This spring I started a worm farm at the food bank/community garden where I work to help manage some of the cardboard and old produce that piles up here. I've been doing everything on the cheap with materials we already have (not a lot of money in food banks right now) and have 8 breeder bins in some outdoor shelves previously used for storage. We're in the southwest US so once summer hit we started having real problems managing heat, which meant I had to come over every day to swap out ice packs. I built this low tech little cooling system with irrigation tubing, a solar powered pond pump, and a bucket inside an insulated tub to get my weekends back and it works way better than I expected!

The tubes run through cut out slots in the sides of each bin so they sit low enough to be in contact with the bedding. The same tubes run through all of the bins. Water is pumped out to the last bin, makes a u-turn, and is returned to the bucket the same way it came up. There's also a spout and some valves off the return pipe so I can drain the system when I need to without trying to move the whole bucket set up (not really necessary but I had the parts so why not)

Regardless of outdoor temperature all bins have stayed consistently 70-80 degrees since I put it in a month ago, compared to swinging from 68-98+ before. The water in the bucket is around 75 degrees most of the time and only pumps during the later part of the day when the sun hits the solar panel, but that seems to be enough. The worms are happy and this solution should keep things nice and stable until we can build a shed for the worm farm, hopefully in the fall. At that point we're planning to transition to mostly large wedge bins- right now we're just breeding enough worms to get a system started that can handle 100+ pounds of cardboard per month.

I thought I'd share my set up since it worked so well and was so easy. It was essentially free and has pretty dramatically reduced the time that goes into maintenance. It turns out a food bank is the perfect place for a worm farm and we've had a great time getting it going and getting the community interested and involved!

(Hoping I did the right flair)

I’m pretty new to this, made another post last week about my bin, and I am wondering if these are castings?

They look like what I’d think worm poops would be. But they look much less wet and soppy than others I’ve seen people post, atleast when they post big batches.

I mean, do you give the worms all the food scraps, cardboard, and other waste you generate, or is it just too much?

Alright it might be that time! I started this bin in April with leaves, coconut coir and cardboard. Am I ready to harvest? If so, what’s my best method?

I found this slimy, stretchy, cylindrical unidentified object on the leaves of my petunia flowers on my balcony. I occasionally top-dress my flowers with fresh vermicompost castings, so I'm wondering: could this be a dead worm, bird droppings, a fungus, or something else?

I see many people who are not very concerned about the type of dry material, in fact, I keep seeing paper with ink, corrugated cardboard with glue and ink that may be laminated. Aren't you worried that all of this will end up contaminating your crops?

I keep Euros, I started with 25 (give or take) refrigerated ones from the pet store I was working at then.

These guys are kept indoors in my kitchen in a 3 bin system, each one has the capacity for 15 gallons. It’s a very small simple setup and it doesn’t smell.

I do keep these guys on substrate- I add old soil from my plants and fresh coir. I mainly use cardboard for browns and moisture control.

They are primarily fed a diet of used coffee grounds and floating aquatic plants. As well as the occasional egg shell dump.

I harvested only 9.5 ounces of the castings mix today (pic 3) and the worms I separated out from this small amount of castings is in pic 4- this doesn’t include the 10 or so larger ones and some of the very very small ones as unfortunately for these guys they were destined for fish food today.

I have thousands of worms in this setup now, very few of which are “nightcrawler” size. The adults mainly average 3”-4” or so.

The casting mix get used on my houseplants, I’ve been making casting “tea”, and the worms occasionally get fed to my fish

Anyway I thought some of you might appreciate this super simple and somewhat different approach to keeping them.

They have been drying for months but are still the consistency of thick mud, and the worms haven’t left it for the new coco coir and paper.

You can't really tell from the photo; it’s horrible. The lower side is the “castings.”

Redworms and European Nightcrawlers having an absolute rager inside an avocado peel!

I’ve had my worm farm (the Tumbleweed Worm Cafe) up and running for two days and on both days when I’ve opened the lid, loads of worms have been sitting on the lid in what looks like an attempt to flee!

