If you are a gardener, or even an angler, you would hug a worm if you could. But the idea of bringing them in your home? Well, that might take a little convincing.
But when you see the perfect ‘black gold’ that worms can make, in your kitchen, with just a little help from you, you’ll probably change your tune.
Not only is composting great for your garden, it’s wonderful from an environmental standpoint as well. Waste diversion – the process of diverting waste away from landfills through reduce, reuse, recycle and compost activities – is incredibly important to the city’s future, said Renée Brownlee, manager of solid waste and administrative services for the City of Greater Sudbury.
“Waste diversion is an important activity for many reasons,” she said. “Saving valuable resources, energy and money, as well as return nutrients to the soil. It is the environmentally responsible way to go about our lives and business. Saving landfill space also means that we defer filling up existing landfill sites and the very high cost of siting new landfills or transferring waste to other communities who still have landfill space.”
She learned about vermicomposting when she first began with the city, and was excited to try something that could be done in her apartment, and as a fun — and educational — activity for her young son.
You can easily order a kit online to set up at home, but if you love a good project, building your own is easy, and a great project for children.
Start with two large plastic storage containers, (a.k.a. rhymes with “WubberWaid”) in a size that will fit the area you have available, or the amount of food you will be adding. If you’d like, try weighing your organic waste over a week’s time – your container should have one-square foot for every pound of waste. However, while you may have great intentions, starting small is in your best interest – just while you and your worms figure each other out.
One container will sit inside the other, acting as a base for any water runoff that might occur. You may have to add a support to the space, so that the other container can rest on top.
The container that sits inside the other is the one that will contain the bedding and worms, so it’s going to need some holes – both for ventilation and evaporation. Make 20-24 one-quarter-inch holes in the bottom of the top container, and two rows of holes – one-sixteenth in diameter – along the top rim, as well as 30 in the lid. You only need to do this to one of the lids, as the other will not be used. A drill will help immensely with this part. If you like, you can cover the bottom of the lid with landscape fabric, in case you have any adventurous worms.
Next, it’s time for bedding. You can use shreds of newspaper (non-coloured ink) and untreated cardboard, torn into one-inch strips and soaked in water. Wring out the excess water (until the paper is as dry as a wrung-out sponge) and fluff up while placing in container, until you have filled it two-thirds of the way. You should also add a bit of soil from the garden if you can get to it, or a bit of potting soil.
Now – the worms. Red Wigglers are held as the gold standard both for their reproduction and hunger. You can order them online, or if you know someone who is currently vermicomposting, ask them for a handful. When Brownlee was creating hers, she ordered her worms from Cathy's Crawly Composters in Bradford, Ontario. http://www.cathyscomposters.com/
So you have the worms, and you’ve made their bed – it’s time for a snack. Your worms love an organic material diet, anything from peels to coffee grounds to lettuce; the only things to avoid are meat and bones, dairy and non-biodegradable products.
It will take you a bit of time to get the perfect ecosystem set for them. You want it neither too wet nor too dry, or provide too much food. In Brownlee’s case, she found “the bedding had to be moist but not wet. If it’s too wet, add more shredded paper. If it’s too dry, add small amounts of water.”
She also mentioned the location of the food you leave for them.
“Place the food in the corners of the containers, alternating the corner every time you feed your worms. This encourages the worms to slither about and leave you their ‘black gold’ castings (aka worm droppings),” Brownlee said. “The castings are full of nutrients and they are the product that you want to retrieve to place into your plants and/or garden.”
That said, she cautioned against overfeeding. If you check the bin and there is still quite a bit of uneaten food, given them a few more days.
After about three to four months, the worms will have multiplied and reduce their bedding and food to almost all soil. However, what is good for us is not good for the worms, and they need to be sorted and restarted.
You can sort through the worms by hand, placing them in a new container of bedding. That would be fine, but you could also try this trick. When you dump the soil and worms out onto a plastic sheet, push the soil into several cone-shaped piles. Find a bright lamp or light, and shine it on them. Have a cup of tea, then head back to the piles. When you do, you’ll notice that the worms have moved further down the pile to escape the light. Remove the top portion of soil to another container for use, and then wait again for the worms to move down the pile. Once you have more worms than soil, add them to their fresh new home, and begin anew.
The worm compost will be very strong, so use it sparingly – as a top dressing or in seed lines, or add it to water to make a compost “tea” for watering.
The setup for vermicomposting is certainly the hardest part, as the worms later prefer you leave them alone but for checking moisture levels and feeding time. It might be easy, is it worth it?
“I was very happy with the results,” Brownlee said. “I felt that I was doing my part and contributing to an environmentally healthy community. Not only was I placing less waste in the garbage, but I was also independently turning out a nutrient-rich soil amendment to feed to my house and garden plants, at no additional cost.”
Jenny Lamothe is a freelance writer, proof-reader and editor in Greater Sudbury. Contact her through her website, JennytheWriter.wordpress.com.
