Worms

Last December I found the blog No Impact Man and became engrossed in his project to strive towards a zero carbon footprint while living in Manhattan. It’s one of the rare blogs where I went back to the beginning and read every post. Along the way I learned about vermicomposting and thought, I live in an apartment (condo), I could do this too. Then, a few weeks later, a class was offered where I work (organized by one of my fabulous co-workers) about how to compost with worms, taught by the Recycling Director of Cambridge, Massachusetts. I signed up immediately.

What appealed to me was that we could turn our vegetable scraps into something valuable, rather than letting it decompose in a landfill where it would produce more greenhouse gases than produce anything useful. I also liked that it could be done in an apartment throughout the year, where we don’t have any outdoor space for a regular compost bin. I also thought my kids might find it interesting. Once I learned that it didn’t take much effort to maintain, that it would also allow us to compost newspaper, and that it didn’t smell – I was sold.

My husband blogged at the time about setting it up. Since that time we’ve set up an additional two bins. This weekend we did our 2nd harvesting of worm castings which yielded about 65 pounds of compost from about four months of effort. It was a pretty good haul! Now the bins have fresh bedding and some fresh food, ready to go on producing soil. We took the compost to our community garden plot, which I’ll post about later.

One of the bins with fresh bedding

Our three worm bins by the back door

I enjoy contributing to a natural process where we can see a full cycle of growth, decay, and then growth again.