Examples of Vermiculture & Composting

About Vermiculture

• When you raise worms, you are practicing vermiculture. Some people earn extra income by breeding worms to sell to anglers, and some people keep worms to improve their soil. When the worms tunnel through your yard or garden, they create air pockets in the soil that allow plant roots better access to nutrients. If you keep worms for composting, they will produce nutrient-rich worm castings that act as a garden super food.

How Composting Works

• All compost systems have a few basic rules in common. Composting depends on the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, which should be about 30:1. You can think of it as brown to green ingredients. Green additions to the system are vegetable-based food scraps like peels, trimmings, coffee grounds and grass clippings. Brown ingredients could be raked up leaves, straw or shredded newspapers. If you have access to livestock manure from horses, cows or chickens, this is considered a green ingredient, but leave dog or cat droppings out of the mix. Whenever you add a layer of green, make sure you add a thick layer of brown ingredients on top of it. The layers will eventually break down and reduce drastically in size until you have several inches of an intensely rich, dark mixture called compost.

Composting Containers

• You can get as fancy with your composting system as you like. Bins are simple to build and can be made from materials you may have on hand, such as lumber, bricks or cement blocks. Connecting three shipping pallets form a box is a common way to build a compost container. Boards can be placed on the front to enclose the pile as it grows. You can also buy various ready-made composting systems from garden centers, home improvement stores or online. Tumblers accelerate the process by making it easier to turn the compost.

Vermicompost

• In a vermicomposting system, worms turn your kitchen waste into compost. These are not your backyard earthworms, but rather red worms (Eisenia fetida), also called red wigglers. You keep the worms in a box with bedding material -- usually shredded newspaper -- and feed them kitchen scraps. The box must be kept between 55 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit and the bedding should be moist, but not dripping wet. A pound of worms can consume 1/2 pound of scraps each week, and the result will be the rich, natural plant food.