3Worm food
Feed your worms a diet of fruit and vegetables (nitrogen), balanced with equal amounts of dry organics such as newspaper, tissues, dry leaves, or hay.
Fruit and veggie scraps, crushed eggshells, tea bags, coffee grounds, newspaper, tissues, old natural-fibre clothing, and dry organic materials such as dry leaves and hay. These things are okay in small amounts: carbohydrates like rice and bread, cooked food, hair, and finger/toenail clippings.
Green garden scraps like leaves and grass, sticks, bones, dairy, and meat. Avoid large amounts of citrus, onion, garlic, chilli and ginger as they tend to make your farm acidic. If you do want to feed more than a handful of these scraps to your worms regularly, be sure to sprinkle in dolomite lime to balance out the pH.
Tips
- Chop up food scraps - the smaller the pieces, the faster the worms will eat them. Some people even put their food scraps in the blender for rapid recycling.
- Start out with small amounts of raw fruit and vegetable, then begin to add small amounts of cooked food, dairy, and other organic materials once your worm farm is established.
Apartment Worm farms
Remind folks not to over-feed and include special signage in the early stages while worm population increases. The critical thing for apartment worm farms is that you have good signage explaining the basics and that participants are well informed (make sure they take these tutorials!). Always monitor early on and be prepared to remove some food if its too full.
Contact council to get your free posters which help residents understand what to put into their farms.
