Because I was afraid of worms, Roxanne. Worms!

In addition to gardening, I've also tried my hand at vermicomposting. It sounds easy. Get a bin, put a bunch of worms in it, throw some dirt and shredded paper and start piling in your kitchen scraps and voila! In no time you'll have some of the best compost around for your landscape.

So I head to a local feed store, Buck Moore Feed & Supply and pick up some red wrigglers. And they came with directions. Worms. Came with directions. Feed them anything you want! except oranges and go light on the onions. Shred in any paper! except not glossy. If the environment is good the worms will start reproducing like crazy! and they don't like to be crowded. Oh yea, and worms don't like to stay in their own "castings" also known as worm poop so remember to change their environment.

...huh?

Now I start thinking to myself, "These are worms. How hard is it to keep worms? They don't like to eat certain foods? How picky of an eater are worms?! I understand the paper, glossy paper is harder to decompose but I have to watch the worm population? I can't even begin to wrap my head around that. And I understand not wanting to be in their own poop but how do I determine when it's time to change the .... worm litter? I mean my cats have developed pretty good signals as to when THEY think their box needs to be changed... they start throwing the cat litter outside the box but what exactly do worms do? Are they going to start leaving the box and doing who knows what on the kitchen floor?

After much research in the library of Google, I've found out that it's for one thing called vermicomposting and vermiculture. There are many, MANY philosophies about vermicomposting and I finally found the wikiversity about it here and it really provides comprehensive information on the entire process.

Some points I'd like to make:

The most important thing is that your bin does not have a smell to it or that fruit flies do not appear. If this happens, the worms are not processing the food for some reason and are thus not happy. Check for the following:

Bedding is to dry

Too much food (worms can't process it quickly enough)

No movement or activity when worms are prodded

No sign of worms

Check your bin once a week

Aerate your bin by moving everything around at least once a week

Worms are not a big fan of "animal" products such as eggshells

As far as the worm poop goes, everything so far has told me that once it becomes too much, the worms will begin to try to migrate out of the poop. This can be seen by the worms beginning to crawl along the wall of the bin. For starters, it seems the best bin setup is a continuous flow setup. I've decided to go from a single bin to a continuous vertical flow setup. That's just another fancy way of saying I'm stacking the bins. I went to Wallyworld and bought a 3-drawer plastic storage cart (sans wheels) and drilled holes in the bottom of each drawer. I like this setup best because I can see in the drawers without having to open them.

Overall though my worms have been happy which makes me happy. What can I say, it's the simple things in life.