The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out; They Eat My Garbage, Dontcha Know

My early Christmas gift this year was a box of creepy-crawlies. I've wanted to vermicompost for a while - I compost but half the year I'm basically just adding garbage to a pile of snow. It's inefficient and, frankly, unsightly. So that's why I got these guys:

First, in the cute little package they came in (made it through single digits to get to us, all worms present and accounted for!). And here they are in their box:

I didn't have a real worm farm - fancy ones can run $100 dollars or more. But I did have a spare Rubbermaid storage container (18 gals., I think) and lots of newspaper, so I decided to make my own. And no, I can't take credit for this idea. I'll have some great ref. sites at the end of this post. But here's the container before I re-purposed it:

To make sure our little fellas have plenty of air I drilled holes all over the bottom and sides. Not the top, since I have another need for it. This is how it looked:

The holes were a little rough:

so I cut them down, which of course I didn't get a picture of - whoops. Then I added shredded papers and cardboard:

I added a cupful of potting soil to help the little guys grind up all the refuse I plan on giving them:

Then I put them in:

God speed, little fellas, God speed:

Here they are in situ (and, yes, our basement is this messy):

I used the lid as a base to catch any liquid or escaping wormies. To keep them happily in the dark, I just flattened a box to cover them:

Looks ramshackle, but it works! And here are those links:

http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/bse/442-005/442-005.html

http://www.compostsantacruzcounty.org/Home_Composting/Worm_Composting/index.htm

http://www.recycleworks.org/compost/wormcomp.html