The beginning

Day 1: After thinking about it for months and taking a free workshop (with very enthusiastic elderly volunteers), I finally started my vermicompost!

If you aren't familiar with composting, there are two basic methods. The first involves mixing "browns" - carbon (such as leaves, paper, twigs) with "greens" - nitrogen (such as food scraps). The mix reacts and heats up the pile, which then needs to be turned and aerated. However, if you live in a small apartment, with no yard, this is nearly impossible. The solution: vermicomposting. This method still has many of the same ingredients, but can be smaller and instead of heating up, the worms will do the work.

I started with two dark plastic storage totes (rubbermaid and sterilite are recommended, but I wanted something smaller and found one during college season at Target). I drilled holes in the bottom and along the top sides of one bin. Then placed the 1st bin in the 2nd (pictures will be posed soon). I added bedding of wet shredded paper and a bag of worms/dirt from Danielle and Chris' compost pile.

I will admit, the worms sorta creeped me out. I think in time, I will probably get used to handling them with my bare hands. Today, I squealed when one of the worms stuck to the bag and I had to leer it out using a shredded paper.

After the worms, I added a banana peel and some broken up egg shells along with more damp bedding on top.

My only concern is that I may have been over zealous with the bedding. It looks like a giant pile of shredded paper, but hopefully they'll do their magic and create some good soil soon! (ps - I'm still getting used to blogging, sorry if the formatting is weird....)