Take a moment and consider the raw materials your family throws away. The trash guys cart off bags of grass and other garden clippings. Dinner plates are scraped into the garbage disposal. Out of sight out of mind.

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Find Earthworm Sources In San Diego

Solana Center - Compost Supplies In San Diego

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I did a survey in my home and found that my family of five creates five gallons of vegetable matter that would normally go down the drain, through the pipes and ultimately end up in the municipal wastewater treatment center. Next, it's filtered out along with other "stuff" and trucked somewhere as sludge that is then put in a landfill.

The items above are the raw materials for an awesome compost heap, or an earthworm bin. Either way you can recycle what we've traditionally thought of as waste, and turn it into one of the most amazing substances know to man, COMPOST!

Compost is nothing more than decayed organic matter, and nothing less than the best soil additive in the world. If you ever been in a forest back east or down south where it rains often, you may have smelled the rich earthy smell of the soil. That's compost.

In those forests, leaves are always filtering down through the branches and landing on the ground along with dead trees, fallen blossoms and myriad of old ferns, mushrooms, bird feathers, etc. As they lay there, tiny bacteria, earthworms and millions of decomposing insects set to work breaking it all down until there is a rich fragrant mat covering the earth.

That compost feeds the forest, holds moisture for the roots, and becomes habitat for billions of earthworms. The trick is recreating the forest floor model at home.

It's easy. Make a pile in an out of the way part of your yard. You can dig a trench or hole to place it in. You can use a commercial compost bin, or do like I do and just pile it up.

For compost to "cook," you need a ratio of carbon (branches, wood chips, leaves) and nitrogen (grass, weeds, horse, rabbit, cow manure etc.) water and air. Don't sweat the carbon to nitrogen ratio. Just make sure you add some from each category to the pile.

Do worry about water. The pile needs to be evenly as wet as a wrung out sponge. And if you worry a little about air, your compost will be ready sooner. Add air by turning the pile. The more you turn it, the more it stays aerated, and the quicker it will change into compost.

There is no need to add any of the so-called compost starters that garden stores sell. All they are is the bacteria that will transform the debris into compost. They ARE important, but why pay for them? They are already present in nature and free for the taking.

Just take a shovel of garden soil or a shovel of your last compost pile and add it to the new one. That will be enough to get things started.

When you turn the pile you'll notice several things. The pile should be steamy and hot. That means the bacteria are hard at work. As they eat, they create heat. As you turn and add more air, they heat up even more.

In the outer reaches of the pile where it's cooler you may see some bugs. Pill bugs are common and are helping to break down the compost. Spring tails, which are tiny little jumpy creatures are normal and okay too.

Earthworms will move in as compost cools, and are welcome creatures. They break down a huge amount of organic matter and work 24 hours a day. It may take 6 months to get a good healthy crop, but trust me, it will change your life. Making compost will make you feel empowered.

Spread it around your gardens, under trees and into houseplants. It will make a huge difference in the health of your plants. The best part is knowing that you're responsible for diverting waste from the system, and turning it into something with value.

California Enourages Workers To Bring Worms To Work
Next to a copy machine on the 10th floor of the city's public works building sits a plastic bin filled with worms wriggling in rotting lettuce.

Public servants walk by without even glancing at the box or the note above it: "Quiet please. Worms at work."

Always on the cutting edge of all things environmental, California is encouraging public and private-sector employees to bring worms to work so that the creatures can chew up apple cores, sandwich scraps and other lunch leftovers and produce compost.

The employees are then invited to take the stuff home and use the all-natural fertilizer in their gardens and on their houseplants.

The state's Integrated Waste Management Board is so serious about this that it has posted on its Web site a list of top 10 ways to recycle on the job, and No. 2 is: "Keep worms in your office."

Supporters of the idea say that once you get over the ick factor, it's not so bad. Open up a bin and it looks like a box of odorless, wet coffee grounds.

"Worms are the most forgiving pets you'll ever own," said Carol Parker, the "worm lady" who cares for the worms at the public works office. "You can go away for two weeks and ignore them and they're fine."

Tips for keeping happy worms are available on the state's Web site. Among other things, it suggests buying your worms from a worm supplier, to make sure you get the right kind.

The site provides a long list of suppliers across the state to choose from, including As the Worm Turns, Live Nude Worms, and the Happy D. Ranch Worm Farm, which sells a three-tray "worm factory," which for $117 includes a bed of shredded coconut fiber and 2 pounds of worms.

To start a homemade bin, experts recommend putting down a little dirt and shredded damp cardboard or newspaper. Be sure to poke holes in the bin, air flow is necessary to promote decomposition and keep odors down, and make absolutely certain you've bought the right kind of worms. Apparently if they are not red worms, they may try to escape en masse.

The waste management board, part of the California Environmental Protection Agency, began promoting composting at least a decade ago, though the Top 10 suggestions are more recent. Andrew Hurst, who oversees the program at Cal EPA, acknowledged that only "very, very small numbers of businesses have worms."

"It's a weird thing to do," he admits. "It's not normal behavior to bring a bucket of worms to your office and put food scraps in there."

At the Cal EPA complex in Sacramento, hundreds of thousands of worms process some five tons of food scraps per year. The 60-some bins are in offices, halls, even the daycare center. There is a waiting list for bins among employees, some of whom have been known to compete over whose office has the more productive worms.

Over time, the caretakers have learned a thing or two about the worms' preferences.

"Worms don't like ranch dressing," Hurst said.

They also seem to harbor a special dislike for bologna sandwiches, though any kind of dairy or meat product is problematic because of the smell, he added. Like other slender creatures, worms are also finicky about fatty foods and carbs, and eat bread only in moderation. Coffee grounds, on the other hand, and rotting fruit go over very well.

"They don't have teeth, so things have to rot," Hurst explained. "Worms need to be able to slurp it."

At least one Los Angeles County employee acknowledged that her popularity did not exactly skyrocket when she brought her new hobby to work.

"People found it objectionable that I had worms behind my desk," said Janet Coke, with the county sanitation agency. "They would just kind of tease me about my worm pile."