Is Your Worm Farm Too Wet?

   Need help with your worm farm being too wet? I have had that issue over the years, usually caused by a few things. 

My biggest problem was having many food scraps containing excess water, like fruits and veggies such as cucumbers, lettuce, or tomatoes. 

I’ve learned a few ways to combat this, so here are my five tips to fix a wet worm farm.

5 Simple Tips to Fix a Wet Worm Farm

1. Worm Bins With Lids– If there are no holes in your worm bin’s lid, try removing the top for a while. This will help it to dry out.
2. Don’t Overfeed Your Worm Farm– Depending on the size and amount of worms. You may need to cut back or add extra bedding like newspaper or cardboard. It will help soak up moisture.
3. Add cover over your worm bedding– I like to use brown paper sacks or cardboard; this seems to really help with moisture, along with taking off the worm bin cover long enough to soak up the extra water.
4. Adding A Hole For Drainage– If you want to keep things just as they are, add drainage for the leachate to drain out the bottom of your worm bin, and that should help, although I don’t personally do this anymore. I add cardboard and newspaper to the bottom of my bins to soak up water.
5. Straining The Food Scraps- This tip sounds strange, but I feed by blending all the food scraps into a smoothie for my worms and straining most of the water. Making a paste across the top of my worm bin and covering it with some bedding.

Don’t worry. I plan to break down each one for you, so hang in there for me!

Worm Bins With Lids

 So, I use plastic totes for my worm farm, and I don’t have holes in the lid, and from time to time, the moisture level builds up, and I have to take the cover off of it for a bit. 

Usually, I leave it off for a day and put it back on. Sometimes longer doesn’t bother my worms at all. They seem more active with a slightly higher moisture level.

At the same time, I start to feel like they are trying to escape the moisture because I notice a few climbing the walls, so you want to keep a check on things daily, and you’ll do just fine.

Let’s Not Overfeed Your Worm Farm!

 Overfeeding is a surefire way to high moisture levels in a worm farm. Depending on the size of your worm population, start small and build up.

 I have a trick for you on feeding as we get farther along, so wait to leave me. I made this mistake and caused myself to lose a lot of worms when I had my compost worms outside; a vast majority escaped. 

Have you ever noticed during or after a rain, you see worms on the ground? Well, it’s because they don’t prefer to be soaked.

Add Some Cover To Your Worm Bin

 This can be as simple as putting a newspaper over top or cardboard. I use newspapers under the cardboard because most compost worms will eat both, which takes longer on the cardboard. 

Both will help soak up the extra water from the food scraps or buildup. I’ve also seen plastic bubble wrap used, but I stick to stuff that will decompose and add to my worm castings.

Straining Your Food Scraps For Your Worm farm

 So, remember when I said I had a trick for You? Well, here it is. I make worm smoothies to give my compost worms; why? I can feed considerable amounts of food, which gets consumed much faster. 

Doing it this way also allows me to strain out some unneeded moisture. Yep, I add all my fruits and veggies to a blender, egg shells that I used in a coffee grinder to make dust, and coffee grinds for grit. 

My worms love it! My reason for this was that very simple compost worms don’t have a large mouth, so by blending, it’s easy for them to consume 3 to 5 days to go through a whole blender’s worth of food.

Adding Drainage Holes To Your Wet Worm Farm

 You can add some drain holes to the bottom of your been and put a bucket to catch the runoff. This runoff is called leachate; it can be later used in your garden and added to water. 

This will also aid in helping when your worm farm is too dry. As stated above, I no longer use this method because I plan to make worm tea out of my castings and prefer to keep the microbes happy while keeping the microbiology in my worm bin intact. 

You do what is best for you; it’s your worm farm; after all, I want to help as much as possible because I’ve been there.

Conclusion I Hope Your Worm Farm Isn’t Too Wet Now!

 As I hope this information was helpful to you and you got some value from it, even if it’s just one of the tips, leave a comment and let me know and share with a friend or loved one that’s been having issues with their worm farm being too wet. 

If you did get some value out of it, check out some of my other posts, I try to post 2 to 3 times a week, but you know how life is! My name is Ian, and I hope this helps you somehow.