Composting with worms (vermicomposting) is a great year-round way to dispose of your organic kitchen waste. The worms are clean, odor free and stabilize organic materials much faster than microorganisms. And the end product is a deep rich organic compost that your garden will love.
The best part is that worm composting is both easy and inexpensive and you don’t need a lot of space. Anyone can make a worm composting bin in a matter of a few minutes from readily available and inexpensive materials. Just follow the steps in the videos below and you’ll soon be on your way to reducing your organic contributions to landfills and taking another small step toward reducing your environmental footprint.
In vermicomposting, worms convert raw organic wastes to a nearly stable humus-like material called worm castings or vermicompost. As the waste material passes through a worm’s gut it’s ground up, increasing its surface area which speeds decomposition by microorganisms. Worms also stir and aerate the waste pile, so that turning is not required.
Not all worms are composting worms so you can’t just go out to your back yard and start digging. The most common composting worm species in North America is Eisenia fetida commonly called “red wiggler” and is readily available on the internet.
Many thanks to TheCompostGuy for his video postings on YouTube.
If you don’t like the look of the plastic bins you can put them inside another more attractive container such as a wooden chest or hamper. Just be sure that there is sufficient ventilation.
I am also looking into different methods for separating the worms from their castings. The methods I’ve seen demonstrated are either fairly labor intensive and take time or they involve some custom machinery. The most appealing option is to let the worms transfer themselves from the old bed to a new bed. This would involve having a two chamber system separated by a removable divider that would allow the worms to migrate from the finished compost pile to the new one.
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