the world of composting

i've wanted to compost for a while now, but just never took the plunge. my mom bought an electronic composter from williams-sonoma that looked very cool, but there was no way lance was going to agree to some fancy, expensive composting appliance. somehow i found a youtube video showing how to make your own worm composting bin. it looked easy enough! the hardest part was going to be getting the worms. so i set out to wal-mart in search of my rubbermaid bins (it takes two) and drilled the little holes and started collecting our fruit and vegetable waste.

with a little research, i found a place to order worms online. apparently uncle jim is all about worm composting and will sell you up to 5,000 worms at a time. guaranteed to be alive when then come to your door via priority mail. and he was featured on oprah and julia roberts buys her worms from there. seemed like the way to go. though lance did make fun of me for ordering my worms off the internet when i probably could have gone down to any one of the many bait shops or farm shops in town. that would have gotten me too close to the worms though. this was more hands-off...just what i preferred. unfortunately i ordered my worms during the worst winter ever and i guess the mail from pennsylvania to oklahoma took longer than expected. the worms arrived not looking so good a week after they were shipped. according to the literature that arrived with them (and the helpful customer service rep i spoke with) the worms probably just needed a few days to perk back up. so i put them up in their new home.

oh my, did they smell...and not good, kind of like death. and we had to keep them inside since it was too cold outside, even in the garage (note: don't start a worm compost bin in the middle of winter!) thankfully after 2 days the smell seemed to be gone. i thought they were going to live. not so much. i made lance do the checking last night and we confirmed the death of our approximately 1,000 red wiggler worms. after another call to uncle jim's, new worms will be on their way to us next monday. hopefully the weather will be fine and the worms will arrive healthy and ready to go at our kitchen garbage. once the box is stable and set up, i am looking forward to having the boys help out. who knew their first pets would be worms :)

here are some helpful links i found about worm composting:

this one has step-by-step guides to getting started with worm composting

don't look at this one during breakfast...some not so pleasant pictures of worms are on here...

my mom forwarded me this site when i was questioning the temperature range for the worm bin (40 degrees and above in case you're wondering). it also has some other helpful how to advice.

many other sites and videos can show you how to get started. and you can go as fancy (from pre-made "worm farms," to basic ones like the rubbermaid bins i used.