How to Set Up a Home Vermicompost System

Earth Day 2008 - Here's how to use your kitchen waste in a vermicompost bin.

Growing a garden has too many benefits to list. Even if you do not have time to dig in the yard, you can help the earth by feeding your food scraps to a bin of Organic material makes up two-thirds of the waste in any city. The food in that waste can be recycled through the use of worm composting.
Compost worm information and starter kits will be given away this Saturday when Muskogee Farmer’s Market celebrates Earth Day.
The primary benefits of worm composting include the production of “black gold” worm castings to add to potted plants or back the earth and a way to use up kitchen scraps without sending them to the landfill.

Build a compost worm bin for your home or apartment —
1) Buy a plastic or wooden box 10 to 18 inches deep and drill air holes around the sides about half way up and drainage holes in the bottom. Compost worms, red wigglers or Eisenia fetida, cannot function in light so do not use a clear or see-through container.
2) Compost worms need air to breathe through their skin so make sure the container is not closed with a tight lid. If the container came with a lid you can drill holes in it to use as a top or put it under the compost bin to catch any water that drips out.
3) Worms move by wiggling their muscles and they need loose bedding to crawl around so put moist torn newspaper and shredded leaves in the bin for bedding. They will eat the bedding so make sure it is free of insect spray. Other bedding choices include damp shredded office paper, straw, or moist shredded cardboard.
4) Put food in the container a few days before you add the worms because they have no teeth and have a hard time eating fresh fruits and vegetables. If you cut the food into small pieces it will be ready for them sooner.
5) Bury the food a few inches below the surface and change the feeding spot each time.
6) Food to add includes funny smelling leftovers from the refrigerator (no meat), bread - even if it is moldy or dry, spaghetti, fruit and vegetable trimmings - no matter what condition they are in, eggshells, oatmeal, leftover cooked cereal, cornmeal, teabags, coffee grounds with the filters, etc.
7) Do not feed them meat, fat or dairy.
8) Redworms do not live in soil; they live in leaf piles, manure and dead plants. Gather worms from under a pile of leaves not from under the soil level.
9) Add more bedding when the first bedding seems to have disappeared. Sprinkle a little water on the worm home to keep it as moist as a wrung out sponge but not wet.
10) If the bed is kept at around 70 to 80 degrees the worms will eat everything quickly. In fact, they eat their weight in food every two days. At 45 degrees they hibernate and eat nothing. At 30 degrees they freeze.

11) Lots of other critters could come to live in the worm bin including bacteria, fungi, springtails, sow bugs, fruit flies, and mites.

12) If you plan to keep the compost kit in the house and many people do, put a kitchen towel over the top to keep light off of the worms and to keep fruit flies away. Lots of compost worm bins are kept under the kitchen sink where it stays dark and warm and where food scraps can be easily added.
13) Be sure the bin is draining so it never smells bad. If it starts to smell, add dry shredded newspaper and check the drainage holes.
14) After three to five months dump the vermicompost bin onto a surface where you can provide a strong light. Make several small piles. The worms will wiggle down to the bottom leaving the compost on the top. Remove the compost, wait for the worms to go further down and remove compost again. Put the remaining worms and vermicompost back into the bin with clean bedding and food.
15) Use the compost you harvested. Add it to water to make compost tea, sprinkle it on top of houseplant soil or mix it with potting soil, vermiculite or perlite. Feed your plants with it.
For decades, back yard gardeners have piled yard waste to let it decompose and then put the resulting mulch into their vegetable and flower beds.

As cities around the United States look for ways to reduce the amount of garbage going into landfills, they set up recycling centers, yard waste shredding operations and public compost areas. In a state-wide program to dramatically reduce trash, CA distributed worm composting containers and compost worm vouchers to everyone on trash routes (www.zerowaste.ca.gov).

The red wrigglers for Earth Day at Muskogee Farmer’s Market came from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm in Pennsylvania, www.unclejimswormfarm.com, and Rising Mist Organics in Kansas, www.wackyworldsof.com.

Go green this Earth Day and start feeding your leftovers and scraps to a bin of compost worms to keep that garbage out of the landfills.