Vermiculture Adventures

Vermiculture (growing worms) is an exciting way to improve the soil in your garden while recycling your food wastes. Worm composting bins (known as vermicomposting) are easily adaptable to different sizes of households and types of maintenance. There are several different kinds, from high-tech systems you can order from a catalogue to those you can make yourself at home. In either case, if you treat your worms well and feed them delicious food scraps, they will reward you with their castings. Worm castings are a very concentrated source of nutrients that can increase the productivity of your soil. Once you have a thriving community of happy and full worms, they can process half their weight in food each day . This is not the case with a regular backyard compost pile, which can only incorporate a small amount of kitchen waste before it gets soggy and smelly.

One of our favorite books on vermiculture is "Worms eat My Garbage" by the late, great Michigander Mary Appelhof. Check it out of the library, or swing by the Growing Hope offices to say hello to our worms and read our copy.
We also hope you'll join us for our Worm Bin Workshop on January 26 (a Saturday) from 10:30am to 1pm; it's the first of our ongoing Saturday Classes that will be held throughout the winter and spring.