Vermicompost at Home

Today's topic is Vermicompost, which may not be everyone's favorite. Essentially, it is a method to more or less quickly turn kitchen scraps into useful and high quality compost, but it involves Red Wigglers, also known as Earth Worms. The idea is that you pile up all that "good kitchen scrap," add the worms (buy "new" at Amazon), and after a while (say: 3 month) everything is digested. "Good" means raw vegetable and newspaper, but no meat or citrus. There are many books about it (noteable: Mary Applehof), and there is a little industry producing equipment. We got a Can-O-Worm, which is considered a highend device. It comes with three levels. You start with the lowest, and fill it up as you go with about 200g of stuff per day. About 1000 Red Wigglers are supposed to work through this. When the level is filled, you add the next layer. The busy worms will migrate up to the new food supply, and after a while (perhaps when starting the third level), you can take out the lowest and use the fresh compost in the garden. All Worms should have been migrated in the meantime, since there is no more food left. That's the theory, but in reality you need to manage the food, take care that there is no mold, level the pH value, and mix it from time to time. We just started level 2, and I will post again when we take out the first level.