Feed kitchen waste to your worms

Put kitchen waste and garden refuse to good use with these easy steps.

August 27, 2016

Amy Ingram 2 minutes read

To recycle kitchen and garden waste, you have to look no further than a worm bin. Earthworms break down your waste and are nature’s answer to returning nutrients back into the soil.

You can recycle and replenish your garden soil with these easy steps to create your own worm bin:

Step 1: Obtain a rectangular plastic bin with a lid. This bin must also have holes around the top of the bin and a hole at the bottom, where leachate can be drained out. These holes can be between 1cm and 5cm in diameter, as long as they are covered with mesh.

Step 2: Place a container under the hole at the bottom of the bin to catch any liquid.

Step 3: Place about 2cm of wet newspaper at the bottom of the bin.

Step 4: Cover the newspaper with 8cm to 10cm of ‘bedding,’ which consists of vermicompost, dried leaves and grass cuttings, all of which must be soft and turned brown.

Step 5: Worms. Place enough worms in your bin that will process the amount of waste you generate daily. For a 25 to 30-litre bin, 500g of worms should be placed in your bin, 45 litres should hold 800g and 70 litres holds 1 200g of worms. Earthworms can be purchased from worm farms and other worm-bin farmers.

Step 6: Cover the earthworms with another layer of wet newspaper.

Once your worm bin is complete, it becomes relatively self-sustaining with you ‘feeding’ the worms with your waste. Keep a bucket in your kitchen to collect peelings and other food waste. Keep the content of the bucket covered in water to drown breeding bugs. Spread this ripened food over your earthworms when the bucket is full.

After about six months, you will be able to collect your own vermicompost made by the earthworms. To collect, place a plastic basket filled with waste on top of the earthworms and recover the basket with newspaper. In a few days, the earthworms will move to the new food source and you will be able to collect the vermicompost underneath without losing earthworms.