I know I’m a bit late for planting season, but just today I stumbled upon compostguide.com, a website about, of course, everything and anything related to composting - including the very fun to say and even more fun to describe vermicompost. So what exactly is vermicompost? Well, you could click on that link to find out, or you can read my fascinated layperson’s description:

The vermi- refers to worms, so vermicompost is using worms to create your compost. You put together a kind of worm haven, as big or small as you like, which consists of some sort of plastic or wooden container - even a small aquarium or terrarium - filled with worm bedding. Worm bedding can be shredded newspaper, sawdust, hay, and any number of other things. Add a little bit of soil. Then you add whatever you want to turn into compost, and the worms go to work, eating it, digesting it, and excreting it into an absolutely excellent fertilizer. The display on vermicomposting at the Park Circle Earth Day Celebration actually called what came out of the worm box Worm Tea, and for a split second I thought people really drank that reddish brown watery worm stuff. Don’t worry, they don’t. Only plants do.

Of course, the whole process of vermicomposting is a little more complicated than what I’ve said above. It turns out that there is a specific method to feeding worms and getting the results you want.   Earth 911 can give you all the details.

And if you’re on the fence about the whole thing, thinking it sounds pretty yucky, mull over this: the queen of the clean, tidy, and above all not smelly, household Martha Stewart herself endorses vermicomposting. Apparently, worms eat a lot of her garbage.

If you’re thinking about getting into composting, let me share a couple of great sites to visit: one is the aforementioned compostguide.com’s blog. Another is this post on domestic composters from treehugger.com.

Happy composting - your household, garden, and earth will thank you!

Filed under: I'On Group, Urban Sustainability on May 26th, 2008