Vermaculture

Vermiculture is an excellent way of turning food waste into a valuable soil amendment full of healthy bacteria and fungus. They are particularly good at releasing nutrients in plant available forms. For example, calcium in egg shells won't do much if placed directly in the garden. It takes a while to be broken down, but if you grind it up and give it to worms as their grit, they poop it out in an available form plants love.

While there are a few types of worms you can investigate, the most common one used for processing scrap food seems to be the red wiggler. They can process up to their own weight in food every day and are easy to take care of.

Night Crawlers on the other hand eat much less and are harder to take care of. They are however indigenous to Canada and great for loosening and building soil if they happen to get out.

You can also pair either worm with your Bokashi bin to get rid of problematic foods that might draw pests.

If you are just starting out in Vermiculture, check out A V's youtube channel. He does a great job of explaining his wormery, his thought process, and has some neat time lapses that really show what is going on with worms.

Once you are ready to start your own wormery check out our video on building your first worm bin.