Hundreds of Pets!

My Christmas present to Courtney arrived in the mail today. Covered in stickers that say “live red worms” on it, the UPS man wondered whether we were making worm omelets. Nope, we’re vermi-composting!

Michigan is way too cold to compost outside during the winter, so during the colder months, we’ve decided to compost indoors with worms. The worms eat our food scraps (no meat, just veggies, fruit, eggshells, coffee grinds ,etc), and with the help of other little bugs they poop out worm castings, which is really fertile soil! (I think this is how it works, but really I’m guessing.)

And best of all, we don’t have to wait for our new worms to mature before filling our composter with food scraps, thank to Sally’s city slicker worms all the way from Brooklyn! (Courtney explains this below.)

Courtney and the worms, with Moshi looking on (jealously?)

Adding in the Brooklyn worms

A disclaimer about vermi-composting (technical term for composting with worms): Apparently, worms are an invasive species in Michigan. True, they were here before the last ice age, but they haven’t yet made their way back since the glaciers retreated (poor little buggers are pretty slow). But since fisherpeople have been spreading their worms all over Michigan forests, worms have gotten in the soil and caused a bit of havoc out here. Ecologists, including some people at my school, are pretty concerned about the effects of worms on our local ecosystems, and are therefore apprehensive about worm composting. But I did my research, and the earth worms are much more harmful to our environment than the redworms that we use for composting. And we can be diligent about keeping our worms out of the outdoors by freezing our dirt from the composter for a week before putting it outside, killing all the worms but leaving in all the good nutrients.

Lots of worms!