Worm Poop!

Nasty, slimy, foul little worms. I actually used to be afraid of worms. Really, I did. If I saw one squiggle by while gardening, I would tense up, my heart would pound and I would scooch back from the garden in panic. That was before two things: the first was having a son and the second was starting a compost pile. I learned how to handle a child who likes to cover one arm completely with worms. The compost pile was actually easy after dealing with that!

Last summer (2007) I decided to take this "green" thing more seriously and devoted myself to starting to compost. It wasn't easy at first. My family thought I was nuts, being the city-dwellers we had once been. I was accused of being a farmer, of being a nut job, or a hippie. Actually, I didn't mind being called any of those things, so the joke's on them!

The hardest part, really, was just figuring out HOW to compost. There is so much information out there and it seemed like there was only one 'right' way to do it, which I've since found out isn't true. In fact, the best thing about composting is that no matter what, if you throw all the stuff in a pile, turn it once in a while and keep it sorta wet, eventually all that crap is going to decompose and make compost, like it or not. It's simple biology.

There are recipes for compost on the web that tell you to add 'browns' and 'greens' for balanced compost. The grees stuff puts nitrogen into the compost, which is good for soil and plants anyway. The brown stuff can be dead leaves from raking, veggie/fruit peels and maybe sticks (though they take a long time to decompose).

Other items you can add are:

Egg shells
Coffee grounds
Coffee filters (unbleached)
Coronet paper plates (marked especially for composting)
Newspaper
Animal Manure***

***Do Not Add manure from meat-eating animals. Ergo, you cannot compost the dog poop from your yard or the kitty litter. Try barn animal poop, like chickens for example. Chicken poop is excellent for your garden, if you happen to have chickens running around. So is bat guano, but it's a little harder to find.

NO NO NO: In addition to carnivorous animal poop, do not throw meat into the compost pile.

I'm still not sure if it's okay to throw things like pizza crust in there, so I just feed that stuff to the dog (whose poop I still have to dispose of in plastic bags). No wonder she's so fat and poops so much.

Since poop is on the menu...

Worm Poop!!!!

That is a real attention-getter, to me at least. Worm and poop are two very funny words that are even funnier together, but that could just be me.

Worm poop is also called "castings." When worms move into your compost pile, you've got a good thing going on. They will aid in the decomposition of the pile by eating everything in it (they REALLY love coffee grounds, but it keeps them awake sometimes). After they digest, they poop out whatever and that is what the castings are; the castings are loaded with nutrients for the soil which helps make it plantable. In addition, tunneling worms make for excellent aeration, something needed in both compost and soil.

You can actually purchase worms to dump into your compost. I feel lucky that some homeless worms actually found what, to them, must be a worm condo because I now have hundreds of worms in there working it for the soil. If you're in a hurry for some good compost, you can add purchased worms and do things like heat it and spin it and stuff. But to me, a pile, a pitchfork and a hose are all I've needed to make great, healthy, totally ORGANIC soil for my plants. If I can do it, trust me when I say that anyone can do it.

And for my favorite book about worms...see Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin.
The cutest worms I've ever seen!