Worm Compost

Since we plan to have a garden this year and we are not about to purchase and use any crazy fertilizers with words we cannot pronounce and chemicals that can and will compromise our produce and our health we have been composting, or rather "feeding the worms", as we tell our three year old, since December.

What is vermicompost?

Vermicompost is a rich organic material produced when worms eat and then expel organic matter. Or, worm poop. It is much more scientific than that but I will not bore you with it here. However, for those of you who must know, you may click here to read more.

What You'll Need:

  • a bin, preferably with a lid and air holes drilled into the sides. (we used an old storage tote)
  • dirt
  • worms (we used worms found in the back yard, seriously)
  • leaves or pine straw
  • organic kitchen scraps (fruits, veggies, tea grounds, coffee grounds, etc)
Seriously, that is it. You start out by making a bedding for your little friends with the dirt and leaves. Make sure it is moist, but not sopping wet. Put your little guys in their new home and make sure to keep them out of the cold. Collect your organic material on a daily basis just by saving your veggie peels, fruit cores, coffee grounds, etc. It helps to chop up the larger pieces. Feed this stuff to your worms and watch it transform. Your worms will multiply. (This is excellent news for us because we love to fish in the summer!)

I'm not there yet with mine, but from what I understand, when the matter you have given to your worms is pretty unrecognizable it is ready to be used in your garden. To harvest your compost you can push all of matter to one side of your bin and add new bedding and food, apparently the worms will travel over to the new stuff and you can just scoop out and use the old stuff. Sounds easy enough to me.

I'll definitely keep you updated on the status of our vermicompost. Here are some photos of ours:

Can you see my little worm friend?

There he is!

I personally think there may be too many leaves in this, but something is working because you definitely cannot see banana peels or apple cores in there.

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