WORKING WORMS

DON'T JUST THROW THOSE TABLE SCRAPS AWAY! LET A BOX OF WORMS TURN THEM INTO SOMETHING USEFUL.

- Corbie Hill

Rhonda Sherman loved taking care of about 30,000 worms, and that’s just counting the ones she had at work.

They lived in two bins inside her worm barn, but you wouldn’t know they were there just from lifting the lid. Reach into the first few inches of their bedding, however, and you’d find them, wriggling and munching away on decomposing matter. Another way to know they were in there was the surprisingly fresh, pleasing aroma.

“When the lid is on, you won’t smell anything,” Sherman explains. “When you open the lid, it just smells like the forest floor.”

Composting Heroes

Sherman’s big worm barn (part of the Compost Learning Lab) still stands in the middle of a 1,500-acre field laboratory at North Carolina State University. It looks just like an enormous farm. For more than three decades, Sherman worked in the university’s Department of Horticultural Science. She is an expert in vermicomposting, or breaking down food waste with the help of worms. Since 1993, she has spread the word: Not only can worms eat your leftovers, but they can also make something valuable in the process.

“They can take your garbage and turn it into castings,” she says. When worms eat compost, they leave behind castings, or poop. Worm poop contains the nutrients that make vermicompost so useful.

Just add a little vermicompost to regular soil, Sherman says, and you end up with larger, faster-growing plants that produce more food.

“That’s something [you] can tangibly see,” Sherman says. “ ‘Wow, my pet worm did that!’ Then your worm becomes a superhero with superpowers.”

Vermicomposting isn’t just good for the environment— it can be profitable, too! A cubic yard of regular compost, Sherman says, may sell for $30. That same amount of vermicompost can sell for 10 times as much.

How to Make a Worm Bin