My set up:
- I soaked the bedding block in too much water and then hand-wrung every handful before putting it in the farm.
- I added hand-shredded cardboard
- someone gave me a container of worms from his worm-farm. I note, a lot of them were in big clumps stuck together, and there were a few bits of food in there too including an egg shell with mounds of worms inside it.
- sitting on the front porch.
- the first night I used damp newspaper for the worm blanket, the second night I used a thin dry piece of cardboard.

After the first day and noticing the worms trying to escape, I removed all cardboard which had become damp and the damp newspaper blanket, and hand-shredded a heap of newspaper and added that in.

This morning after night-two, I’ve removed heaps of the newspaper as that was all damp, and added fresh stuff in.

I’m in Melbourne, Australia (so it’s Winter here).

From Google I’m assuming my worm farm is too wet? Or could it be something else? Help!!

Hello everyone,

I’ve been composting for about 5 years now and I feel confident with my skills there.

I just moved to Mexico from Pennsylvania. I’m just looking for some tips on worm farming in a hot climate all year round.

This will be my first worm bin and I’ve been doing quite a bit of research. I’m really excited to get things started so any tips will be greatly appreciated 😁

I know mites are normal and help break down the leftover food. I had a moisture issue where my bins were too wet ( I have a vermihut)
I have since fixed moisture issue but mites are still there. They’re so small and white I can’t get a good picture.
Anyways, my bin is inside. Do I need to be worried about my new mite pets causing a havoc in my house? I don’t want them free 😭
Honestly I want them gone but I don’t how.

Very excited to harvest my first bin! Here are some process shots. Advice/education welcome.

It could be much finer but I imagine this is fine to put into my garden beds and houseplants. Loved using the scrap of hardware cloth for sifting. Super low tech, LIGHT and free!

I had a small potted rose plant with a few red wigglers in it that I left outside over the winter in Syracuse.

The lowest temperature it got to was -9° Fahrenheit over the 2025-2026 winter.

I was taking the rose out of the pot to plant in the ground in July when I found at least 2 live red wigglers.

Now I’m not saying the worms themselves made it through winter, but I’m thinking the eggs did and they hatched.

I knew that Asian jumping worms would do this where they lay eggs for the next year, but I was under the impression red wigglers eggs would not survive winter.

Has anyone else experience this?

I can't see any food left in it!

Hey all,

I build and started my first worm tower and I’m not sure if what im doing is right.

I’ve looked at different videos. Some say keep green/browns in balance. Some say, don’t over feed your worms and keep the greens in small doses but then my browns dry out fast.

I keep a spray bottle near to keep the top hydrated. If i dig down it is moist and that’s where the worms are.

I’ve restarted once because the worms were really slow and looking at the end of their life so I figured i screwed up.

At first it seemed to go better. If I lifted the top and removed the cloth that i keep on top of the pile. I would see the worms crawl down and away.

Now the activity seems less and i found this clump of worms. Not really moving a lot.

Any tips would help.

Hi all, I have a well established worm bin that does well in my un-airconned home. I’m leaving on vacation for three weeks and wanted to put it outside while I’m gone to limit any secondary composters taking over my house (sometimes we get a couple flies from it) as a courtesy to my housemate. Would a bin remain viable at a max temperature high daily temp of 85F? It would be in a very shady spot in my yard. Thanks!

look good?

I didn't invite them. They just appeared and continue to procreate. I'm an amateur composter at best. I literally just use this thing to finish off my bokashi so it's no longer in my kitchen... I kinda try to add Browns where I can but it's up the back of the yard and doesn't get much attention. Beyond a bit of weed pulling I don't work out tidy the garden at all really...

By all reasonings they shouldn't be happy. The compost is a bit stinky - acrid? Is that the word? And honestly too wet... But there they are. Big pink, juicy, lively and multiplying. My actual worm farm worms would baulk at their living conditions..

Guess they are just making do like the rest of us out here...

was this a good idea? I already have a bunch in my veggie pots but they probably all died since they were small pots

I just looked in my worm tub and see these bastards hanging off one of my children, what the fuck? why the fuck? And how would you deal with this invasion of douchebags giving your worms shit.