Vermicoast

I have had more than one request from those of you, who are new-ish to keeping worm bins, to write about the harvesting of your bin for the very first time.   It is or can be a little unnerving, sort of like that first date 20 or more years ago. Like that, date it will go well and turn out better than you ever thought it would.

OK, it has been four to six months since you began the bin.  The entire surface is lovely brownish black casts up to almost the top of the bin.  Very little of the paper bedding is left.  The worms have consumed it all.  The worms are starting to congregate at the sides and top of the bin’s lid.  All signs that you need to take action are apparent.  Your first action will be to decide which type of method of harvesting you will do for your bin. Here are the ways to accomplish this:

1. Dump and Sort: this pretty much says it all. To do this you take a tarp or an old plastic tablecloth, spread it out wherever you have a flat surface on your driveway.  Take the worm bin to it and overturn the bin contents onto the tarp.  Start and make about 6 to 8 piles of the casts and worms.  Shape these into cones.  Since the worms do not like light, they will dive into the layers, which they are safe from the sun.  While they are doing this for 15 or 20 minutes you are cleaning out the bin, making sure you have enough soaked and shredded paper bedding for the new cycle of the bin. Line the bottom, over the drainage holes with cardboard, to keep the worms in the bin and allow the leachate to drain out freely. Take a pail and a flat-sided stick and lope off the top 2 to 4” of the casts into your pail, reshape the cone again and pull a few weeds, leaving the worms to dive down again. Continue to find garden tasks until, when you have finally removed all the casts, as described above, you have left at the bottom of each cone a mass of writhing worms, which are ready to get back into their bin ASAP.Just in case of the likely event that your worms have doubled their numbers, I hope you have a worm annex or second bin ready to start for the additional pound they have become now.
2. Passive Migration: I like this method and use it all the time.  Since I have 90 + bins it allows me to do the job, assess the bin, feed add bedding, remove the casts with a minimum amount of time, and wasted energy.  I move all the bin’s contents to one end of the bin, pushing all the worms, their small amount of bedding and left over food to one end of the bin.  Then I add fresh soaked, shredded paper to the empty end.  I place a food which the worms like and can eat by sucking in the new bedding end.  This will hasten the worm’s movement out of the casts and into their fresh bedding, if they have a food source, such as a melon rind, they can suck on directly and is an incentive for them to migrate.  This method takes about 1 to 2 weeks to have all the worms move into their new bedding.  Once this has happened, you simply lift out the casts and start to cure them for use in your garden.
3. What is curing of the casts and why do it?, you ask?  This is a process which was not discussed very much when I first began to keep worms.  While you can use the casts right away, as soon as you harvest them, often you do not have an immediate use for them.  Curing is a way to complete your worm composting efforts, giving you an even more finished product.  There are always bits of unfinished matter in the casting at harvest.  During the curing, the few worms, hatchlings and cocoons in the pail will continue to eat and finish off the food.  It is a simple process and I think you will be pleased with the results.
4. How do you cure the casts? After harvesting fill a pail or other container with them slowly add water that has been set out for 24 hours until the castings are moist to the touch, this may take one quart or less, if you are using a pail, which will hold 25lbs of casts.  Cover with a lid and put in a shady place for 2 weeks or a month.  Check for the moist-to-the-touch test after 2 weeks, adding water if dry.   Remember to leave the water out for 24 hours to allow the chlorine and other gases to escape into the air before adding it to the curing container.
5. Curing the casts makes them easier to work with when you are making your potting mixtures.  When you open the pail, the castings will have a nice even consistency and you should have more worms!  These worms will come to the top of your pail because you have left a melon end on the top of the pail’s contents and the worms will work their way up to feed on it.  I always check at 2 weeks, after I have placed the casts into their curing pail because I put a melon end at the top and at that time, I will scoop out the worms that are feeding on it and place them back into a bin. I would recommend that you do the same procedure to allow the worms to migrate to the top at the end of the first 2 week period and then at the end of the month.
6. How you can use the worm’s casts. There are many uses for casts in your gardens and gardening. The castings will have a nice even consistency and you will have more in the next round of your worm bin’s cycle.  Depending on the worm’s diet, castings can contain up to eleven times the amount of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous available in soil unworked by worms. Castings have a favorable pH, ranging from 5.5 to 7.1 making them a safe, non-burning starter food for seedlings.
7. To Recap:
8. > harvesting your bin is simple. You now have two different ways to guide you through the process.
9. > curing has been explained to you and is simple to do.
10. > using your casts will be an adventure, one that you will enjoy and your gardens will benefit from the soils being enriched with your very own casts.
11. Good job, well done!
12. Enjoy your worms.
13. I will be back in a few days, with Feeding you worms-Do’s and Don’ts
14. ~Shel