Vermicomposting is worm composting and really there's two essential things you
need besides the worms and that is a bin and a composter for in your house.
You can get something fancy like this. personally I just use a pitcher and I put
my food in that. A plastic pitcher and I take that outside. But this one here has
aeration holes and a large open space for your food.
And so you can put your food scrapes inside a bin like this and take it out to
a composting system. This here is a multi tiered worm composting system.
It's called can of worms and it's from Australia. The multi tiers allow for
worms to migrate upwards and you can harvest the worm castings below.
So right now in this composting system the worms are on the second level.
And you'll see in here this is about to be ready to be harvested. This is very
dense worm castings. That is this dark matter.
One of the main benefits of using worms to break down your food are the castings
that are left behind. This is the dark organic matter that is in my hands
right now. And this matter contains more iron, zinc, copper,nitrogen, potassium,and
phosphorus than many fertilizers you can buy at the store.
You'll see in this layer right now, the worms are actually slightly reddish in
color. This is the type of worm you'll want to use if you start worm composting
at home. These are called red wigglers.
You can see them all in my hand. So red wigglers actually contain over, can consume
over double their mass in body weight a day. So they are really good for breaking
down your food.
Some essential items you need like a composter by your kitchen sink and the
actual compost bin and then the worms. There are several places you can order
worms. If you look online you can find red wigglers and you can order them in the
mail actually. There's actually a couple places in Salt Lake where you can get
worms as well. And so once you have the worms in the bin what you need to do is
put together an actual set of items that the worms need to survive. The first is
bedding. I personally uses newspapers, shredded newspapers. You can use shredded
office paper, cardboard, some people use coconut mulch. There's several items you
can use for the actual bedding. The actual moisture of the bedding should be that of
a wet sponge, but not soaked. So think of a sponge you had by the kitchen sink and
you squeeze it out. What's left behind how that feels is how your worm compost should
feel. What else the worms need to survive is some form of grit. So that could be
dirt or coffee grinds anything along that nature. They can use to help digest the
food. And of course you need food. So that's the main purpose for you to help
cut down your food waste. So food scrapes that the worms can eat. Here's a pea pod
and an avocado. In general worms don't like really spicy food. So that would
include onions, heavy spices like cayenne pepper, and garlic. So you don't
want to overload your compost on things like that. And they also don't digest meat
So you don't want to put a log of meat in your compost. So you need the vegetables
and the last is some form of moisture. I explained that with the sponge analogy.
Once you have those items you can just put them in your bin, put the worms in there
and get started. This is a very fancy bin that was ordered in the mail. It is a
multi tiered bin like I explained, but you can also order, or buy at the grocery
store a simple tote. A Rubbermaid tote and drill holes. A very important aspect
of your worm compost is that the worms have holes so that they get enough oxygen
to survive. An average tote at the grocery store, a Rubbermaid tote, would cost about
five dollars. Ordering worms, if you were to order worms for example in Salt Lake
you can order two dozen worms for four dollars. So they are actually very cheap.
They're the same worms that are used for fishing.
When your worm compost gets to the point where it's mostly worm castings. That's
the dark organic matter that we see here. You are ready to harvest the castings.
And how you do that on a multi-tiered system like this you would put fresh food
and bedding on the next layer above. The worms will naturally migrate upwards onto
the next layer and then you can harvest
the castings below. Another thing you can do with a worm system like this
with holes on multiple levels is harvest tea from below. So this is a good example
of worm tea. This is a mixture of the worm castings and water and this sits in the
bottom of the composting system and then you harvest the worm tea by turning this
tap and it comes out the bottom. It's best if you can aerate your worm tea.
So you want to stir it for on average for about eight hours, about once every hour
or two hours. Just stir it and keep aerating that tea and then you can use it
in your garden. How this worm tea works, it's like liquid fertilizer. So you're
applying that to your garden and it really helps boost your plant growth.
So you'll see this is really light in coloration, so what I'll want to do is
take a handful. Make sure I'm not killing any worms in doing that. And I'll throw
some of that in and mix it with my hand. And what you'll have here, as you see is
some really powerful liquid fertilizer now that you can use in your garden. You can
also apply the castings to your garden but I'll warn you that they are so dense in
nitrogen that you'll actually want to put the castings around your plants instead of
touching your plants directly. Because it might over fertilize the plants.
So red wigglers, which are the most common worms that you would use in your worm
composting system survive best at a temperature range between 55 and 77
degrees Fahrenheit. So what that means for most Utahans is that this would be
inside your house. Luckily worm compost has more of an earthy smell than a
typical composting system because of the worm castings. So that keeps down a lot of
the barriers home owners have with composting is that the smell isn't that
bad if you do this in your house. If you have a worm compost outside you can keep
it out there certain times of the year and if your compost pile is large enough that
it is generating it's own heat you can also have your worms in there.
Over the winter, but it just depends on how large your compost is.
Another benefit of worm composting as apposed to regular composting is that worm
composting has an earthy smell. You don't get the composting or breaking down smell
of regular food you would get in a regular compost. Instead these casting have a real
soil earthy smell to them. And a way to cut down on smell if you were to compost
a lot of people have their worm compost inside their house and the way that they
do that is when they put fresh food scrapes in the bin. Let's say this
avocado shell was fresh. I would actually pull some dirt aside and bury that
underneath and then you don't have any smell from that food breaking down.
The worms will take care of that underneath the layer of soil. That's the
best way to keep the smell down in your own house.