A worm farm is one of the easiest and most rewarding things a gardener can do for themselves, their garden, and their budget.  Worms, (night-crawlers, red worms, etc.) are vital to the propagation of beautiful and nutritious soil for anything and everything you could want to grow.  They are nature's little tillers and makers of high quality soil that will make everything in your garden, indoors or out, just thrive. Flowers bloom in glorious colour and plenty of vital nutrition gets to delivered into your fruits and veggies.

Setting up a worm garden is quite easy and inexpensive.  The really easy method to having a worm farm is to order one from a reputable source.  The best source I know of is http://unclejimswormfarm.com/

However, it is easy enough to make your own bins out of some of the big plastic tote type tubes with lids and a few items that pretty much are around most households. If you don't wish to buy worms then you can spend a little time digging up some of these worms out of your yard. Basic night crawler/red worm is the sort of worms you use for a worm farm. They can take coffee grounds, egg shells, used tea bags, fruit and veggie scrapes, old, used up dirt and dead plant material and turn it into some of the most beautiful soil in a matter of just a few days.

Best of all, once you got a good environment for your worms, they will thrive and breed like mad! Pretty soon you could have whole bins of beautiful soil to use anytime you need it. You'd never have to buy expensive potting soil again! All you need is a corner of a room and you can have a little soil factory.

First, decide how big you want your worm farm to be.  Most people start out with a couple of containers as this makes it easier to move the worms to the other bin when it comes time to harvest the worm castings, or soil.

Drill, poke or cut several holes in the bottoms of each of your tubs for drainage and use a lid for the drain pan.  (The liquid that drains from the worm beds is called worm tea...the best liquid fertilizer on the planet!)  Put something at each corner of the drain-pan/lid to sit the worm bed/tub on top of and to allow drainage. (I used four large thread spools of the same size and affixed them with hot glue to each corner of the drain pan.) Make sure the tub sits firmly on the risers at each corner of the tub.

Now, lay down a layer of newspaper. Black ink, no colored pages!  Then lay down a layer of soil a few inches thick. 2 or 4 inches is usually sufficient. DO NOT USE POTTING SOIL! Potting soil will kill your worms! Get cheap top soil as it has plenty of bits of wood and other organic material in it. One bag for a tub should work. Then add crunched up bits of egg shells, cold coffee grounds, (if you brew your coffee in unbleached coffee filters then the coffee filters are okay to tear up into the soil, but DO NOT ADD BLEACHED COFFEE FILTERS; they will kill your worms. Used tea bags are shredded open and the tea leaves dumped into the mix. Bits of lettuce leaves, carrot tops, celery leaves, potato peelings, etc. is good to add to the bin too.  Do not add too much or else it'll be more than the worms can eat up fast enough to keep from stinking.  NEVER ADD MEAT SCRAPES TO YOU BIN. Worms won't eat it and it'll go bad and contaminate the worm bin.

Mix everything together while misting clean water, (rain water is best), into the soil with a plant mister bottle. (DO NOT USE TAP WATER) Get the soil lightly moist but NOT wet. Introduce your worms into their new home and gently mix them into the first inch of soil. Cover top of bin with a piece of cloth.  Burlap is best, but a piece of CLEAN, UNDYED, natural colored hemp or cotton cloth will work well enough. The cloth keeps light out and lets the air flow. Check a couple of times a week to turn, and mist, if needed. 

When the worms have eaten most of the food you will need to harvest the soil because the worms can not live in their own castings.  Either move the worms to another prepared bin as you harvest or else gently harvest while dropping worms back into the bin and adding more food/bedding to keep your worm farm going strong for many years.

The worms will breed and make more worms as time goes and you may find you need to harvest a few for going fishing, selling some to other fishermen, or putting them into different areas of your out door garden to help keep the soil nice and productive.

Hoodoo, thanks for posting this tutorial ! 
I think that a worm farm would be an excellent project for me to try , and we certainly need some better soil here.  I don't know what kind of soil you have up there, but here it is all that hard red clay. I have to soak it before I can dig a hole to plant anything.
I do have worms, but I am not sure if we have very many of them.
When we lived in Idaho, I had a neighbor who had a worm farm. They raised rabbits, and had the worm bins under the rabbit hutches. I am not sure how she had it set up; but it apparently worked really well together, and the rabbit droppings kept the worms busy eating and making good soil.
I think they also sold the worms to the sports shop to sell for fishing bait.

