By the end of this lesson: you will understand the practical balance between wet food and carbon-rich bedding.

Kitchen scraps are usually wet and relatively rich in nitrogen as standard. Cardboard, paper and dry leaves are also carbon-rich and create structure. A productive wormery needs both to work.

Food without enough bedding becomes wet, compacted and short of oxygen. Bedding without enough food remains a comfortable home but produces little useful output – so you will only be getting vermicompost in small batches.

You do not need to calculate a laboratory carbon-to-nitrogen ratio. Use practical signals. If the bin is wet, claggy, sour or full of recognisable food, add dry bedding and pause feeding. If the bedding is airy but dry and little food remains, add a modest feed and moisture if required.

Bedding is consumed over time (as is food). It is not a one-off setup material. Treat it as a regular input, particularly when feeding wet fruit or thawed scraps.

• Wet inputs: Melon, berries, lettuce, thawed fruit and cooked vegetables add a lot of water.
• Dry structure: Corrugated cardboard, paper egg boxes and dry leaves absorb water and preserve air spaces.
• Balanced result: Damp, springy material with an earthy smell and no standing liquid.

Top Tip – When you are thinking about adding another tier to a stackable Wormery.  Get the bedding ready well beforehand.  Soak it and get some microbes acting in it in a separate plastic box well ahead of time.  It will keep your production high and get the new tier off to a flying start.