The materials for the worm farm can run you anywhere from $0 to $20, however you can find most of the materials in garbage piles if you wish.You will need

1. 2 Buckets – They should be 5 gallon, but I’ve used 2 x 2.5-3 gallon buckets.  I don’t yet know if this will work with buckets this small.  Check your local bakery for free ones that they’re throwing away.  I tried that but ended up having to buy a couple cheap plastic garbage cans.
2. 1 Shopping Tote – This needs to be polyester because if it’s cotton, the worms will eat through it.
3. A newspaper and/or plain cardboard – A regular newspaper will do.  Don’t use the glossy type.  Strip anything non cardboard (like tape) off the cardboard.
4. Some water
5. Some method of drilling or puncturing holes in the buckets – a drill, knife, hammer, force of will, etc.
6. A small amount of leaves and grass clippings
7. Worms – I’d start small with a half a pound (500 or so) and if you need more, get more after

Worms need air just like most other living creatures, so drill lots of holes in both buckets for ventilation.I put both buckets together like they are going to sit when they’re finished and drilled holes through both of them so that they would line up.

Make sure you drill a few holes in the bottom of the inside bucket.  This will allow water to drain out so your worms don’t drown.

This is why you have two buckets.  The bottom bucket catches the “worm juice” so you can use it on your plants to encourage microbial growth (this is a great thing!).  I haven’t tested this, but I’m thinking you could dilute the worm juice in a 5 gallon pale with water and aerate the mixture with an aquarium pump and a tablespoon of molasses to create a type of compost tea.  If you try this, please let me know how it goes.  If you want to qualify your results, set one plant aside to try this on so you can see the difference in results.  Remember, compost tea’s results are most noticeable in unhealthy soils.

Take a fabric grocery tote and put it in the bucket.  I took the handles of mine, wrapped them around to the bottom of the inside bucket and secured them with parachord so the bag wouldn’t move.  Feel free to use whatever means you wish to secure the bag.The bedding and worms and “canopy” (for lack of a better word at the moment) will go inside the bag.  The bag allows water to drain out freely and air to get in, while keeping all the castings and bedding and compost contained.

Make sure the bag is made out of polyester! If it’s made of cotton, the worms will eat through it.  This wouldn’t be the disaster of a lifetime, but it would potentially make more of a mess than you want.

Find your least favorite newspaper articles and adverts and shred them into small pieces. Soak the paper in water for a minute or so and add them to the bottom of the bag.  Shake off any excess water.  This will serve as the bedding for the worms.I’m sure you may be wondering about the newspaper print being bad for the worms as I did, however when I googled this, I found out that most newspapers use soy ink.  This doesn’t include paper with shiny surfaces.  I’m talking about your typical newspaper…paper.

Feel free to read for yourself here, or google for yourself.  I’m not going to claim I know everything on this topic.  I’m only sharing what I’m doing and the research I did.

I picked up my worms from this nice lady.  She’s more expensive than a lot of places, but she’s local and fairly close to me, so I know my worms won’t die in transit.  She’s also very helpful.The worms came in a bag with bedding and soil, so I just had to gently dump the bag into the compost bin bag.

In order to give my worms a forest floor feel, I went outside my apartment and found the first pile of leaves laying around which happened to be on a lawn next door.  While my wife and I were grabbing some leaves a lady who lives in the house came over and asked what we were doing.  We felt kind of awkward, but we explained about the worm farm and had a really good conversation with her about her garden and compost.  She was happy to let us take some leaves.Place the leaves on top of the worms to give them a nice homey canopy.