wormadmin Staff answered 8 years ago
Why Do We Add Bedding And When Do We Add It?
You should feed the worms kitchen scraps equal in weight to the worms weight once a week. we call this “food” or “greens”.
UNDER this food you should put an equal amount of bedding, dry if your farm is too moist, moisten it if your farm is too dry. This is called “bedding” or “browns”
The bedding gives escape from food that is too hot, adds air to the farm, and they eat this material as well.
Bedding is a safe place for worms. Food is not.
The Best Bedding:
IMO the best beddings are those that are free and plentiful, like aged grass/leaves, newspaper and cardboard.
Coco Coir & Peat:
These have a place in farms which are kept indoors as it doesn’t contain bugs like grass or leaves may.
But other than for that, it isn’t as good as the above, as it costs money and is hard to tell when it is turned to cast.
Commercial farmers use it a lot, as their goals are different from our domestic farming goals.
Personally, I use a mix of cardboard and aged grass – about 1/4 grass to 3/4 cardboard, but you can replace half the c ardboard with newspaper.
This makes great bedding.