When I was growing up; my mom was an avid gardener, and she always had a compost pile, and that was where the worms went. She just added the grass clippings, scraps of veggies and coffee grounds from the house; and I had to haul the manure  from the corral where I kept my pony.
When it got tall enough, then she and Daddy would put up another little containment fence, and she would start another pile of compost there.
Meantime, the first one would be becoming wonderful soil, thanks to the worms working in there. We always had a lot of worms for fishing, too ! Plus, I loved going out late at night with the flashlight, and catching the huge nightcrawlers that were out in the midnight grass.

I loves my little worms! I turned a friend on to having a worm farm and he just LOVES it! His little girls do too!  They have 2 bins now and he also uses a worm or 2 a day and feeds his Oscar fish, and that fish will just practically try to jump out of the tank when it see him coming with a worm! It's hilarious and the big guy really loves gobbling down a big ol' worm.

Ah, Kentucky soil varies from area to area. Where we live, in Appalachia, there is a lot of sand stone and it can be fairly poor in parts of it. Other parts, some of the very rare deep forest that is still old growth in the deep gorges, is just beautiful. Black and rich...it even smells wonderful. Lot of clay too, some of the best clay deposits any potter or sculptor could want.

Central Kentucky is horse country and farm land. Western part of Kentucky has everything from swamps and forests to farms. Just depends really. Loads of worms. So easy to have a worm farm. 

Where did you  get the worms for stating the worm farm, and about how many worms is a good amount to use in the tub ?
Do you have yours in the shade so that the worms don't get too much sun and cook in the plastic tub ?
I haven't started one yet, but I think this is a great way to get some better soil, and definitely want to try it. I will start with one tub and see how it goes for me. About how long does it take for the worms to turn the food in the tub into good dirt ? A few weeks, a few months , or what ?

I have made a compost pile before and added the eggshells and coffee grounds to that, and my mom always had a compost pile going, so she had some wonderful dirt.  Then we used to dig through there when we were going to go fishing and needed some worms for bait.  I love to fish, so I think that having some extra worms would also be great for that purpose, as well as enriching the soil.

happyflowerlady (03:08pm Thu, Aug 21, 2014)

Where did you  get the worms for stating the worm farm, and about how many worms is a good amount to use in the tub ?
Do you have yours in the shade so that the worms don't get too much sun and cook in the plastic tub ?
I haven't started one yet, but I think this is a great way to get some better soil, and definitely want to try it. I will start with one tub and see how it goes for me. About how long does it take for the worms to turn the food in the tub into good dirt ? A few weeks, a few months , or what ?

I have made a compost pile before and added the eggshells and coffee grounds to that, and my mom always had a compost pile going, so she had some wonderful dirt.  Then we used to dig through there when we were going to go fishing and needed some worms for bait.  I love to fish, so I think that having some extra worms would also be great for that purpose, as well as enriching the soil.

I got my first worm farm from here: http://unclejimswormfarm.com/?gclid=CjwKEAjwg_afBRD3rpChlqiKt1ESJACwY6NkfYRNf0hnjaZgFt51KK7OC5EaEN8LgOjoqZxzAFh3ehoCAyXw_wcB

This is a GREAT place to get a small starter worm farm to get your hand in. Once I learned how it all worked, which is super easy, making my own was a snap. As for how long it takes for your worms to turn leftovers and garbage into awesome dirt, well, that depends on the size of the bins. Usually about 2 weeks for one of those average sized "tote tub" bins you can get pretty much anywhere. I got mine at a Dollar General store.

The worms you can get from either Uncle Jim's, or possibly find them where outside where you live. Red worms is what you want though. Sometimes you can get them from folks who sell them as fish bait. Don't really need a huge number of them as they will multiply pretty rapidly when they have plenty of food. I tend to harvest the dirt, (making sure to seek out any worms and put them back in the tub), and add more stuff for them to feast on. I never keep my bin(s) in the sun. That will kill your little worms. A shaded area outside, if you live in a climate that doesn't tend to get cold in the winter, is good, but a corner inside a room is best. They don't tend to stink so long as you don't try putting stuff like meat scraps of any sort in the bin. Worms won't eat it and it'll rot, draw flies and stink.