There’s nothing like worm-compost troubleshooting to spice up a Monday in the office!

For Aimee Carson, Evergreen’s new Community Food Program Co-ordinator, the highlight of her first day at her new job was stumbling across a bin of worms.

It was lunchtime and I made my way to the staff kitchen where I immediately noticed frozen containers of food scraps thawing on the counter. My eyes soon shifted downwards, to a red bin perforated with holes and conveniently tucked underneath the counter. Curiosity getting the better of me, I investigated further and discovered composting worms!

Our worm bin, or vermicomposter, is home to a hard working batch of red wrigglers. These worms can consume up to their weight in food each day and gladly accept our food scraps as payment for producing a rich soil supplement. In fact, they work so hard producing compost that they’ve outgrown their red bin.

Lucky for us, Aimee is a worm enthusiast and was eager to help solve our composter capacity problem.

We decided the worms deserved an upgrade from their not-so-roomy “worm bin” to a multi-leveled chalet: The Worm Condo. So we set up this luxurious new suite and even offered a free relocation service. Despite a few setbacks with parasitic mites, the worms are now cozy in their spacious new home.

With the condo up and running, we are diverting even more of our food scraps from the waste bin while producing a valuable organic soil amendment for our office plants. Who knew worms could be an essential fixture of the office?

Learn more about how to set up your own vermicomposter and let us know how it goes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Green Tips, Staff, Toronto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.