DYI: Vermicomposting

I wanted to get a start on my composting before we had our house by having something inside. I looked into it, talked to people, read articles, and it seems sort of expensive and hard. Then I talked to my friend Kyle and he said "Get a bin, drill some holes in it, and I'll give you some worms". Of course me being the person that wants more details I asked him all sorts of questions. Sure enough, it's really not that hard, and really not all that expensive. Thankfully I had Kyle to get the worms from, other wise I would have been spending at least $30 on the minimum amount of warms I could find and that would have been way too many for an under the sink sort of set up!

So here is my little DYI on having a mini composting system under your kitchen sink!

1) Get a bin (I got mine at Canadian Tire, $3) and some dirt (Dollarama $1)

2) Drill some holes in the top and sides of the bin (on the sides make sure the holes aren't low down, it could get too full with compost or you could make it more tempting for your worms to crawl out!)

3) Put a little dirt in the bottom of the bin and spreed it evenly.
4) Buy some worms or get some from a friend (complete with a little compost to make it not so hard for them to get used to their new home)

5) Mix them in with the soil a little

6) Cut some strips of news paper. It has to be a sort of raw paper, so news paper seems to be perfect.

7) Put the strips of paper over the top of the worms and dirt

8)Put the lid on and store under your sink.

Pretty easy right?

Depending on the size of your bin (mine's pretty small, but I'm thinking of up-sizing) you may only have to feed them twice a month (I feed mine about two banana peals and a couple of cucumber ends a month and they're happy as can be!)

Some things they really like:
Banana peals
Coffee grind
Cucumber ends
Apple peals
Egg shells (it's good to crush these up pretty good to make it easier on them to eat)

Always keep news paper pieces on top. They eat that as a sort of palette cleanser and it helps them digest everything.

I hope this post was helpful! And if you're like me and would rather see a video to help me really visualize things here are a couple of great ones!

Happy vermicomposting!

I shared this post at: Tutorial Tuesdays