Bringing A Worm Bin Inside For Winter + Year Round Care

Bringing a worm bin inside for winter allows you to compost your food scraps through any season. If you’ve been wondering if you can keep them all year long in the midwest, here are your answers!

A Can-O-Worms bin in the corner of the kitchen surrounding by plants

TABLE OF CONTENTS HIDE

1 What Is A Worm Bin?

2 Worms Are The Easiest “Pet”

3 Worms Can Compost Food Scraps All Winter Long

4 FAQs

5 Steps To Bringing A Worm Bin Inside For Winter

What Is A Worm Bin?

When you put red wriggler worms into a container with some bedding material and organic matter, they effectively break it down into high-quality compost, aka worm castings.

These are extremely nutritive to your living plants, indoor or outdoor.

a worm bin on a deck with pots behind it in red, orange and blue, waiting to be amended with worm castings so the bin can be brought inside for winter

Worms Are The Easiest “Pet”

One of the joys of my life the last few years, and the first “pet” animal in our family was a Can-O-Worms Compost Bin filled with compost and red wrigglers. A friend was getting rid of theirs because they had other animals on their farm to do the work of processing their compost. We, however, had just moved into town (because it was the best property we could find that still met all of our needs – someday maybe we’ll get back out to the country after we finish renovating this house!).

I really missed the small hobby-farm animals I could always throw my food scraps to in other places we’ve lived. Of course, I could still have a compost pile. Our property is surrounded by trees, and we can get away with all sorts of things that “townies” usually can’t (e.g. peeing outside, naked sun time in the backyard, throwing yard debris or old bones from broth into the woods).

a worm bin filled with food scraps from the kitchen. Most of them have been eaten by the worms, but some squash seeds have sprouted and are growing up out of the bin.

Worms Can Compost Food Scraps All Winter Long

Although doable, we aren’t quite set up for keeping lots of animals around. We have way too much work to do to get our house and yard set up to be more usable to ourselves. Our house is still very much unfinished, our soil is almost completely clay, and bold town deer come in and eat everything if you don’t have a tall fence.

I long for a big garden in the earth! But, until then, I need to build our soil, wait for Zach to finish his shop in the garage in order to finish our house and our fence.

I can’t wait to tell you all about my successful deck gardening experience this year! But, after keeping worms for years now, I can share how much I love turning our compost into rich black worm castings and how you can too!

a worm bin filled with compost and shredded newspaper with a little sprout growing up out of it.

FAQs

What Kind Of Bedding Can I Use In My Worm Bin Through Winter?

At first, I started with a bed of leaf mulch.

It was advertised at “compost” at our local yard waste dump site. But it was really just coarsely chopped up city leaves.

In our Can-O-Worms, I filled one whole layer with this. Then, I added the worms, added a second empty layer on top and started feeding them our choice food scraps and strips of newspaper.

The exciting new pet we added to our household this year was a bunny, and she compliments the worms perfectly.

She lives in a cage in our house and is litter box trained. The litter box is lined with saw dust where she does her business, and we love adding this waste to our worm bin too! Not too much, mind you. But, the worms really seem to love having a helping of this waste in their bin once or twice a month. Here’s some more information specifically about using saw dust in your worm bin.

Every other time we need to dump the litter box, it just goes straight on the flower beds and blends right into the mulch.

A worm bin tray filled with composted food scraps, being dumped into a garden pot on a deck.

When Do I Dump My Worm Bin?

When the time comes to dump the worm bin, i.e. you’ve filled all the layers, just take the bottom one or two out, making sure you leave one layer that is still significantly bedding material, not just uneaten food scraps. They still need a comfy place to rest. So, I usually get all 3 layers of my bin filled, then dump the bottom one every spring and fall.

This year, I distributed my worm castings right into my deck garden pots.

It’s ok if some worms go in too! They will help eat any organic matter that needs to be broken down. Worms will probably freeze with cold weather, but their eggs can survive subzero temps and will hatch in the spring!

I love the symbiotic relationship between the worms, the bunny, and the deck garden. We and the bunny eat out of the garden pots, we feed the bunny waste and our food scraps back to the worms, and they create black gold to go back into nourishing the plants! Plus, my oldest loves the bunny cuddles, and my youngest loves the “wormies” and carries them around for awhile, grossing our her older sister until they’re ready to go back to their home.

a small bucket of fresh food scraps - wilted lettuce, sweet potato ends, etc - next to an almost composted worm bin later and a pile of newspaper, getting ready to feed to the worms.

What Foods Can I Feed My Worms?

Fruits – raw
Vegetables – raw
Coffee grounds and tea leaves – not too much
Shredded cardboard and newspaper – add this with food scraps to absorb moisture and promote an aerobic environment
Crushed egg shells – the grit helps their digestion
Leaves and grass – unsprayed
Small amounts of sawdust
Manure from vegetable eating animals
Starchy foods – plain oats, bread, pasta

What Foods Should I Leave Out Of My Worm Bin?

Meat
Dairy
Citrus
Oil
Salt
Spicy foods – peppers, onions, garlic
Tough pieces of produce – avocado pits, watermelon rinds

Here’s some more great info about what to and what not to feed your worms. We put any produce scraps that the worms don’t love in our Earth Machine compost bin.

two buckets of food scraps from the kitchen. One has softer foods to the worms to eat. The other has a label that says "only citrus, eggshells and other tough things."

Steps To Bringing A Worm Bin Inside For Winter

Take all of the layers apart
Distribute the fully/mostly composted layers into your garden or pots
Use a hose to spray off top and bottom of the bin and all empty layers
Put one mostly composted layer on the bottom of your bin to become the new “bedding” layer
Find a place in your house that will stay fairly warm and you won’t forget about them
Feed 1-2 times/week, making sure that you only feed them your choice waste and they’ve eaten most of it up before you feed them again. This prevents food spoilage.
Add carbon waste regularly to promote an aerobic environment.

I love bringing my worm bin inside for the winter because:

food scraps can go straight in, instead of getting forgotten in a bucket under the sink
they are very active, and I keep a better eye on it
they stay cozy and comfy all winter long
I have a fresh supply of castings to add to my garden in the spring

In conclusion, if you roughly follow these guidelines, you will have happy healthy worms who do a whole lot of work for you and benefit all areas of your life. In my experience, they have been hard to kill and are an easy set-it and forget it (for a week or two) pet. Bring them inside for winter to keep composting all year round.

Do you already keep worms? Do you want to? What are your tips or questions? Leave a comment below!