Guest Composter: Going Full Worm

Today’s guest composter is Ariel Kanter, a writer and editor in Highland Park, IL. Keep up with her work on Instagram as well as her Substack, Rel’s Recs. If you’d like to submit to the compost interview experience, by all means drop me a line.

How long have you been composting?
I have been composting since 2021.

What made you start composting? How did you get into vermicomposting with so many worms?
When I lived in NYC—from my college years at NYU to age 29—I barely recycled. It’s just hard when you live in a tiny apartment to give much thought to your environmental footprint. Who knows who is mixing what in the cans next to your building? And I just didn’t see a point, which I know is incredibly selfish.

When I met my now-husband, who is very environmentally conscious, I was shamed into caring more, which is a good thing. He is very cautious of creating waste, especially food waste. When we moved into an apartment together, he treated me to a fancy recycling bin, and suddenly I became a much better person.

In 2020, when the pandemic hit, we moved to the suburbs of Chicago, and I finally got a chance to do something I loved: gardening. I threw myself into it. I got seeds and soil and did everything to set myself up for success. One lesson I learned during this process was that compost makes plants healthier. (I know you’re like duh, but this was the process.)

Unfortunately, my experience with compost up until that point—seeing bins at friends’ houses—was that it was super stinky. Fly-infested. Gross. So I set out to find a compost solution for a person like me. Something easy, not stinky, and moderately chic. That’s when I discovered the Subpod, a vermicomposting system that allows you to create super-healthy compost inside a garden bed with very little effort. I honestly don’t know how I got myself past the worm part of this. I think the idea that I could have the healthiest plants—and grow the best food—was so enticing that I just sucked it up. Instead of just doing regular composting, I went full throttle. Full worm.

Describe your current composting setup and process.
What I like most about the Subpod and what attracted me initially is that the whole thing sits inside a garden bed, so all the gross stuff happens out of sight. (And yes, if you want to set up your own vermicompost bin, you can absolutely just buy a plastic bin from Home Depot and keep it in your basement, but I like that the Subpod is good-looking and has easy-to-understand directions. I needed all of that to get me over the finish line.)

So I got a garden bed, dropped in this crate, and surrounded the crate with dirt. Then I ordered 1,000 worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm. I was not prepared for a box of worms to arrive in the mail. But a box of worms did arrive in the mail. It was horrifying. I dropped them in the crate according to the directions with some damp newspaper clippings and closed the top. Now, the beauty of this crate is that the sides are all holey. The worms don’t only create compost in the crate, they also crawl all throughout your garden bed and make the whole thing super healthy and fertile. I’ve seen this in action over the past three years. Everything that grows in this bed is huge and beautiful: peppers, melons, tomatoes, eggplants. Not to be kind of braggy, but it's better and healthier than my neighbors who do not use vermicompost.

It took a little while to figure out how to take care of the worms and to get the system humming properly. Luckily, worms are resilient. I never killed them completely, and I never had to buy more! (Even during the cold Chicago winters! I just cover the garden bed with a tarp.)

I keep my food scraps in a countertop bin and take them out every other week. When it’s time, I open the Subpod, dump in the scraps, add some dry carbon (whether that’s dried leaves, cardboard, or wood shavings from my husband’s woodworking studio), mix it up with the included aerator, and close up shop. The Subpod has two sides, so you feed one side at a time. Once one side is full, you feed the other side. The worms will migrate, and you can take the compost out and sprinkle it around your yard. I also bring it inside for my houseplants. And I will tell you this: It NEVER smells.

What’s cool is that you begin to get a sixth sense for what kind of environment the worms like. If I happen to dump in a particularly gross container of juicy moldy food, I’ll add in extra dry carbon (with an apology). The mixture rarely gets too dry, but you can always add in some damp newspaper or something if you need to.

That picture of the worms unearthed above is just from one swipe with the aerator. There are soooo many more. It's INSANE how many there are. They get a ton of eggshells, coffee grounds, paper towels, apple cores, all the food seeds—and it's SO COOL to see in the summer because all the seeds sprout in the Subpod, and I pull the sprouted seeds out and plant them and GROW THAT FOOD. It's the most miraculous thing. It's how I got butternut squash this year.

What do you compost the most?
Mostly veggie scraps from cooking. They really add up!

What gives you the most satisfaction to compost?
If something like a full cucumber goes bad in the fridge, I feel so much better about composting it than letting it go in the trash. Food waste is so terrible for the environment. I learned a lot when researching for this article in Modern Farmer. For example, 8–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions are associated with food waste. So if there’s anything we can do to cut back on that, I’m happy.

What is your preferred ratio of greens to browns? Defend your answer with science, folk wisdom, and/or vibes.
Oh I do not have a scientific answer here. I’d say add all your scraps (don’t hold back because this is the whole point), then add in a few handfuls of browns (the dry stuff) and mix it around. If you still see running liquid or there’s any squelching, add some more browns. No worms will die this quickly, so come back the next day and see how it looks! If it starts to smell, add more browns.

What do you do with your compost once it's done composting?
Spread around my garden, bring it inside, I've even brought some over to my sister's house!

Anything weird or unusual you've attempted to compost?
I composted a half a loaf of moldy bread the other day. It worked! The worms were like nomnomnom. They’re pretty strong after all these years, so I can give them some leftovers and a little meat and citrus, too. But I don’t go crazy because I don’t want to kill them. Is this parenting?

How do you explain composting to those outside the faith?
Worms eat my old, gross food, then poop out healthy soil that makes my plants grow healthy and strong. Vermicomposting also diverts food waste from landfills—and when food waste sits in landfills, it releases methane, which actively contributes to climate change.

Any advice for the novice composter? Things you wish you'd done differently? Thoughts on how composting has .... changed you?
Just do it. Worms are gross, but if I can do it, you can do it.

Composting itself has made me think so much more about our food systems, from where my food comes from and how it's processed (and who processes it) to how it impacts the environment. It was such a little sort of frivolous thing—”I’m going to buy this brown bucket and some worms to help my garden.” It was always sort of a selfish thing too, but it has made me more cognizant of how food gets on my plate, and grateful for all the work that goes into the process. It’s made me pretty scared about all the food waste out there, but it’s also motivated me to talk about composting and try to get as many people into it as possible.

I was even thinking the other day: What if just one huge global business adopted vermicomposting? One huge hotel chain. One massive tech company. Then they take all this compost and create gorgeous rooftop gardens to grow yet even more food for people in need (while also diverting all that waste from landfills). Maybe they even hire previously incarcerated people who often have a hard time finding jobs to manage the gardens. Will others start to take notice that you can do something good for the world that can also be really beautiful? My experience, but on a global scale?

If a non-recycler like me can become a die-hard worm girl, then I think there’s probably hope for a lot of people. And maybe that can really make an impact.