A couple days a week, I take the time to sift through the mass of daily food waste generated by the family and separate it into worm food and critter food. I unabashedly favor the worms. They get the wilted greens, brown bananas, apple cores, and Kona coffee grounds - nothing but the best for my hard working vermicomposters! I also keep a low maintenance composting bin in the garden for yard waste. I've dug through that pile a few times, and it is TEEMING with beetles and slugs who make short work of whole apples, watermelon rinds, and egg shells. The invertebrates on my land are fed as well as my dogs!
The benefits of vermicomposting a clear - every 3 months I get to harvest worm castings, the black gold of the garden. The other bin will provide some usable compost someday, but provides a MUCH more valuable service right now - the honey pot. Since I started that composter, every slug, cockroach, and ant colony has migrated to that pile. I never see pests in the house or slugs in the garden because they're perfectly happy eating old waste instead of new growth.
Everybody wins ;-) Great work team!
"I never see pests in the house or slugs in the garden because they're perfectly happy eating old waste instead of new growth."
Haven't heard that reason to compost before, but that's a great one. Need to start composting too.
The honey pot is a bit of a double-edged sword though. . . now I have to keep feeding the critters or they'll bust out of the compost pile and rampage all over my garden!