How big is the bed. My beds are big so I throw all cardboard of any kind in and after I cover it up with leaves to help keep it moist it all dissappears pretty quick. Some of the smaller rubbermaid bins and such dont really have enough room for much cardboard unless you cut it up in real small pieces.

I don't have a bin yet but I'm looking at getting a 30-50 gallon rubbermaid bin to use. Right now I'm trying to finish up some things in the basement before I get a bin setup.

I would cut up the cardboard into smaller strips. I wanted to know about the cardboard now so that I could start shredding it well before I get the bin and the worms.

The colored newspaper and slick cardboard will take longer to be eaten than the plain stuff as it takes longer for the bacteria to prepare them for the worms. Don't forget the small strips of newspaper as they love them as well as rotten leaves, grass clippings (not to many just sprinkled around) and compost. They will even eat the shirt off of your back if they get the chance if it is cotton! A handful of garden dirt will help get it started also. The rotten leaves and garden dirt will help start the bacteria. I would not put much table scraps in at first, mabye just a little pumpkin or blended up cantalope, or something soft covered up with a piece of newspaper a day or so before the worms get home.

Don't forget to dampen it as that helps the bacteria get started and the worms need moisture to breath. After the bed gets going shreaded junkmail works also. I love it that all of the junkmailers are paying postage for my worm food!

Thanks for the information everyone.

I plan on using primarily carboard and newspaper. I don't have good access to any leaves or grass clippings really since I live in a new housing development but I have plenty of cardboard I can find that would otherwise just get thrown away.

The primary food the worms will get will be banana peels as my son goes through 3 lbs of bananas a week and maybe some coffee grounds when I don't have coffee at work. Any other fruit or veggy waste is fairly small so it won't be much.

Thanks again for the advice now all I need to do is pick up a rubbermaid container and prepare it.

I forgot to ask with my previous question but what about the glue on the cardboard boxes? Is that harmful to the worms?

The glue is what they like the most about cardboard. It is fine.

the brown corigated cardboard boxes are a favorite of worms from all I've read and been told by professional worm growers in the area. Animal based glues provide proteins that are a food source for the microbes that the worms eat. Cardboard (as opposed to paperboard like cereal boxes) also makes a fluffy bedding with lots of spaces for air and worms but it is good at regulating moisture.

Biggest problem I've had with corigated cardboard is, the time and effort involved in shredding it up. Most personal paper shredders will give up if you feed them too much of this stuff, we have broken two already and we even pealed the cardboard apart before shredding.

If you soak a cardboard box in water overnight, it will rip apart easily and will even make it easy to peal the plastic tape off of it.

as to the glossy paperboard, it will be slower to decompose but it eventually does. The only worry some people have is that we don't know exactly what is in the colored glossy surfaces and worm casting is rather concentraited stuff. If there is anything in those colored inks that could be dangerous, it will be concentraited and who knows what will happen if you use it on your veggie garden. I don't know that I really worry about this. I shred all paper/cardboard and use in in my big compost pile. I don't want to use lots of it for my new worms but I'm not going to toss a whole batch of shredded paper just because one cereal box got into it.

Please, if anyone has info on the regulations for inks on paperboard and their toxicity or lack there of. Tell us. I know that newsprint in North America is safe and nontoxic now even the colored inks but I don't know about other inks.

Personally I don't put anything in my worm bin that hasn't been grown somewhere. My worms really hated newsprint and began to die quickly, so I've only put organic materials in there ever since. We burn our cardboard (only unprinted kind) and I've been searching around trying to find out if cardboard ash would be okay in a compost pile or worm bin. I've only found that it's negative in compost as it conflicts with manure, but I don't use manure...

Worms don't die from newspaper. I have beds that only got newspaper for months and the worms (redwigglers) love them. They need to be torn up into small strips and not just laid flat as that will not let air in and the microbes will take a long time to process them. (months) Cardboard is probably their most liked food source as they really love it. The corragated kind has the glue that they love and the little tunnels that they can go into and feed in the dark like they like it. I don't even break it up I have big beds and I just pile it in. I have put it in beds 2 ft. thick and covered with leaves to keep it dark and moist and in a month or so there was nothing but casting and happy worms left. By the way cardboard and newsprint were grown
somewhere,In the woods.

The professional worm farm near here uses primarily newsprint and cardboard as their bedding.
Newsprint used with lots of acid food could become too acid for the worms to really like it so many places that use lots of newsprint will do something to neutralize it a little bit.

By the way, shredded paper and cardboard composts great so long as you have a high enough mix of nitrogen to balance it. (if you pee in a bucket of shredded paper/cardboard and then burry it in the middle of your regular compost pile you can really heat it up-ours is often over 150F! of course one you pee in it the paper products are no longer safe for the worms since the salts and heating would be bad for them.)