|
|
Have You Thought About Using Worms?
 Employing worms to make compost is called vermiculture. Manure worms, red worms, and branding worms (the small ones usually sold by commercial breeders) are dynamos when it comes to decomposing organic matter - especially kitchen scraps. The problem is that these worms cannot tolerate high temperatures. Add a handful of them to an active compost pile and they'll be dead in an hour. Field worms and night crawlers (common garden worms with one big band) are killed at even lower temperatures. |
|
 |
To maintain a separate worm bin for composting food scraps, you need a watertight container that can be kept somewhere that the temperature will remain between 50 and 80 degrees F all year-round. Ready-made worm bins are available, but you can also make your own.
Setting up a worm bin is easy. All you need is a box, moist newspaper strips, and worms. Bedding, made of newspaper strips or leaves, will hold moisture and contain air spaces essential to worms. To figure out how to set up a worm bin, first consider what worms need to live. If your bin provides what worms need, then it will be successful. Worms need moisture, air, food, darkness, and warm (but not hot) temperatures.
|
| We recommend using only raw fruit and vegetable scraps. Stay away from meats, oils and dairy products, which are more complex materials than fruits and vegetables. Thus, they take longer to break down and can attract pests. Cooked foods are often oily or buttery, which can also attract pests.
Avoid orange rinds and other citrus fruits, which are too acidic, and can attract fruit flies. Try to use a variety of materials. We have found the more vegetable matter, the better the worm bin. Stay away from onions and broccoli which tend to have a strong odor.
Red worms are available locally, and there are many sites on the Internet that can help you with worm composting!
|
 |
|
