For a time in the late 1990s, Earth Links provided educational materials and earth worms in Santa Cruz County for people interested in having worms eat their garbage. Today, you can get information on worm composting at Santa Cruz County Public Works Department’s website, which has links on finding worm bins, feeding and maintaining your worms, and harvesting the compost.
Plan for a basic wooden wormbox, courtesy of UCSC Farm and Garden
UCSC Farm & Garden, at the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz, also has a handy two-page guide to vermicomposting (PDF, opens in a new window), with information about building your own compost box, feeding and maintenance of the worms, and harvesting the “castings” (vermicompost-ese for “worm poop”).