Vermicomposting (aka Worm Composting)

[Mark Krawczyk]

For many folks, it's challenging to maintain healthy, functional compost piles in their backyard due to any number of reasons.  Lack of carbon-rich material (leaves, straw, sawdust, etc), a lack of desire to give the pile the attention it's due and a lack of understand of the principles of worm composting all leave many biological recyclers with smelly, slimy piles that attract more wildlife than human attention.  This is not to say that good healthy compost making isn't within the reach of us all, but that worm composting or 'vermicomposting' may be a faster, more enjoyable strategy for many folks (especially those without a good backyard space for a compost pile).

Vermicomposting essentially involves the human maintenance of a 'worm farm' or bin.  Basically, organic matter, straw, leaves, newspaper, topsoil, etc are layered in a designated plastic bin that's been perforated with holes to allow air transfer and is then seeded with red wiggler worms.  If kept moist and provided a steady supply of food scraps, the worms will breed and help to further break down household waste, leaving a wake of worm castings (an amazingly rich soil amendment) in their wake.  What's more, you can choose to harvest the worms (I use them to 'seed' my garden with these amazing organic matter conversion factories) and create a liquid fertilizer from their castings.

Worm farming is easy, educational and fun.  Do you have experience with worm composting?

[JasonFrishman]

I totally got into worm composting back when i was living in Boston.
Built a worm compost bin from scratch and everything.
In fact, I actually built a second one with a client I was seeing (I was working at an inpatient psychiatric facility for adolescents - the kid loved the idea of playing with worms as therapy!)

anyway, my home worm compost bin went incredibly well, at first.  It was awesome, we harvested excellent compost, our garden and houseplants and herbs were doing great, and then, well, things happened.  I have some idea about what went wrong, in fact i think it was a multitude of things, but nevertheless, I got some of the FOULEST, smelliest, grossiest stuff i have ever worked with (and i've worked at a lot of interesting places!)  After that, my worm composting days were over. (My wife helped me clean everything up and she seconded the end of vermicomposting in our apartment.) fortunately for us, when we moved back to VT we have enough room and ability to have 2 compost bins in our backyard.)

as an aside, the book that i learned vermicomposting from boasted one woman who had a worm bin built into her living room coffee table, with NO smell or worm escapees! now i would love to see that!

-Jason