Start Vermicomposting with this Homemade Worm Bin

Are you looking to make your own worm bin? If so, you're in luck, because we made a homemade worm bin for less than $10, and it works great.

Why use a worm bin?

The main reason to use a worm bin is to make worm juice and worm castings also known as vermicompost.

Worm castings and worm juice are amazing fertilizers, they will supercharge your growing power and for good reasons. Worm castings help suppress certain soil-borne diseases, and the high nutrient content helps plants grow faster, especially due to the slow-release nitrogen in worm compost.

I had saved up money to purchase this worm bin on Amazon, but it seemed like a huge expense, so I read through all of the reviews and identified the problems with the store-bought worm bins including escaping worms and mosquitos. Then I studied all of the store-bought and homemade worm bin designs, and I came out with a solution that worked for us in the space we have.

A plant friend had dropped up a bunch of pickle bins, which my kids use for their community clean ups. Two of these bins had gotten stuck together, and this seemed like the perfect simple design, because it offered me a way to collect worm juice and because they were made of food-grade plastic.

Materials Needed for Homemade Worm Bin:

1. 2 x Food grade 5 gallon buckets
2. 1 x Food grade bucket lid
3. Plastic
4. 2 x 1/2 inch female pvc couplings non-threaded, 
5. 2 x 1/2 inch pvc pipe remnants,
6. 1/2 inch pvc turn-off valve
7. Pvc cement for joining
8. Silicone sealant
9. Drill - tiny drill bit
10. 1/2 inch drill bit to make a hole for your turn-off valve. 

We recommend making two of these worm bins, so you can start at second bin for your red wigglers, once you begin using your worm castings.

How To Make A Worm Bin:

1. For the bottom bucket, attach a shut-off valve. 
2. This is how we did it: Drill a 1/2 inch hole in the bucket for the pvc pipe about 1/4 inch from the bottom. 
3. Attach pvc pieces: Cut a piece of 1/2 inch pvc pipe 3/4 inch long. Put it through the hole, so that each side are the same length inside and outside of the bucket.
4. Attach a female pvc coupling on the inside and a female coupling on the outside to keep the pipe firm on both sides to prevent it from moving. 
5. Seal the inside and the outside with silicone sealant to prevent any leaks.
6. On the outside, cut another 3/4 inch long 1/2 inch piece of pvc pipe and use it to connect the turn-off valve to the female coupling on the outside. 
7. For the upper bucket, make holes in the bottom with your tiny drill bit.
8. Put the upper bucket inside the bottom bucket.
9. Make holes in the upper 2 - 3 inches in the sides of your upper bucket with your tiny drill bit. The part of the upper bucket, which is not covered by the lower bucket.
10. Drill lots of holes with your tiny drillbit in the lid.
11. At the bottom of the worm bin add some woodchips/compost/shredded cardboard, egg carton etc. This is the bedding for the worms. 
12. Get your worms. We ordered these Uncle Jim's red wiggler worms from Amazon, and they came in great condition. Make sure to track the package or leave instructions not to leave the package in the sun.
13. Place your worm bin in the shade preferably somewhere, where it'll get a bit of cover from bad storms.
14. After you add your red wiggler worms, start adding food scraps, leaves and other compostable items.

Tiny holes for air in our homemade worm bin

Tips For Your Homemade Worm Bin

• Your red wigglers will try to escape, when you first release them in your worm bin.
• We recommend putting something heavy on top of the lid at least in the beginning.
• Leave your worm bin in the shade.
• On hot days consider leaving the worm bin open midday for better airflow. My red wigglers seem to want to stay hidden, when I leave the worm bin open, so they do not try to escape. 
• The new baby worms are tiny, so make sure you use your tiniest drill bit to ensure that the red wigglers do not escape either through the top or drop down into the worm juice.
• Drain your worm juice after each rain, to prevent water in the worm section and to keep the humidity level in your bin at a healthy level.
• If you're in a drought, water the worm bin once a week and make sure to collect any juice.

The worm juice is great for our plants and between using compost, chicken manure and worm juice and worm castings our garden has never looked better.

Draining worm juice from our homemade worm bin.

The tiniest drill bit in our collection was perfect for making the holes, and we have no mosquito problems and only few escaping worm babies.

Worm castings

How to Collect Food for Your Worm Bin: 

In our kitchen we keep an empty gallon ice cream bucket. This is our kitchen compost bin. In this bucket we add any produce scraps, fruit that's begun to decay, eggshells, stale bread and if anyone has leftover veggies or non-meats and dairy on their plates this go in the compost collection bin as well.

A closed-lid bucket prevents the attraction of flies. Sometimes we empty the bin in our compost pile and worm bin several times a day, and it is never left inside overnight. Once the compost collection bin has been emptied outside, we wash it, and the water gets thrown into our banana areas. We switch out this empty ice cream bucket every 1 - 3 months depending on if it gets yucky, if it is broken or if we cannot get it cleaned sufficiently.

We treat our worm bin similar to our compost pile, and we usually pick something out from our kitchen-composting bin for the red wiggler worms in the worm bin before we toss the rest of the kitchen scraps into our compost pile for the chickens to go through. It's a great way to prevent food waste, and at our house we have very little food waste because of it.

What to Feed Your Worms:

• Food scraps
• Leaves
• Shredded cardboard
• Coffee grounds and filters
• Teabags
• Breads 
• Crushed eggshells
• Grains

What Not to Feed Your Worms:

• Meat
• Fish
• Dairy products
• Processed foods
• Citrus

How to Separate Worms from Worm Castings:

One effective way to separate the worms from worm castings is to lay out a flat piece of plastic or an old tablecloth etc. in a sunny place. 

Now create big hills out of your worm castings and leave it for 15 - 30 minutes. When exposed to sunlight the worms will dig down to the bottom of these hills, and you can simply remove the top part of the worm castings which should be worm free

Red Wigglers vs. Earthworms:

Did you know that earthworms are not native to North America? They were brought over from Europe, a fact that I am always puzzled by, when I dig down in our soil and find numerous earthworms. 

Earthworms are a sign of soil health according to scientists from the Michigan State University. 

Our woodchip piles are loaded with earthworms, which is why I recommend using a pitchfork, when digging into a woodchip pile or compost pile. Whenever we are digging compost to use for planting, we always throw the earthworms back in the woodchip pile. The same goes for when we're digging in the ground and come across earthworms, we collect them and put them in our compost piles to help break down the compost.

Wondering what worms are best for composting and for the worm bin?

For the open compost pile regular nightcrawler earthworms will do a great job, but it is best to use red wiggler earthworms for worm composting in your worm bin or composting bin.

Nightcrawler earthworms are great diggers, and they prefer to burrow deep down in the ground eating dirt and plant materials that are already broken down such as decaying roots, leaves etc.

Red wigglers on the other hand are voracious feeders of decaying plants and manure in the ground, and they eat kitchen scraps. Red wigglers can also tolerate warmer temperatures, and they therefore live closer to the surface plus they will actually eat materials above ground, which is another reason why they are great for the composting bin or worm bin.

Red wiggler worms reproduce faster than earthworms, and that is great for your worm bin as they will eat more kitchen scraps.

We absolutely love our homemade worm bin, and the only regret is that we did not make it years ago. Worm castings are great for the garden, and our garden is looking better than ever. The homemade worm bin aka the vermicomposting bin should not replace your composting bin, but it should be used as an additional means of creating a homemade fertilizer for the garden.