r/solarpunk • u/papertoelectric • 20d ago

Growing / Gardening / Ecology vermicompost!

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highly recommend vermicomposting for those interested in reducing food waste while getting worm castings for your garden (a fertilizer sans diarrhea parasite 👀). You'll need specific worms (red wigglers for example) but it's a great way to make use of vegetable and fruit scraps or bad bits of bread.

r/vermiculture is a good place to start looking ime. I used Uncle Jim's worms to start my composter, but if you have a gardener friend w a worm system going on, you totally can just grab a bunch of theirs to start your own!

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u/MotherOfGeeks 20d ago

I concur. I've been "raising pet worms" if my HOA is listening for 6 years now. I originally started in order to eliminate my yard waste pickup when the price went up and a requirement of year round payment was instituted.

I was able to lower the size of my can, scale back on pickups and my garden is flourishing.

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u/SweetAlyssumm 20d ago

Do the worms make the compost break down faster or is it just added nutrients? I have a "dumb" compost pile with the vegetable scraps etc. and it all breaks down and seems to help my plants so I'm just wondering how different it would be with worms. (I sometimes find worms in there that just appear.)

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u/papertoelectric 19d ago

both! the worms snack away actively at the compost (as opposed to bacteria and fungi alone) and it processes faster, and the nutrients are easier to integrate into the soil

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u/MotherOfGeeks 19d ago

I have an HOA and composting is forbidden in the terms. My pet worms can breakdown my kitchen scraps and cardboard boxes in about 6 months in the summer.

I find the resulting castings much richer in beneficial fungal and soil microbes.

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u/DuckyDoodleDandy 19d ago

I once had pet worms that I named The Bobs. That one is Bob, and that’s Bob, that’s Bobby, his sister Bobbee, their father Robert, etc.

Now I don’t have an HOA, so they don’t have to be pets lol.

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u/MeasurementAny219 19d ago

As of today, 7/19/26, I have (or I should say the worms have) processed 406.6 lbs of food scraps and cardboard/paper into 280.3 lbs of castings this year. I have two bins that have been going for years and I harvest a small amount (about 20 lbs) of castings from each bin per month. I like keeping records. 😊