Customer Reviews

Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was a fun book about the little creepy crawlers! It gives a very solid scientific introduction to the little critters and answers most of your basic questions about worms. The focus of the book has to with vermiculture--the use of worms for developing super-rich compost material for organic gardens. Vermicompost is without a doubt the best composting material available for organic gardeners, and setting up your own vermicomposting bin is the best way to get yourself some of this richly organic fertilizer.

The book details how you can set up your own vermicompost bin, either by making it yourself or by purchasing a commercial worm bin. It also even describes how some school systems have saved themselves bundles of money by having worms eat the schoolkids' lunch scraps rather than pay for commercial garbagemen to haul the stuff away!

I would most strongly recommend this book for anybody interested in either worms, vermicomposting or organic gardening. It's a very fun read!

Mary Appelhof's book is both amusing and educational. This is the "Vermi Bible" for most people who compost their household waste with worms (vermicomposting).

This 2nd edition includes description and discussion on commercially-available vermicomposting bins. Unfortunately, with the excitement and growing interest in worm composting, there are bins now available that are not reviewed in the book. (I guess we'll need a 3rd Edition!)

For the beginner as well as the worm hobbyist, I recommend this book highly.

Now in its revised second edition, Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof is a practical and "user friendly" guide to recycling kitchen food waste, producing fertilizer for house and garden plants, growing fishing worms, and saving money, all through the process of a worm composting system. Worms Eat My Garbage is a simple, effective, "how-to" guide covering everything from how to set up a worm bin, to what types of garbage are best for worm composting, to taking care of the worms, to effectively saving money while reaping the benefits of the process. Worms Eat My Garbage is easy-to-follow, thorough, and enthusiastically recommended reference for environmentalists and gardeners.

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in lowering the ammount of garbage they send to the landfills. If you have an interest in raising more healthy plants, better fising bait, or just want the experience this is the book to start with. While written on a 10th grade reading level, this book is wonderful reading for anyone. My background is in biology and I found some of the side notes very useful. This is a book that everyone should read even if you have no desire to raise worms.

I must say that I knew most of the stuff contained in the book, since the web contains a LOT of information. Nevertheless, the online info is quite dispersed. Here you can have all the knowledge in one book. Also, I did not give it 5 stars, because I think it still lacks a bit of professionalism; the author indeed knew a lot from decades for worm composting, but still, a lot of her knowledge was empiric and seems unsure of some of the causes. For instance, she emphasizes a lot on cold climates and gives little info on hot climates.

I enjoyed all of the information and found this book to not only be informative and interesting but also very easy to read. I also found the author to be humorous in her writing. This book gives the do's and don'ts that are very helpful.

This is one of the most referenced and most often quoted books on home vermiculture. It is clearly written, simple to read, and generally useful.
It is also out of date.
This book is based on the time it was written, when there were only a few options other than "build it yourself", and build it yourself was big bins outside. If you are an apartment or small house dweller you will find this book less useful as it *mostly* assumes a larger scale operation than a small home can manage.

This book is going to be useful to the small scale composter, and inspirational, and educational, but will leave many questions unanswered, and will not answer a lot of the questions in managing a small plastic based bin.

Can't recc this book enough. I had real problems composting. My organic matter didn't break down fast enough and it smelled. Now thanks to this little book my organic (and kitchen) waste breaks down 20X faster w/o chemicals or back breaking churning! The worms do it all. OH, my kitchen garbage doesn't smell because I toss all my organics into the compost bin. I never buy soil anymore.
My son loves to go on bug safari.
This book is great for teachers.
One tip. Follow her advice. Make sure to get the right worms, reds for breaking down, nightcrawlers for churning, in my case.

This a must have book for vermicomposting. It covers and answers all the questions you might have as a beginner and keeps you going for a few years. I've been composting since 2003, and although I refer to the book less and less over the years, I used the heck out this book for the first 2 years. It almost covers everything (99%). If you can maintain a compost bin for more than 3 years, then you might need more specific info on the web, but otherwise, this is the book to have.

I highly recommend this book. I highly recommend letting worms eat your garbage.

This is a great resource for people considering getting started in vermicomposting. I got this book and read it cover-to-cover about 3 times before recently setting up my worm bin. I also checked out several online sites and forums about vermicomposting before I got started.
This book is not overly long (~150 pages) nor complicated, and it covers all the basics very well. This is a great place to start your "worming" journey. But I would also recommend checking out the online forums where people tell about their own personal experiences and ask other vermicomposters for advice.