Gardening by Cathy

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Sorry for the delay in telling you about how you can feed and care for your red worms and not go “nutso” in the process.

If you have been reading my posts about how to set up a red worm farm, some of the staples you now always have on hand are flattened cardboard cereal boxes, rinsed eggshells, newspaper and/or old mail you want to safely get rid of because it has your address on it, and vegetable ends or tops.

Pretend you are baking a cake. You have ingredients for that cake, right? It is the same here, only the ingredients will be eaten by the worms, and not baked.

Squirmie food ingredients:

flattened cardboard cereal boxes
rinsed eggshells
newspaper and/or old mail
vegetable scraps -ends or tops (keep in a cool place like a plastic bag in the refrig)

Now to make the food for the squirmies without going nutso:
Shred the cardboard and newspaper/old mail, keeping the two separate. Immerse both into water and wring gently. (I use two plastic tubs, but 2 buckets would work just as well)

Pretend your squirmies are a batch of dough and you want to
hide the egg shells and the shredded newspaper in that dough. Do it!
Chop coarsely your vegetable ends or tops and hide that in your squirmie “dough” as well. (Large vegetable scraps chunks are acceptable here)

Now, check the moisture level of your “dough”. You want it moist
to the point of dripping, but not saturated with water. If it is fairly dry, drip some handfuls of water into the bucket. If your squirmie “dough” is wet and moist, the worms will continue to keep it moist, but if it is saturated with water the red worms might drown because they need to breathe as well. If it is too wet, try adding some additional shredded cardboard and see if that doesn’t dry up some of the additional moisture.

You are almost done. Dip your shredded paper in water and squeeze
together as if you were doing papermache. Put these clumps onto the top of your squirmie “dough” to seal in the moisture and keep out the light.

I do believe the red worms squirm because they are light sensitive and so are working to get away from the light. Cover the entire top surface of the squirmie bucket with your clumps of wet paper shreds and you are now done.

By not making the green smoothie or fluffy green shake, you are
slowing down your worm farm production to a manageable level. Remember, you have the controls as the red worms themselves will die and be absorbed into the “dough” if conditions become not right such as over crowding or too wet. It is not a perfect science,
just start and enjoy the results.

Be sure to comment and ask questions if anything is not clear.

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