Indoor composting / Vermiculture

Lucyboo25

I live in an apartment (no backyard) and want to start composting small batches. It seems like getting an air-tight kitchen compost container and using worms is my only option, right? I read SuperGreen's Gardeners How-To pages (very helpful - thanks! ) and it seems like vermiculture is the way to go. Is it still important to keep equal brown and green parts? Anyone have any indoor composters? Do they smell?

 

TIA!

SuperGreen

The book The Urban Homstead have an awesome section on vermicomposting.  It tells you how to make a bin from regular materials, what to feed the worms, how to care for them, everything you need.  This book is awesome, it has a lot more than just worm composting.  I PPH this book.

Lucyboo25

Do you think buying an electric composter negates the green-ness of it all? I like one that has a filter so you can do small amounts of dairy and meat, too, but it's electric.

CDMay2006

We compost outside, but my BIL has a worm bin inside, and it doesn't smell bad.  It isn't air tight; i think he built it from wood scraps and it's lined with some kind of really thick plastic sheeting.  The lid is also wood.

tokenhoser

I've got a vericulture composter. It isn't airtight - that would kill the worms. It smells like wet dirt. It's been really easy, and I periodically give away free worms on kijiji just to encourage others to try it. My tub is just a rubbermaid with some air holes drilled in. I add shredded paper to keep it dry enough, and then food scraps to their liking (they don't really like acidic things like citrus or pineapple, and can't do meat/dairy). No worries on green/brown balance.

Jen&Joe06

I just did some posts about this last week.

Part 1

Part 2

chapinito32

This sounds almost identical to our composter...  My husband's classmate is a Master Composter (I didn't know those existed--but am hoping to take the course this summer!) and taught several of us how to maintain an indoor/outdoor composting heap with worms.  We bought a 10-gallon rubbermaid container, then drilled/burned holes (using a nail/flame) around the upper rim and on the bottom (for drainage).  We started with a handful of worms and then just started adding fruit and veggie remnants (and eggshells, coffee grounds, mate) and equal parts damp newspaper/paper (both scraps and paper cut/diced to about 2" squares).  We were told that the newsprint (or the phonebook we've been using recently) would neutralize any odors from the food scraps.  (We don't put any dairy/meat and were told that the worms wouldn't eat any citrus, so none of the peels... but we've been saving/drying those for a sort of potpourri.)  Once the worms have been fed we cover the compost pile with a damp newspaper (5-ish sheets thick) and snap the lid on.  It leaked/drained quite a bit the first few days we had it, but now it's pretty self-contained and the worms seem happy (at least they've greatly multiplied in the last few weeks!) and the smell of earth in winter just makes me happy.  For now our compost bin is in the spare bathtub, but once it warms up we'll move it to the apartment balcony.