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Vermicompost
Compost your fruit & vegetable scraps under the kitchen sink
This is a super easy and inexpensive project that will be helpful to our environment. First it's going to help the environment by keeping
the vegetable food scraps out of your trash and out of our landfills. In the process you will be creating a wonderful organic compost
material perfect for your houseplants and your garden.
You will need:
  A plastic container with a lid
A tray to fit under the bin
Wood blocks to sit the bin on
Strips of newspaper - black and
white sections of the paper
Red wiggler worms
1,000 worms
will eat around 3-4 pounds of scraps a week
Garden soil - about 1 cup
Setting up your vermicomposting bin:
Your bin needs to be well ventilated.
Use a 1/8" drill bit to drill holes all over the lid of the container.
Place the blocks in the tray and place
the container on the blocks to allow ventilation under the container.
Layer the cut up strips of newspaper
in the bottom of the container - spray with water
Put the worms and their soil in the
container on top of the newspaper strips
Spread the garden soil over the
worms
Let this sit out without the lid for a
couple hours so the worms work their way down into the bin.
Put the lid on the container and let
this sit overnight
You may now start adding your
vegetable scraps to the container. Spread the scraps evenly throug the bin - be sure the scraps are covered with the soil.
Acceptable Scraps
All vegetable peels are okay.
Coffee grounds can be added to the container.
You should never add dairy products, fat, or meat to the bin. It will smell and get nasty.
Harvesting the Compost
Use rubber gloves to protect your
manicure. Don't use garden tools because you don't want to harm the worms.
It will generally take about three weeks for the vegetables to start breaking down. You will have real compost in about 3 months. You
can sift out the compost just using your fingers.
Push the compost to one side of
the container, add fresh newspaper strips, dirt, and fresh vegetables to the other half of the container. The worms will work their way
over to the fresh vegetables. Then you can scoop the compost out and sift through it. Put anything that hasn't completely broken down
back into the container.
 
Uses For Compost
Sprinkle on the soil around your
houseplants to add extra nutrients to the soil.
Mix with water in a spray bottle to
make compost tea. Mist the leaves of your houseplants with the tea.
Water your plants with compost
tea.
Add to soil in your garden for extra
nutrients.
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