Vermicomposting a.k.a. Worms

In an earlier post Lane mentioned that we have a community of worms living in our house eating our table waste. Sean prefers to throw all of his excess processed food in the garbage to go to the landfill but whenever we can rescue perfectly good organics from this fate they land either in the compost bin outside or the worm bin in the basement. Our current batch of worms came to 2703 Hanover just after Christmas thanks to a very caring gardener/vermicomposter aunt of mine.

This crew is my second batch of worms. The first group lived out on my balcony in a medium sized rubbermaid bin for the first year I lived in Richmond. When I moved to 2703 I released group #1 in the garden around one of the Dominion Power buildings. It was my small attempt to offset Dominion's (and Sean's) carbon footprint. The new worms have been living in the climate controlled luxury of our basement in a converted grain dispenser which also came from my wonderful aunt.

Today I decided to take the worms on a little field trip so they could see where they would be living shortly. Pictured here the worms are enjoying (or more likely trying to escape from) the sun for the first time since last summer.

Can you find the worm in this picture?

Here the worms are having their world turned upside down.

For anyone interested in raising worms the book 'Worms Eat my Garbage' by Mary Appelhof is a great source. The book is the bible/koran of vermicomposting. While raising worms can be as simple as shredding some newspaper, putting it in a bin, adding worms and a little bit of organic matter occasionally it can also get a lot more complicated. I have chosen to do it the lazy way and spend little time with my worms which probably results in fewer worms and less compost generated but it is still productive.

Check back in a few weeks when the worms are released into the wild to fend for themselves for the summer before hopefully being recaptured to winter in the safety of the basement once again.