Composting worms are great, especially if you're trying your hand at Gardening, since you can make use of their nutrient packed soil as well as the liquid that drains off: "worm tea."
This is another great use for Plastic bins since you can put the worms and composting material in one with holes drilled in the bottom and set it in a second one to collect the excess moisture. I use the 16qt under the sink.
If you want to keep them outside, you’ll have more room — I’m jealous of the stacked houses that some people have for their worms — but you’ll have to worry about temperatures and predators (or just raccoons or other things that might be interested in the scraps, even if they’re not interested in your worms).
You need “red wrigglers” which you should be able to get from a bait shop (at this point there might be enough interest from gardeners that you can get them elsewhere as well). I think my sister must’ve gotten mine for my birthday and I want to say that they arrived in the mail in a styrofoam container. Earthworms need stable tunnels and rooms to live in and you’re going to be disturbing things as you put your kitchen scraps in.
I started off with my nested bins for drainage and shredded moistened newspaper for bedding along with the contents of the little containers the worms came in, so there was some dirt along with the critters.
From there, I basically treated my bin as having 6 stations that I could put food scraps into, three on each side (gently making a little hole and covering it with the newsprint), with the idea that the worms are interested in food at a certain stage of decomposition, and this way it would be easy for them to navigate around the bin working most efficiently on whatever pile they were most interested in over time. And by the time I’d get back to station #1, that spot would be ready for another load. Make sure you toss a few egg shells in there for them as well—they don’t have teeth, so they need to eat things with grit to then use the grit to break down their fod (like a bird’s crop).
I read some sage general advice on a forum that was basically: give your worms choices. Allow them to move away from areas that are too wet or too dry, too acidic, too cold, too hot, etc. (and that way you don’t have to get everything perfect).
If you’re interested in composting but not interested in worms, I’d recommend trying out a compost tumbler. I selected mine for a few reasons:
- I wanted two chambers: one for actively adding fresh kitchen scraps and one for finishing after having been filled up.
- I wanted the chambers to rotate independently so that it wouldn’t get too heavy to easily turn/aerate the compost and so that the finishing compost could rest while I’m still actively turning the fresh batch.
- I wanted a door that was big enough to dump my kitchen compost bin with minimal risk of making a mess.
- (I love my compost bin, though it does seem outrageously expensive 😬 — it’s sleek and doesn’t take up much room on the counter, there’s an interior liner I can take to the compost and then easily rinse out, the lid stays open and also closes decisively, and it fits in the door of my fridge.)
- I wanted it high enough off the ground that I could put a bin underneath to catch the finished compost.
Urban composting tip: if you don’t have access to “browns” e.g. piles of leaves, try shredded cardboard. I have a heavy duty shredder in my office that slices in both directions “cross-cut” which creates a perfect, fluffy, compost-ready pile from my Amazon boxes. If your shredder can’t handle cardboard, you can still shred the brown filler paper they often include as well as printer paper.
The little paper bits help manage moisture from my kitchen scraps and balance out my otherwise pretty “green” compost. I honestly think it’s probably a better option than the single stream recycling that my city claims to do, and I’m so pleased to be able to amend the soil in my yard.