I Heart Worm Poop

Doesn’t everyone love worm poop?  I took this picture at the Green Festival in Chicago last year. 

Sure, you can buy your worm poop. You can buy worm tea, too.  Me?  I like to make my own worm poop.  My worms are little pooping machines.  A worm can eat half its body weight per day. One pound of worms is roughly equal to 1,000 worms.  On top of that, worms multiply rather quickly, too.    That’s a lot of kitchen scraps those little guys can eat up and poop out. 

Worm poop is some of the best fertilizer you can find anywhere.  Setting up your worm composting - or vermicomposting - production is also pretty easy to do.  All you need is a worm bin (which you can make or buy), worms - red wigglers - not earth worms (I bought mine on eBay), some newspaper for bedding, and finally kitchen scraps (no meats or dairy).  Something else that makes worm composting easier is to have a kitchen compost pail (I have this one). 

Why do I vermicompost?  There are a bunch of reasons.  To be honest, one of the first reasons was that I thought it would be fun and interesting and I thought that the kids would love it (see video below).  I was right on both counts.   To make it even easier - my wife actually suggested that we give it a try.  As I mentioned before, worm castings are great fertilizer.  You can use it as soil additive or you can take the tea - liquid that comes out of the waste - and   spray your plants with it.  Since worm castings are just poop - you can liquify it by boiling it with some water and then you can put it in a spray bottle.   Food waste that is thrown in the gargbage adds up very quickly.  Most people think that because it comes from nature, that it will easily biodegrade and go back to nature.  Well - not in today’s dumps.  What happens is that the waste liquifies as it rots.  That liquid then blends with toxins that are in the dump.  Then the liquid ends up in the ground water, streams, and lakes.  Its not a pretty thing. 

There is a great company out there called TerraCycle that mass produces worm poop and packages it in old soda bottles.  They have an excellent operation and are growing rapidly.  Another initiative is underway at Southern Illinois University.  They are taking the approximately 1,200 pounds of cafeteria waste they collect daily and feed it to more than 2 million red wigglers.  That’s some serious recycling!

Worm composting is fun and easy.  Give it a try.  Worms aren’t gross - they’re neat little creatures.  Kitchen composters don’t smell.  Properly maintained bins don’t smell, either.  It just smells like dirt. 

We just upgraded from our homemade bin to The Worm Factory.  It is a 5-tray system.  It makes harvesting the castings easier.  You just feed in the next tray and the worms crawl up to the food.

 


The Worm Factory Bin  - Click for a close-up of my worms


More YouTube Worm Composting Videos