If you love DIY, you don’t mind getting your hands dirty. If you love design, you’re hooked on visible before/after. And, if you’re flipping an apartment, you love when things get done for you. For 3 out of 3? Add 500 worms.
Our dirty secret: We’ve got worms, and they eat our garbage.
In honour of Halloween, the holiday that holds anything creepy and crawly to the light, I’m showing off my worms.
What’s worm composting? Ever heard of it? It also goes by ‘vermicomposting’, basically a bunch of worms in a plastic bin happily munching away at your food waste. Give them six months & they’ll turn the whole lot into perfect black compost. Even if you’re not a gardener, you can get into this – it’s ten times cooler than any lame ant farm. But would it be gross? Would it be a mucky hassle? I put off finding out for 2 years.
What we learned at Worm School. Adult education can take all forms. Six months ago, on the invitation of a friend, Paolo and I went to worm school. Worm school? Yea, well, this is Vancouver.
Expecting the class to feature a cast of barefoot hippies in greasy dreadlocks, I was surprised to spend a Saturday morning in the company of lawyers, housewives, retirees and normal-people-like-me (heh!). An hour later, we were sent home with 500 worm babies.
Worm composting is stupid easy. Turns out, worm composting is the easiest thing on earth. For six months, we’ve fed them a bucket of fruit peelings, veggie scraps, coffee grinds and eggshells a week. Eat a banana, chuck the peel in a tupperware in the freezer. Peel potatoes, add scraps to tub. When it’s full, defrost for an hour & then feed your happy worms.
Hi babies! Hope you’re behaving in there! See you next week!
You’d never know we even have a compost. They live in a bin on our balcony. Come over all you’ll see all kinds of hell – but you’ll never notice the worms, squirming around in half a year’s detritus. They’re quiet, well-behaved and, unless we make reminders, we easily forget they’re there.
Perks to worm composting in an apartment:
1) Take out the garbage less. With worms eating our food scraps, the trash doesn’t fill up as quickly. More time for DIY? Something like that.
2) Free goodies! We’ve just planted our spring bulbs: daffodils, tulips and crocuses – mixed into generous servings of the worms’ best compost. (If “planting bulbs” makes me sound like a tender old lady who knows what she’s doing – rest assured we shoved those suckers in pots of dirt & nothing further).
Come spring time, if we want to take “buy this apartment” glory photos, our flowers will bloom bright & beautiful, and our house plants will cooperate. Happy home that someone wants to buy? See – it all ties in.
Slightly more contrived – worm compost will help us grow bigger & better vegetables – in containers on the balcony. That’s money saved – more dosh towards future down payments.
3) It’s easy! With none of the smells or pests of normal composting.
4) No space required! You can worm-compost on the tiniest of balconies. No one will know it’s there.
5) It’s tremendously cool. The other day we cashed in. Had a look what the wormies had been up to. It was so cool. The compost is magic stuff – looked and felt so fantastically rich. We’d kick your kid’s ass at a science fair.
So get yourself some squirmy-wormy babies:
If you live in Vancouver:
- Go to worm school! The workshop includes everything – worms & all – for $25
Everywhere else:
- Worm suppliers: a very long list covering Canada, the States, UK, Australia, Brazil, South Africa & more.
- Google for worm schools in your area – try with garden centres or your city’s waste management/recycling centre.
- Otherwise – buy your worm kit online (you need a plastic worm bin & red wriggler worms) and probably the worm composting bible: Worms Eat My Garbage
.
Quality bedtime reading
- Here’s the dirt: worm composting
- Good bugs in a worm bin
- Worms Eat My Garbage
)
Any questions or creepy-crawly trepidation? I’ll happily share what we’ve learned in 6 months of worm composting – just ask! Promise it’s not gross.
Oh, and Happy Halloween from your favourite Canadians. Our tongue-in-cheek creation. (Not quite as fantastically self-deprecating as Karrie’s halloween costume, which you should all check out).
