What to do with Thanksgiving Leftovers? The Worms Will Help Out

I had never heard the word vermiculture (cultivation of worms for compost) before reading about it in the Master Gardener Hand Book but it piqued my interest. Over the next year the subject came up a number of times with other Master Gardeners, so when I was offered the opportunity to harvest free worms from under the rabbit hutches at Loma Vista Farm in Vallejo, I decided to give vermiculture a try. I brought home a cottage cheese size container full of red wiggler worms (Eisenia foetida), the best ones for composting because they stay near the surface and are said to eat about half their weight in garbage every day.

When I got home I located a 20”x 14” by 12” deep clear plastic tub in the garage and set to work making my first worm bin. I didn’t realize until much later that worms prefer living in the dark and I should have used a solid plastic tub, a wooden box, or even an old Styrofoam cooler.

My clear tub had a folding top which provided lots of air. If I had used a tub with a solid top I would have drilled ½ - ¼ inch air holes half way up the sides and some on the bottom to serve as drainage holes. I filled my tub with six inches of shredded newspaper, wet everything down until it felt like a wrung-out sponge, and added the carton of worms which contained a little soil and rabbit manure from the farm. I then buried some kitchen scraps in one corner and placed it in the bathtub in the guest bathroom because it was winter and I had read worms work better with a little warmth. A few days later I had flies buzzing around the house and realized, even though I hadn’t noticed them, fly larva had come in with the worms. Yuck! I immediately moved the bin to the garage for the rest of the winter and when spring came, moved it outside under the shade of our cherry tree.

I fed the worms weekly with kitchen scraps, being careful not to feed them meat, milk products or fats because it can attract flies, rodents, and other animals. I fed the worms egg shells (worms need some grit for digestion), coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable scraps, leftover beans, bread and even tea bags. Each time I fed them in a different location in the bin, but they didn’t seem to be eating the kitchen scraps very fast. Now I know they probably didn’t like coming to the edge of the tub where it was lighter. Plus, I needed more worms for the amount of food I added to the tub. If I had been more scientific about it I would have weighed my kitchen garbage first, decided about how much I produce in one day, bought twice the weight in worms and made sure my bin had one square foot of surface space per pound of garbage.

 One day the next fall, upon opening the tub I saw a layer of wiggly larva. Oh no! The flies had found the bin again! I was grossed out, decided to end my vermiculture experiment, and buried the whole mass in the compost pile. The worms seemed to thrive there even though the pile got up to 120 degrees when I turned it. As far as I know, my pile never got to the highest ideal temperatures of 160 degrees. If it did I don’t think my worms would have survived. Now, every time I turn the pile I enjoy seeing the worms working and I still add kitchen scraps to feed them always being careful to bury the scraps so I don’t attract rats or other animals.

I thought my vermiculture experiment was over, but a year later a friend offered me her home-scale, commercial worm bin… complete with worms! I decided to give it another try.  Stay tuned for the next installment of my creepy crawly story.