Comments on: Simple Vermicompost Harvesting Method

By: mark

mark — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:32:04 +0000

I’m about to start my bin. Worms are in transit and should arrive in 2 days. I have 6 day old spinach and sprouts in the feed bag that are extremely rotted with a lot of liquid being produced. My concern is that it is too ripe and will be somehow toxic to the new worms. Is that possible? Anything to worry about here?

By: Bentley

Bentley — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:34:09 +0000

Hi Metqa,
What you feed to the worms will have a major affect on the color of the vermicompost. I used a lot of cardboard materials which tend to make the compost a light color. Same with manure (in my experience anyway). When you use mostly food waste, the castings tend to be black.
Anyway, good luck with your continuing efforts

By: Metqa

Metqa — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:15:14 +0000

Thanks for the reply. I actually went through a whole session of worms, binning, fruit flies, fly eradication, harvesting starting over, then gnats that let to wormageddon, Worm grieving, and finally opening the coffee can with my first harvest in it and finding more than 10 healthy worms and several worm babies hanging out. So I think I’m excited to try again.

My stuff, when I first harvest, was black. It didn’t look like yours in the video , but like dirt, but with no smell I moved the bigger bits to the new bin, and put the black stuff in a container, and it seems eggs hatched inthe container and they kept working it till I found them several months later.

By: Bentley

Bentley — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:50:13 +0000

Hi Caren,
I honestly don’t harvest vermicompost all that much, and if I do I generally don’t worry about baby worms and cocoons since I have a pretty extensive outdoor network of Red Worm habitat associated with my gardens. Baby worms and hatchlings should have a pretty easy time find a good place to live once the vermicompost is put to use.

Be sure to check out the harvesting section on the “Hot Topics” page to see some other ideas as well. You may find David’s tub method helpful.

By: Caren

Caren — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:15:39 +0000

Great method! I only have one worm bin, but I can dump it out on plastic and still use this method. That would be much easier than picking all of the worms out of the finished compost by hand! I think this method could easily be done indoors when the weather is too cold to go outdoors with the bin. Other methods are just too messy.

Do you go through your castings for any cocoons that might be left in it? I will still go through and pick them out by hand because I love to hunt for cocoons. I try to get every one of them. It’s an obsession! LOL

Thanks for sharing your fantastic method!

By: Marisa

Marisa — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:14:55 +0000

Very helpful, thanks.

Do you need to start another bin to “harvest” the compost material. I’ve heard you can sort of push the old material to one side of the bin and add new food and bedding to the other side of the bin and the worms will migrate over. Then the old material can be used and the new stuff spread out. Ever try this?

By: Bentley

Bentley — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 03:00:05 +0000

Metqa,
Very strange – it works perfect fine for me. Perhaps you need to update your version of Flash?
Try visiting the actual YouTube link:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=BhyTzhPtJcg

Feel free to email me directly if you want to discuss this (or any other vermi-stuff) further.
Cheers

By: Metqa

Metqa — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:48:20 +0000

Um, the video no longer works. Where can I go to watch it. I’m very interested in starting a apartment size bin, and I’m getting all my info together. I love your blog. it is so informative and I like the getting started video. I’m trying to figure how to make the stacked system but really small, my kitchen is only like 7×7 and a little space under the since. And I regularly get dumpster flies invading and the occasional neighborly cockroach, so I need to know everything about keeping it non smelly and tight, and how to do everything. I have a small container garden in front, so worm casting would be great, plus I feel bad throwing away veggie scraps cause I can’t compost. (besides I suck at regular composting, i hope this is easier) I’m reading all the comments and your great personalize answers. WOW. I feel more confident from reading your pages than from all the other websites I’ve browsed. I just signed up for the journal. I look forward to reading up. If I actually get off my duff and do this I will write back about it. Um, sorry for rambling. I want to watch your video. Thanks.

By: Bentley

Bentley — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:37:45 +0000

Hey Gary

A: Yeah, it takes a little patience but they were already starting to head through the holes within minutes of adding the material. I couldn’t find any adults left up above when I looked today.

B: I was actually pretty amazed by how many there were. I knew there were lots of worms near the surface – they’ve been congregating up there and consuming wastes very quickly – but I had no idea there were so many all the way through the material. I even found a LOT of worms right down at the bottom where conditions were getting fairly anaerobic.

C: Yeah, I try to be as careful as possible when using a trowel – I usually try to slide it down along the wall then leverage material up. I don’t use my hands too much – easier to clean a trowel than try and dig vermicompost out from under my fingernails!

D: Great question. The material that was placed over top of the garbage bag is actually still there – I wanted to make sure all the worms moved down into the new bin. Not 100% sure what I’m going to do with that material – I may add it to another worm bin to see if the worms will process it further.
The material/worms that was still left in the old bin has simply become starter stock for a new system (I’ve started adding new bedding and waste materials to that bin again).

Thanks Gary!

By: garyb50

garyb50 — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:40:11 +0000

A: I’ve tried this worm harvesting method but evidently did it way too fast. I did it outside, using sunlight & ended up having to ‘herd’ the worms to the holes. It never occurred to me to just let them do it on their own.

B: I’ve NEVER had that many worms in my ‘finished’ bin. Don’t know what that means.

C: You use a trowel. I ALWAYS use my hands. hmmmm

D: What did you do with what wasn’t quite done?

Keep on keeping on… Love your site.

gary