Composting worms are great, especially if you're trying your hand at
This is another great use for
If you want to keep them outside, you’ll have more room — I’m jealous of the stacked houses that some people have for their worms — but you’ll have to worry about temperatures and predators (or just raccoons or other things that might be interested in the scraps, even if they’re not interested in your worms).
You need “red wrigglers” which you should be able to get from a bait shop (at this point there might be enough interest from gardeners that you can get them elsewhere as well). I think my sister must’ve gotten mine for my birthday and I want to say that they arrived in the mail in a styrofoam container. Earthworms need stable tunnels and rooms to live in and you’re going to be disturbing things as you put your kitchen scraps in.
I started off with my nested bins for drainage and shredded moistened newspaper for bedding along with the contents of the little containers the worms came in, so there was some dirt along with the critters.
From there, I basically treated my bin as having 6 stations that I could put food scraps into, three on each side (gently making a little hole and covering it with the newsprint), with the idea that the worms are interested in food at a certain stage of decomposition, and this way it would be easy for them to navigate around the bin working most efficiently on whatever pile they were most interested in over time. And by the time I’d get back to station #1, that spot would be ready for another load. Make sure you toss a few egg shells in there for them as well.