You can use red wiggler worms to create your own compost. When placed in a bin in your backyard, the worms will eat all your kitchen scrapings and peelings, and in a matter of months, turn them into beautiful compost for nourishing your soil. Here’s advice on how to get started, from Maggie Pipkins, owner of Cape Cod Worm Farm in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts:
- Buy red wiggler worms. You will need about 1,000 to handle the food scraps from two people, in a container approximately 2 feet by 1 foot by 1 foot deep.
- Use a wooden box, which will absorb moisture, for your worm container. Moisture builds up on the inside of the plastic containers often sold for this purpose, and the soil gets gummy and stiff.
- Place 8 inches of bedding soil at the bottom of the container. Use a 50:50 mixture of soil and peat moss. (Pipkins recommends taking soil from under an oak or other deciduous tree, not a fir tree, where the soil will be too acidic.) Do not use potting soil unless you can verify it does not contain chemicals that could be harmful to the worms.
- Place worms in the container and let them stay there for two days before placing any food in it.
- Begin to add food scraps—everything but meat, fish, bones, and acidic fruits. If you grind the scraps before adding them to the container, the worms will eat them more quickly. Place food scraps on top of the soil so they get the air they need to decay.
- To harvest the worm castings, dump the contents of the container onto spread-out newspaper and remove the castings. Fill the box with fresh bedding and dump the worms and any undigested matter back into the box.
- Keep your worms outside, if possible. During the winter, cover the container loosely with hay or leaves to guard against freezing. If you keep the worms indoors, you can prevent them from crawling out by placing the uncovered container under a low-watt light.
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Use worms to create your compost.
