It’s getting to be a problem. We save egg shells, veggie peels, tea bags and those shredded confidential documents. Orange peels pile up, wilted celery piles on top of that. Makes you think that this might be the beginning of a hoarding story, doesn’t it? Fear not – there is nary a cockroach, rat, mold or fungus here.

We do, however, have a problem. While all these materials are perfect for composting, perfect for becoming those “coffee grounds” of nutrient-rich soil to be spread on top of our beds, they become a challenge in the winter. The compost bin is stuffed. I’ve filled every container I can find by pit composting. The lasagna composting in the front bed looks, quite honestly, gross without adequate snow cover.

So now, here come the worms.

I’ve been considering vermicomposting for about a year now. I’ve pulled up unclejimswormfarm.com so many times that my browser automatically fills in the site when I type “u.” I had many questions and concerns. Where do I put these things? They cannot be outdoors in the cold winter, or even in the baking hot summer. They are indoor crawlers. Do they ever escape from the worm farm? Will they smell? What if they are prolific breeders like Creepy and Crawly?

We found Creepy and Crawly, two snails, in a hibiscus pot many years ago (B.D – before dogs) and the kids insisted on keeping them as pets. I bought a small fishbowl, threw in some dirt, plants and a cuttlebone (recommended by the snail-keeping experts), and stretched a piece of screen in an embroidery hoop for a cover. Perfect low maintenance pets! Entertaining – albeit in an extremely slow, quiet way, but still entertaining. Of course, we read up on snails and discovered they are hermaphrodites; Creepy and Crawly were both males and females. How amazing, we thought! The first laying of eggs was also amazing, tiny pearls in the soil. The first hatching was amazing, the baby snails simply charming, traveling (at “breakneck” speeds) up and down the sides of the fish bowl, small as a pencil dot. Then we learned a lesson. While they may be slow travelers, snails breed faster than the blink of an eye. Soon, we had a fishbowl absolutely chock-full of snails of all ages, continuing to mate, lay eggs, hatch and mature in a matter of weeks. It was a perfect environmental disaster – a wonderful teaching moment. The kids and I discussed predators and prey and natural balance. Then we set the fishbowl outside and took off the cover. Hundreds (if not thousands) of snails made their way out into the sunshine, making the neighborhood birds very happy. We theorized that Creepy and Crawly, being so much older than the rest, were probably much wiser as well, and had made it down into the dirt safely – it made the kids feel better.

So do I really want to open up this new “can of worms”? Do I really want to have the responsibility to feed and shelter 1,000 red wiggler worms? Would this smell? These worms, Eisenia Foetida if you prefer the Latin, are perfect decomposing machines. They eat paper and peels and shells and even tea bags, converting them into worm castings (a very nice way of saying worm poop), packed with nutrients, making the perfect mulch and top dressing. Worm tea (a nice way of saying worm pee) is also full of nutrients. Fellow gardeners say there is no smell and escapes are rare. Still I hesitated. This was a big leap in compost craziness.

Today, I leapt into the insanity. I finally had enough of the just-plain-wrong look of the lasagna compost and dropped the Worm Factory (3 tiers so the worms migrate upwards to separate themselves from the compost – I am going only so far – I am just so not picking out worms from compost) into my shopping cart. 1,000 worms (the smallest quantity available) went in too. Found a discount code online and then pressed “place order.”

My brother Rich is amused and interested. He thinks he’s going to be another disaster; too many worms reproducing far too quickly, producing too many castings. He is looking forward to regular reports. I tell him there can’t be too many castings with all the beds we have. And as for too many worms – well, there’s always the birds.