You will be helping the environment when you reduce the amount of organic material you put in the garbage. All you need is a worm bin, some bedding for the worms to live in, some red worms, and some food scraps.

The type of worms needed for worm composting are red wigglers. These worms love organic material. They also like warm temperatures (13-25C) and moist bedding.

You can buy the worms from EcoCity Society - Greenways in Edmonton.

Your worms are living creatures. Worms are delicate and should be handled with care.

Red worms can live in many kinds of organic materials. Only part of the bedding should be soil. The rest of the bedding should be shredded newspaper, peat moss, or fall leaves.

The bedding should be as moist as a wrung out sponge. Otherwise the worms cannot breathe and will die quickly. If you are adding paper, soak it in water, wring it out, and then put it in your bin.

If you use a very dry material like peat moss for your bedding, then you may have to spray the worm bin every day of so to keep it moist enough.

Worms get their nutrients from organic matter.

Chopping the food into smaller pieces helps the worms digest the food.

Bury the food scraps under the bedding to discourage flies and odors. Put the scraps in a different spot every time.

1. Feed them. Collect the food scraps in a pail. Once or twice a week dig a hole and bury the food waste. Choose a different spot every time.

2. Moist bedding. The bedding must be kept moist, but not too wet. If your bedding is too wet, add more organic bedding material (shredded paper).

3. Harvest. Any time from three months to a year, you will have to start a new box.
   
   Take off the lid. The worms will dig down deeper because they are sensitive to light. Scoop out a layer of compost. Wait a few minutes to allow worms to dig down, and scoop out another layer. When you have taken out most of the finished compost, pour the worms onto a sheet of plastic and prepare new worm bedding for them. The worms will now start composting all over again.