For your reading pleasure

Found this in the NYT the other day -- Urban Composting: A New Can of Worms.

See, Pete -- I'm not crazy. Or, rather, I'm not the only crazy one.

And so it begins

I had a bin. I had my worms. I had organic waste overflowing a fabulously aerated bin under my kitchen sink. I had a family used to collecting organic waste for outdoor composting. I had moistened bedding in the first working layer. Time to put it all together.

This picture shows the coir bedding in the bottom working tray (dark brown) with the lighter brown bedding that came with the worms, and the worms themselves (kind of pinkish -- the "red" part of the name does not seem to hold out so far).



This picture shows the bottom working tray with the wet newspaper on top. Underneath, I put a bin full of organic waste from the kitchen: banana peels, peanut shells, grapefruit rinds, coffee grounds & filter, egg shells, bread, shreddings from various vegetables, and possibly some fuff from the dryer. I put all of this is a thin layer right over the worms/bedding, and covered the whole mass with wet newspaper.

I'm not sure about the dryer fuff. I compost that all the time in my outdoor bin, but I don't know if worms will like it. Other things worm might like: cereal, cake, cheese*, lemon, onion peel (not the onion itself), pizza crust, potatoes, potato salad, tea bags, and all kinds of spoiled food from the refrigerator. Too much citrus could kill the worms; I'm also leery of dairy, like cheese*, for odor issues. Meat doesn't generally go in a home vermicomposter due to odor issues and also the possibility of attracting unwanted tenants (wanted tenants, I'll mention those as I find them).

For my husband and kids -- here's a list of what DOESN'T go in the bin: things that don't decompose (like rubber bands, staples, sponges or aluminum foil).

Also animal waste doesn't generally go in -- definitely not from cats and dogs. Guinea pigs, of which we have three, are a different matter. We use recycled paper nuggets for bedding for the guinea pigs, and this seems like a perfect "brown" material for the vermicompost -- and how cool to get even more use from this already recycled and peed upon material. Also, cavy (aka guinea pig) droppings are small and dry, and even when... wet... odorless. And these animals are vegetarians, which avoids the unwanted-tenants-attracted-by-meat-poop problem.

Although my favorite worm composting book, Worms Eat My Garbage, by Mary Appelhof, didn't specifically mention guinea pig droppings, I think they're ok to use. I googled "vermicomposting" and "guinea pig bedding" and generally got the thumbs up from other vermicomposting-people. I don't think I'll use it though -- I've got a bag of shredded financial documents already in line in the laundry room by the Can-O, and I'll go through that first.

Here's Tonks, cavy extraordinaire, in his (unwelcome) Christmas gift -- a harness and leash.

Um, we're missing something

Aside from getting a vermicomposter (and there are many kinds), I also had to find worms. This is an easy task, but you need to get the right worms.

And to me, all worms look alike, right? My girls took insect investigation summer camps but although I've been a gardener for years, I don't look closely at the worms I find in my soil. Basically, there are tons of different earthworms, some of which are soil workers, and some of which are composting worms, who don't like living in soil but prefer heaps of organic matter. We love earthworms for everything they do in our soil -- especially those of us with heavy clay soil that needs an earthworm's tender aeration -- but they wouldn't do diddly in a heap of organic waste.

(Quick aside: worked on a conservation project at the Botanic Garden with a soil ecologist who told me the earthworms we so treasure in our soil aren't actually native to our country. At some point, they were brought over here, probably in an agriculture shipment as a stowaway. Who knew? Gardeners in this country act like the earthworm was always here and have a god-given right to infect our soil, blah blah -- I'm just glad they're here now.)

So I needed some composting worms -- red wigglers, redworms, stink worms or tiger worms (all referring to the very same beast). They're not something I could go outside to find. Luckily, there are worm supply farms all over the internet (you might say the internet is crawling with them, but I'm not partial to easy puns).

My supplier of choice was GardenWorms because they were one of the least expensive options with ready stock. I imagine that hunting for reg wigglers in a time other than the dead of winter might reveal more sites with stock to ship.

The worms arrived in a bag with some bedding. Usually the box will say "live" or "perishable," but our postal guy, Eric, was so freaked out by the combination of "GardenWorms" and "perishable" on my box that he rang the doorbell to hand me the package personally and to verify that I wouldn't be eating what was inside.

Can-O-Worms

Oops, Christmas refers to this post, not the last. Being crafty in my composting marriedness, I inveigled my poor spouse to procure the bin. I sent him pictures from Amazon and my favorite composters site. He ignored me and purchased the Can-O-Worms.

The Can-O- Worms is considered to the most popular home-vermicomposting system in the US. You get a legged base with spigot, three trays, and a top. The spigot is for releasing the liquid (called leachate) that may drain from the composted organic waste -- this makes prime fertilizer for indoor plants. The Can-O-Worms is made with recycled plastic and comes packaged in cardboard that you then use in the Can -- nothing is wasted.

You can vermicompost in just about any plastic or wood container that allows aeration. Some people get Rubbermaid bins and drill holes in appropriate places -- this would be horizontal vermicomposting, since they'd be using the entire bin at the same time. With horizontal vermicomposting, there's time and mess with harvesting out the finished product, separating the worms, etc.

The Can-o-Worms is a vertical unit that supposedly makes harvesting and separating easier. Ostensibly, you start with the worms and the food in the bottom bin until it's full, then add food to the next up bin and the worms migrate up once the food is fully digested in the lower bin.