Garden Worm Bins

Vermicompost Right in Your Garden - Make a Worm Bucket

I am a big fan of vermicomposting. It can be done indoors or out, and it's still fun, even after all the time I've been composting with worms, to watch my apple cores and coffee grounds turn into amazing, nutrient-rich vermicompost. If you're looking for an even easier way to compost with worms, consider installing a worm bucket right in your garden bed. 

-  Get a plastic 5 gallon bucket with a lid. These are cheap at most home centers. If you have a bucket from cat litter or laundry detergent, these will work well too.
-  Cut the bottom out of your bucket, and, if you have a large drill bit, drill several 3/4" to 1" holes all around the bottom quarter of your bucket. Doing these two things allows your worms to come and go as they please -- which is exactly what you want. If you aren't able to drill holes, it will still work, so don't let that stop you.
- Place your bucket in your garden bed, sinking the bottom quarter of it down into the soil. Now you can start filling the bucket with kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, crumble egg shells -- anything you'd add to a traditional worm bin. Put the lid on, and you're done.

The whole point of this particular composter is to take work off of you, the gardener. You add your food scraps to the bucket, keep it covered, and end up with better, more fertile soil, thanks to the worms. They make their way into your bucket to eat, then head back out into your garden bed where they deposit castings, adding nutrients to your garden and improving the soil. Anything that improves my soil and turns waste into something useful, with no work on my behalf, is a win in my book (lazivores, unite!)

Effective and simple - that's for me. Now if someone will drill the holes and bury the buckets...