Our outdoor vermicomposting system utilizes worms to break down our vegetarian scraps. Over the summer they doubled in population with extra food from family and neighbors. With winter approaching we made a date to build an indoor worm farm. We had two large Styrofoam shipping coolers someone discarded in our yard and we kept because we figured we could use them for something.
My honey drilled holes in the bottom and sides, cut leftover screening and prepped the boxes with wood shavings, newspaper and sandy soil (we’ve heard crushed eggshells work too for helping the worms’ digestion). I went to the backyard composter to round up worms. Seriously it takes about one pound of worms to process two pounds of table scraps in a week and one pound of worms is about 1000 of the little red wrigglers. We measured our weekly waste and planned accordingly.
One evening after we had the worms settled my honey actually said, “I’m saving these pieces of pizza crust for the worms.”
Neither one of us can tell of Fred/Frieda (worms are hermaphrodites) or Keshia/Ken is the one who is on top waiting for the freshest serving, but the soil for our gardening is beautifully aerated, moist and loaded with nutrients. Doesn’t organic soil sound almost mouthwatering? Weird.
THE END
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