Composting with Worms: Vermiposting

Here in the volcanic foothills of the Santa Monica mountains in Southern California, the "soil" is mostly rock. In order to have any kind of respectable vegetable garden (or grow much of anything that isn't a native chaparral plant, for that matter) you have to create soil.

I do that by scavenging around for dirt (sometimes I pick up fill dirt from Craigslist) and composting practically everything. Kitchen waste, leaves, horse manure from neighbors, chicken manure and shavings from my chickens, grass trimmings from a neighbor, you name it. There's no such thing as food waste here; if leftovers don't get fed to the chickens, they get fed to the worms, or to one of the big compost bins.

As you can see from this video, I use a small vermiposting (the technical term for worm composting) "station" for table scraps and other random food. I also have a large outdoor bin for bigger loads.

The cool thing about one of these little stations is that you can use them indoors. They don't smell, they're easy to manage--- perfect even if you live in an apartment, and you want to practice composting while you're saving up for your suburban ranch. I got this one (and an initial load of red wrigglers) from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm.

I especially love the worm compost for my tomatoes. Mixing that stuff into the soil is like giving my tomatoes crack, they just go crazy. Very high nitrogen content, I'd guess.

If you want to learn more about vermiposting, I recommend the "bible" on the subject, "Worms Eat My Garbage." Here's a link to the book at Amazon.