Worms nibble my garbage
When my husband first pitched the idea of starting a worm bin in our mud room a couple of years ago, I balked. Though generally in favor of any action that can be considered green, I admit bugs give me the heebie jeebies. But Jennifer Craig with Durango Compost Co. made me a believer (see this story on her operation). Last year we bought her worm castings and used them on our garden. At the end of the season, I did a blind taste test between our tomatoes and those grown by another gardener who used Miracle Grow. The tomatoes aided with the worm poop won hands down.
So this year, we purchased one of the bins Jennifer offers. So far, our pound of red wrigglers seem to have settled in fairly happily, though we are still discerning their eating habits and have more refuse then they can accommodate (Jennifer said they multiply quickly so to be patient). My son finds it curious, though so much is new in the mind of a 3 year old, he pretty much took having a bunch of worms in the house as no big deal. The coolest thing: when you put your ear up to the compost in the bin, you can hear them moving. It’s almost like listening the earth breathe.
Tags: Environment, gardening
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 3:31 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Rachel Turiel says:Love the red wrigglers!
You can also throw one worm into an outdoor compost pile and in weeks each shovelful of compost will bear many little red bodies squiggling to hide from the sun.
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:04 am
Dan Moore says:Hi,
What do you mean by “the tomatoes aided with the worm poop won hands down”? Bigger tomatoes? Bigger plants? More tomatoes? Better tasting fruit?
I’m a big believer in vermicomposting, but always have wondered at the benefits of worm castings as soil amendments, hence my questions.
Thanks!
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:07 am
Kid Row says:Dan — my test between the vermicompost tomatoes and the Miracle Gro tomatoes was on taste only. Granted it wasn’t very scientific, as the varieties weren’t the same and they were grown under different conditions (the Miracle Gro tomatoes were started in a greenhouse then transplanted at about 1.5-foot height into pots on a balcony while the vermicompost tomatoes where started in our windowsill, hardened off in yogurt tubs and transplanted, rather late, into raised beds). But regardless, the worm-poop tomatoes tasted better and that was all the convincing I needed.