Larisa Barth and her two children, 12-year-old Kamari and 9-year-old Judah, grow a wide variety of foods through outdoor and indoor gardening — including lettuce and leafy greens, fruits, herbs and micro tomatoes.

When the family first began gardening, they purchased soil from Landon’s Greenhouse, Nursery and Landscaping already packed with nutrients. Now that they’ve expanded the hobby, Barth hopes her family can find nutrient soil without buying it from the store.

“We wanted to focus more on what we can do to make our soil better,” Barth said.

The solution? Vermicomposting — the process of using annelid worms to break down leftover food scraps into nutrient-rich soil.

“You feed (the worms) a little bit of your compost as time goes on,” said Rooted in Wyoming Program and Outreach Coordinator Ian Cannon-Wallace. “Then in the spring, you harvest those casings. Even if all you’re doing is growing some tomatoes in a pot, rather than treating that with Miracle Gro you can incorporate this worm casting, which is rich in all kinds of microbes.”

Cannon-Wallace and Sheridan Community Land Trust Conservation Intern Jordan Carroll led the SCLT’s newest discovery on vermicomposting on Saturday, March 1, providing instructions and resources for families wanting to start their own worm bins for rich soil.

Small black crates with grates make the system possible: in the first layer, people can throw leftover food scraps, like leftover vegetables, clean eggshells and peels. The compost worms travel through grates from the second layer to the first, feasting on the leftover food. 

In the second layer, worms make their homes, leaving droppings and castings that fill the soil with nutrients.

“Worms are little masters of bringing the oxygen down into the soil through their tunneling, and it helps with drainage too, because the water will seep down in.” Cannon-Wallace said. “They’re neat creatures, and they’re just doing their thing.”

The third layer of the crate holds the nutrient-rich soil used for outdoor and indoor gardening and plant potting. The vermicomposting system can be done through the multiple-bin system, or can be modified to fit the needs of smaller spaces, Cannon-Wallace said.

“Our vision with these bins we’ve set up for people is that they can fit in any size apartment, under a sink, even in a cupboard or on a shelf,” he said. “They only take up 2 or 3 square feet, and they’re not very tall.”

Several event attendees — from adult horticulturists to homeschool groups and students on class field trips — created their own version of a vermicomposting system using a plastic bin, drilled holes and a tray liner.

“Seeing kids get ecstatic with the worms is so cool,” Carroll said. “I didn’t get this stuff as a kid, in the school system I grew up in… so anything that gets people educated with new stuff and experiences, I’m in.”

First-grade Clearmont Elementary teacher Samantha Grubb, who attended the event with several first and second-grade students, said she plans to bring the ideas from the session back to her classroom.

“The original plan was to have composting at our school and vermiculture,” Grubb said. “Then I became interested in (vermicomposting) as I planned this field trip — that we could maybe have a worm bin in our classroom. It would be super cool.”

Cannon-Wallace said he views vermicomposting as part of a larger idea:  the benefits of taking an ecological approach to horticulture by using different lifeforms, as if gardening with nature and not against it. But he also sees compost worms as a chance for young children to take care of a living, breathing organism.

“As far as pets go,” Cannon-Wallace joked, “They don’t bark.”

(This story was published on March 4, 2025.)