It was 1952 and Mr. Campbell had a worm bin. This shallow box--about
two feet wide by four feet long--resided under a worktable in the
tiny storeroom/greenhouse adjacent to our grade school science
class. It was full of what looked like black, crumbly soil and
zillions of small, red wiggly worms, not at all like the huge
nightcrawlers I used to snatch from the lawn after dark to take
fishing the next morning. Mr. Campbell's worms were fed used coffee
grounds; the worms in turn were fed to salamanders, to Mr.
Campbell's favorite fish, a fourteen-inch long smallmouth bass named
Carl, to various snakes, and to turtles living in aquariums around
the classroom. From time to time the "soil" in the box was fed to
his lush potted plants.
Mr. Campbell was vermicomposting. This being before the age of
ecology and recycling, he probably just thought of it as raising
live food to sustain his educational menagerie. Though I never had
reason to raise worms before, preparing to write this book perked my
interest in every possible method of composting. Not comfortable
writing about something I had not done, I built a small worm box,
obtained a pound or so of brandling worms, made bedding, added
worms, and began feeding the contents of my kitchen compost bucket
to the box.
To my secret surprise, vermicomposting works just as Mary Appelhof's
book _Worms Eat My Garbage_ said it would. Worm composting is
amazingly easy, although I admit there was a short learning curve
and a few brief spells of sour odors that went away as soon as I
stopped overfeeding the worms. I also discovered that my slapdash
homemade box had to have a drip catching pan beneath it. A friend of
mine, who has run her own in-the-house worm box for years, tells me
that diluting these occasional, insignificant and almost odorless
dark-colored liquid emissions with several parts water makes them
into excellent fertilizer for house plants or garden.
It quickly became clear to me that composting with worms
conveniently solves several recycling glitches. How does a northern
homeowner process kitchen garbage in the winter when the ground and
compost pile are frozen and there is no other vegetation to mix in?
And can an apartment dweller without any other kind of organic waste
except garbage and perhaps newspaper recycle these at home? The
solution to both situations is vermicomposting.
Worm castings, the end product of vermicomposting, are truly the
finest compost you could make or buy. Compared to the volume of
kitchen waste that will go into a worm box, the amount of castings
you end up with will be small, though potent. Apartment dwellers
could use worm castings to raise magnificent house plants or scatter
surplus casts under the ornamentals or atop the lawn around their
buildings or in the local park.
In this chapter, I encourage you to at least try worm composting. I
also answer the questions that people ask the most about using worms
to recycle kitchen garbage. As the ever-enthusiastic Mary Applehof
said:
"I hope it convinces you that you, too, can vermicompost, and that
this simple process with the funny name is a lot easier to do than
you thought. After all, if worms eat my garbage, they will eat
yours, too."