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Photos credit to Organic Nation, donkeycart, Organic Nation (again) and Stefan Perneborg via Flickr Creative Commons
Pin ItHey, you want a s'more? Some more of what?
Awesome! Can’t believe you can do that in an apartment.
Oh yes yes! Our strata laws say we can have something like 2 cats or 2 dogs… but we went with 500 worms instead. Vet bills far more manageable.
OMG I sort of want to kill you right now!!
LOL (and I did literally laugh out loud at that link!!!)
I’d love to worm farm. Def something we are going to do when we move and have a greenhouse. I seen a really cool article on it in some magazine. I’d like to do it here, but I’m thinking I would have to have the worms in the basement in the winter? -40 is not exactly worm wriggling weather. I’m going to go check out your links!
Ehehe. It was too good to be true, sewing like that deserves high(ly public) praise.
I think worms don’t like to get very cold (but who does?). We’re meant to bring them inside if it gets much below freezing… but a basement would be perfect! They eat more quickly when it’s warm.
-40? Seriously? So that’s why they call it the Great White North.
-40..not just for a day or a night..for a month or more at a time. You West Coasters are so soft, must be all the rain. I remember two years ago(?) it snowed so much in Vancouver right near Xmas day (23rd or so) that the husband’s step-brother said it would have been faster to drive to AB than to get a cab (two which failed to show up, making him miss his flight to AB) to come get him and take him to the airport. That’s normal business around the prairies! All the more fun for making snow forts and sledding down the awesome hill you live right across from…
My sewing and creative skills are epic. This is true. Also, the bottom picture is how I look best..slight fuzzy and out of focus.
Ohh, and I wanted to add a disclaimer that although I was channelling my inner Mrs. Roper when I bought that lovely kaftan at Value Village, it truly is part of my halloween costume…not just what I was lounging in!!! Ha!
That which you’ve described shakes the very core of my moral fibre. Brrrrrrr. Not exactly sold on these “Prairies”.
Re. costume – disclaimer noted! It gets top prize in my book.
Uh, totally just found your blog via the Canadian Blog Awards (congrats on the beaver) and have spent my day reading ALL of it. I am thoroughly enthralled and can’t wait to see how things continue to turn out.
As for the worms… I’m in the same boat as Karrie. Minus forty degree weather is coming and that is no fun for humans OR worms.
Heather – wow! So glad you’ve joined in with ugly-loving. Thanks ever so much.
Hats off to anyone who can hack it in -40. I struggle with four. Not minus four, just normal four.
I used to work at a Catholic college with a nun who told me about living “in community” in a large apartment with several other sisters, one of whom was a committed environmentalist and gardener. This was an hour north of NYC, and while it doesn’t get to -40, it gets cold enough that it wasn’t possible to leave them outside all winter. So they sat – eeewwww – in a large ceramic pot ON THE KITCHEN COUNTER!!
Ahahahaha, noooooo!!!!!! Really? All creatures great & small, hey?
You’re right! It’s Halloween! Maybe I should take pictures of my worm babies and update my blog too! Except, I’m not into touching them yet. I’ll use a fork!
Hi Chris! Oh yes, that’s exactly what you should do! I use gardening gloves – wouldn’t a fork, um, spear them? Haha. Cheers!
Yowzah! I did not expect this. You mentioned gardening in a comment on my blog, but I had no idea you were so hard core!
An agent of surprise & worm-related secrecy! Not at all hard core, it’s the laziest route to environmental karma!
Okay, I think I’m finally going to have to get some worms. We’ve stopped using our normal compost since we’ve had the dog since he likes to eat strange things and I’ve felt so guilty.
The eco-terrorists win again.
A convert! Just don’t tell me if the dog eats the worms…. that sounds a bit grisly. I guess if you started a bin now you’d have a ton of compost ready for spring. As for eco-terrorists, did you see Ellen Page on Jay Leno a few months back? YouTube for yikes.
Just watched it! If you start saving buckets of urine, I’m going to start worrying.
Ahahaha – I like Toto bathroom fixtures far too much!