What to Feed Redworms

Feeding your kitchen scraps to redworms in a worm bin removes a significant burden on the environment and creates valuable compost for your plants. Dumping food waste in a landfill creates methane gas, a greenhouse gas 21 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. By feeding those banana peels and apples cores to your worms instead, you can help reduce the 12 percent of municipal garbage that comes from food scraps.

  1. Preparation

    • Red worms will eat most non-citrus vegetable products. Acceptable foods also include coffee filters and grounds and tea bags. For a special treat, give them mangoes, melon rind or cubed pumpkin including the rind.

      Keep a small pail, such as a 3-qt. container, beside your chopping board and load it with fruit cores and vegetable leaves, stalks and stems. Include eggshells after crackling them into small pieces with your hands. Add leftover rice or moldy bread.

      Chop any large contents into cubes about 1 inch square. Do not grind the food; it's extra work, and you run the risk of overloading your bin, making it too wet, and creating anaerobic bacterial conditions that lead to a bad odor.

      Unacceptable foods include oils, pet feces, meat, cheese, butter, fish and eggs. Worms also avoid garlic and onion, so these tend to rot and create a bad odor in the bin and should be avoided.

    Storage

    • Place the pail in your freezer for about a day and then thaw it in the refrigerator.

      You can also store your kitchen scraps in a large margarine tub in the refrigerator until use.

    Quantity

    • Add about 8 oz. of thawed food, nestling it in your worm bin bedding so that it is several inches below the surface. Observe via a flashlight with a red cellophane filter, so as not to disturb the worms, when the food is eaten before adding additional food in a nearby part of the bin.

    Troubleshooting

    • "An overloaded worm box can become anaerobic, and stinky! If that happens, don't add any fresh kitchen waste. If you leave it alone for a while, the situation will correct itself," notes the Washington State University extension service.

      To avoid fly and smell problems, "always bury the food waste by pulling aside some of the bedding, dumping the waste, and then cover it up with the bedding again. Bury successive loads in different locations in the bin," recommends CityFarmer.Org.