Vermicomposting

Sunday March 16th I made my very own vermicomposting bin. I didn't write about it at first fearing my bin may not be successful. But after adding scraps from tonight's dinner, I am confident that they will live!
What the heck is vermicomposting you say? Well here is an excerpt from Wikipedia: "Vermicompost (also called worm compost) is the end-product of the breakdown of organic matter by some species of earthworms (Red Wigglers: Eisenia foetida or Red Earthworms: Lumbricus rubellus). Vermicompost is a nutrient-rich, natural fertilizer and soil conditioner."

Like I alluded to in an earlier post I have been reading this blog: 365 days of trash. Sustainable Dave is doing this blog describing his year of saving all the trash he produces. One question I had was... doesn't it stink (one of the problems with other composting methods)? He says: "This is probably the question I hear the most from people. When you think of what goes in your garbage, what is it that usually smells? For most of us, it's food, leftovers and scraps from prep. That's where our worm composter comes in. All of my food scraps go in here and as for leftovers, I rarely have any that need to be tossed. You can't put dairy, meat or fish in there, but I don't eat meat and fish and dairy i just finish. It works great. Everything else that needs it is cleaned before it goes down there, so there is really no smell, and no tiny (or larger) livestock to speak of. Hopefully it'll stay that way." Note: Ours doesn't smell either. We have been keeping it in our dinning room during these last few chilly evenings of spring (worms like temps above 32 and less than 85). And you can't even tell it is there.

Worm Composting the Video by Sustainable Dave

I was so excited when my friend Adrienne told me one night at dinner that she wanted to go to a worm workshop that was being held at a local farm: Frog Pond Farm. She was hesitant to tell me thinking I wouldn't be too interested, but she underestimated my excitement.

The workshop started out with us going through how to harvest our rich compost. Here is the hands-on method:We then went inside the farm owners' 100 Watt House and introduced ourselves and learned the ins and outs of composting on paper, then went outside to learn about all different types of compost: Hot, dump and run, and vermi. Then we made our own bins. This consisted of a rubbermaid roughneck tote with 2 holes in the lid and 2 on the sides that are plugged with vents. We added 5lbs of newspaper bedding (15 Independents torn into about 1 inch strips) and then some pond water to moisten it. And last >1lb of red wriggler worms from a local worm breeder (who knew there were worm breeders?)After adding only about 1 pint of scrap food the first week, we have been adding to the bin when ever we cook. We are also adding paper like napkins, junk mail (non-shiney), and other little pieces of paper that we can't recycle. They are starting to break things down into a nice black compost. I can't wait to use it!