WEEK 2

Set up your small worm bin: Take shredded newspaper, moistened it and layer it within the bin. Add your worms to the damp newspaper, or whatever you are using for your bedding. Next you're going to lightly feed them some ground up food scraps. Keep an eye on those food scraps over the next week - check them and see what they look like, if they stink, if they ate all you fed them... This will help you understand how much your colony will eat, which depends on the temperature, moisture levels, whether or not you blended your food up, and more.

I like to start off with just a banana peel and see how long it takes them to eat the entire banana peel. When they finish I give them another one, and so on. Developing this understanding of their eating ratios and speeds is one of the keys to success.

You also need to start understanding how moist their bedding should be.

Check your bin regularly: Is it soggy? Is it smelly? Are your worms active or are your worms trying to escape?

One really cool thing about healthy worms is that they do not smell bad. The bacteria that they carry in their gut actually helps balance the system and keeps it smelling healthy and clean. A major plus for indoor operations.

WEEK 2 RECAP

• Set up your worm nursery
  • (See video)
  • Get 2-3 plastic bins that fit within one another
  • Fill with dampened shredded newspaper
• Start getting to know your worms eating ratios and speeds
  • Start with seeing how long it takes them to eat 1 banana peel

Identify your Carbon and mineral source(s) and set up your base pile.

WEEK 4

Dump your first 5-gallon bucket of compostables into your base pile - remember where you put it because each week we want to dump into a new location so that your worms and other creatures migrate around the pile.