vermicomposting

March 12, 2007 at 12:56 am | In compost |

I’ve posted about composting quite a few times. That’s always been about composting outdoors. Last fall Sarah in my co-op went to a workshop about vermicomposting and came home with a bin and some worms (red wigglers, specifically). Over the winter, she and I took some plastic kitty litter containers to the basement to drill holes in the tops and on the sides near the tops so the worms could breathe and not stay too wet and she then gave me some of her worms (they’re all called “Wiggly”). They’re doing very well in my house, eating some of my garbage. Hopefully as they reproduce, their capacity will increase and I won’t have to put so much organic waste outside. This is especially true in the winter when our bins get really full!

5 Comments

  1. Hi Ted,
    I’ve been using this method for a couple of years now (or to be rather more precise, my wife - the ardent recycler in our household - has) - it’s very effective at reducing organic material and produces a really potent liquid fertiliser (which has to be drained off from the bottom of the container) - but be warned! It’s potent in more ways than than one; the smell has to be experienced to be believed! You may not want to keep it indoors once they really get going…

    Btw, if you were wondering where I sprang from, I found your blog via Michael Herman.

    Comment by andy — March 12, 2007 #

  2. Andy, everyone else I’ve talked with about worms says that if it smells bad, something’s wrong. Yours sounds like it’s doing fine, except for the smell. Could it be that there’s too much food for the number of worms you have?

    Comment by ted — March 15, 2007 #

  3. ted is right, if your worm bin smells, that means something is wrong. A bad smell indicates anaerobic microbes–you need more air flow, and less moisture. When my worm bin gets a little smelly I add dry shredded paper and open the top for a few hours. That seems to take care of things.

    Comment by max — March 19, 2007 #

  4. Thanks Max!

    Comment by ted — March 23, 2007 #

  5. […] asked me about vermicomposting, so I thought I’d post some more details. I wrote before about the plastic containers with […]

    Pingback by Humanize the Earth! » vermicomposting details — April 10, 2007 #

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