Pets with a Purpose

You want worms. Red ones. Lots of them. Trust me.

Nicole's latest Chronicle column answers the question that loomed large when she wrote two months ago about gardening in your apartment: where you gonna get all that rich dirt you need to grow tomatoes on your window sill?

The answer is worms. About 1,000 will do.

They don't take up much space, you don't have to clean up after them (that is kind of the point) and they subsist on a diet of vegan scraps that, in San Francisco, would otherwise become part of the three tons of used food collected every day and processed at a commercial compost facility outside Vacaville (love the sound of that town's name).

If you are in Bay area check out the the print version of Nicole's article, which is framable, we hear -- it takes up the whole back page of the House and Garden section, on page on F - 8.