Shiny paper like magazines or some store ads
How we Feed our Red Wiggler Composting Worms
We feed our composting worms about once per week. I keep a big plastic 64 ounce yogurt tub in the cabinet under our sink (I saved up a couple of these handy tubs over the years since we don’t get them very often because we make homemade yogurt).
A lot of our food scraps are fed to our chickens but the following foods are placed into the worm food tub on a regular basis:
-Every day we make coffee, the coffee grounds go into the plastic container.
-When I make loose leaf tea or homemade chai, the spent tea leaves and herbs go into the worm food container.
-When we make a big batch of our favorite kale chips about once a month, the tough stalks the chickens don’t like are broken into pieces and put into the worm food tub.
-Fruit and vegetable skins like apple and cucumber are split between the worm food tub and the chicken scrap tub since the chickens like to eat them too!
-Any bits of salad greens, spinach, chard, kale or homegrown sprouts that start to turn yellow or get a little soggy after being stored in the fridge a little too long.
You’ll notice I didn’t write potato peels and I also don’t feed these to our chickens UNLESS they are homegrown potatoes.
Why? Some potatoes carry diseases that can live in the soil and damage future crops (you can read more about that in this post on growing, harvesting and storing potatoes).
Since all of our compost is used for our gardens, I don’t want to take a chance of introducing diseased potato peels into the compost. Peels from potatoes that are not homegrown or verified disease free are one of the rare pieces of produce we throw out.
Keeping Fruit Flies Out of the Worm Compost Bin
I learned early on when vermicomposting that pests like fruit flies can breed in a worm compost bin.
A few years ago I wrote about how to keep fruit flies out of your worm compost bin based on our unfortunate personal experience. I follow this method to this day with success.
The plastic tub of worm food we keep under the kitchen sink gets a lid put on it and stuck in the freezer for about one week which is my worm feeding schedule.
When I put a new container of worm food in the freezer, I take out the last one I placed in there the week before.
The frozen tub of worm food sits on our our counter top (with the lid on tight of course!) for a day or two until it is thawed out. Then we feed it to our Red Wigglers in their worm bins and the vermicomposting cycle continues!
Once you figure out an easy method like ours to feed your Red Wiggler composting worms, it becomes an easy rhythm each week to keep a happy, healthy vermicomposting bin.
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