Worm production at home.

Find a Suitable Place

For worm production at home, the worms and bedding should be contained in a small box or bin, approximately one foot high, 2 feet deep and 3 feet wide, so you'll need that much space. Temperatures of about 60 to 80 degrees F. are ideal, but the worms will tolerate temperatures from 40 to 90 degrees F.

Build or Purchase A Container.

Worms aren't too fussy about housing, so mainly consider what suits your worm production at home, some people prefer building a box usually with the dimensions mentioned above. If you decide to build your own box, use clean exterior grade plywood and construction grade timber. Don't use pressure-treated wood for those parts on the inside surface, as the chemicals may be toxic to worms. Don't paint the inner surface. Be sure to drill at least twelve 1-inch holes in the bottom of the box for drainage.

Prepare the Bedding

Commonly available sources of suitable bedding for your worm production at home bin are shredded newspaper, cardboard, or computer printout paper, but you can easily shred your own paper. With newspaper, use only the regular black and white sections - not the colour sections - as dyes maybe toxic to worms. Tear parallel strips of about 1 inch in width. You'll need about 10 pounds for an average sized worm production at home bin.

Put the shredded newspaper in the bin. Add a gallon of garden soil-the worms need the grit to aid their digestion-and 4 gallons of water to provide sufficient moisture. Moisten the bedding material but don't make it too soggy. Prepare moistened bedding at least 2 days prior to adding worms, as it may heat initially and harm the worms.Or you may wish to purchase a ready made material for your worm bedding,one that I use is Coir Bricks, Pack of 10

Get your Worms

You'll need approximately 2 pounds of  Red Wiggler Worms for each pound of garbage your household produces daily.
These worms are commonly raised for fishing bait and can be readily purchased locally for stocking your worm production at home.

Caring for the worms is easy. Spread the worms gently over the top of the prepared bedding. They can be fed on plant-derived products such as potato peels, lettuce leaves mouldy bread, spaghetti, orange peels, tea or coffee grounds, and garden waste like corn shucks or pea shells. Try to avoid using meat or bone as they tend to cause odours and attract dogs or rodents to your worm production at home.                                           

Schedule when you feed your Red Wiggler Worms, every day, once a week, twice a week, you are in control not the worms.
If you're going to be away from home for more than a couple of weeks, you may wish to have someone feed the worms for you.
To feed your worm bed, push back the bedding, place the food, and cover it so that it's an inch or so beneath the surface. There's no need to chip or grind the food; let the micro-organisms and worms do that for you.
In the course of several days place the garbage in different locations in the bin to avoid an encounter with freshly decomposing garbage
In your worm production at home, you'll need to change the bedding and harvest the larger worms after about 2 months and every month or so thereafter. To harvest the worms, dump the worms and compost into a pile onto a piece of plywood. In a few minutes, the worms will move into the pile to escape light and exposure, remove the top few inches of the pile, wait a few minutes, and repeat.
Eventually, you will be left with a pile of mostly worms. You can harvest the large ones for fish bait and return the small ones and the egg cases to a freshly prepared worm production at home bin with new bedding.

Use the old composted garbage and bedding as a nutrient-rich soil amendment around plants or in your garden.
Red worms consume large amounts of organic matter and are found in manure and compost piles and decaying leaves. They live closer to the surface than earthworms and reproduce very quickly in captivity. Eight red worms become 1,500 red worms in six months!
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