First Worm Harvest - Very rewarding experience, Thanks everyone!

18 years ago

Well, I had planned on doing my first harvest for my outdoor 18 gal bin by putting my old bin on top of my new bin with fresh bedding, then gradually remove the vermicompost every day and let the fellas migrate downward toward through the bottom holes and into the new bin. But an armadillo was digging up my lasanga beds looking for grubs and worms and I feared he would have easy acess to the bin contents based on how they were stacked. So Thursday and Friday evening I decided to sift through it by hand. It gave me an excuse not to do the laundry :) I know this sounds like I don't have a life, but I had a BLAST!

I'm happy to say that my fellow worm neighbors have had a few additions to their super extended family. They've almost doubled in population and I found alot of cocoons. So I've split some of the bedding and put it in the old bin and put a 1/4 of the worms in there and 1/3 of the eggs. The BSF larvae count was low, but I had a few.

The vermicompost was not soggy but moist like a cake and earthy. The bottom inch was a little wet almost like potters clay. In the new bin I got some landscape fabric and some cedar chips and made a pillow similar to what was recommended in Kelly's bin plan. I had no styrofoam peanuts, but I had saved the cedar chips when we babysat my father in law's guinea pig this past summer. The new bedding mix consisted of:

1 part American spangum peat moss (very tough and stringy)

2 parts cardboard squares (1 to 2 inch cut)

1 part coir

1/2 part hand shredded and whole used coffee filters

1/2 part mixed brown leaves

unfinished food stock

1 part (3 to 4 inches layer) vermicompost on one side.

An inspection of the bin on Sunday and the tenants appear satisfied with their bedding. I'll check up on them a little more this week. I've already used some of the vermicompost for my tomatoes and two plant cuttings. The rest I have taken out of the 4 gallon bucket and spread on soda/beer flats to dry out a little before I put it back in the bucket and save for later. I'll check in a few weeks for worms that may have hatched from cocoons I missed.

Knowing that winter is coming, I don't know how long it will take before the next harvest. My wife still won't let me bring the worms inside (yet) and we lack a garage, but we have a shed so the worms are going to head south (90 feet) for the winter when it does come. Fortunately, for us we don't get snow and we occasionally dip into the 20's so I'm hopeful the worm neighbors will survive in the shed.

I want to thank everyone here for making my vermicomposting experience a success. Without your informative postings to questions, tips, sucesses, and failures I wouldn't have been as prepared and I may have quit this hobby at the first sign of trouble. I also want to thank my worms. They truly are the hardest workers under the earth.

Charles

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Comments (6)

ShenValleyJoe
18 years ago
I've never tried the migration methods for harvesting. Things would certainly be different if I had large bins, but on our scale, why bother? I just sit down with a couple of cat litter buckets and a six pack and have at it. Its instant gratification at the end of the day. How long did your harvest take you? My first one was over five hours of being totally anal. The last one was about three. I think that its fun, too. Congrats! Sounds like things are going well.
teenee65
18 years ago
I'm jealous!

Did you still have any bedding in the old bin at the time of harvest? My bedding continues to decrease so I have added a little here and there. Did you move any of the BSF larvae into the new bin?
:)
Tina
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My lady was having a bad day, and I brought home a live potted mini-rose in an effort to cheer her up. She decided she wanted to plant it, and we ended up starting to garden... in summer... on thoroughly compacted, sometimes poisoned, tool-breaking Georgia red clay... with nearly no money, spare time to labor, or energy. I knew compost is an excellent soil ammendment because my grandmother's been making it for decades (and it's a pity she's about 2,500 miles away, or I'd ask for a sample from her ancient, worm-infested compost bin), and I started doing my research to see if I could figure it out and bring that unmanageable clay to cooperative life. I discovered vermicomposting while educating myself about other kinds of composting (which is still ongoing), and found plans for a DIY stacking bin system from five gallon buckets. I had a couple of cat litter buckets, one with an intact lid, and plenty of paper waste and a small power drill, so I made one for myself. There's not much worm presence on my property (though there must be SOME worms, else the worm predator planarians wouldn't be here), so I went to a fishing supply shop and spent about $7 on two cups of roughly two dozen red wigglers apiece, and put them in the bin. This was about two months ago. So far, my worms are still alive... maybe I'll be one of the few that actually doesn't kill their first set of worms by accident. Because of the tiny population I started with, right now my project is more vermiculture than vermicomposting. I've seen some cocoons, and a few baby worms now and then, they're most definitely breeding in there. There is a lot more soil in there than I started with, and it looks a heck of a lot better than what I put in at the beginning. I feed them now and then, knowing they can just eat their bedding, but wanting the food to be plentiful enough to encourage lots of meeting and breeding. I do keep an eye (and my nose) on things to make sure the bin doesn't go too nasty and maybe harm the worms by overfeeding. I figure by the time the worms have expanded their population enough to be ideal for the size of the bucket they live in, most of the bedding will be converted to casts, hopefully with many cocoons waiting to hatch. I'll prep and set the second bucket, give the worms time to migrate upwards to new bedding and food, then take the vermicompost from the bottom bucket. I'll take a few handfuls to seed my outdoor composting areas with microbes, cocoons, and any straggler worms, and give the rest to my lady for her existing plot and container gardens. I hope to eventually have rich, fluffy black loam in place of this hard, sticky red clay (to the one who implied it couldn't be done: Challenge Accepted), a thick carpet of living mulch that continuously breaks down to nourish the plants while it insulates the soil and keeps it moist, bumper crops of fruit and veggies to supplement the household diet with cheaper, healthier fare, drastically reduced trash output, and unlimited free bait for fishing when those rare opportunities arise. If I can arrange to sell some surplus at the farmer's market, or engineer a self-cleaning cat litter box, or find any other ways to put the worms to work, that'll be a nice bonus. But, life is dynamic and ever-changing. Don't try too hard to predict it, just go with it and see what happens.
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Frogonalog
Original Author
18 years ago
Sorry for the delayed response. I was volunteering in my wife's elementary class this morning.

Joe,

It took about 6 hours over two days. I was using a plastic colander to sift the material. I'll try to have a 1/4 inch screen sifter next time. I came straight home from work and I ran out of daylight the first day and I had to quit. I was trying to be careful not to overlook look the eggs and baby worms, but about a third of the way through, I got a little more laid back. I was off a little earlier on Friday. I thought it would be easier doing the migration, but like you said, it is small scale. I'd still like to try all of the harvesting methods at least once (except for the death method).

Tina,
The only remaining bedding in the old bin was a coffee can full of small twigs from the american sphangum moss. I put some of the vermicompost back in the bed until the worms get acclimated to the fresh bedding. The worms and the microherd did an excellent job at breaking down the bedding. I started noticing a decrease in bedding about 1 1/2 months, I noticed the BSF almost two weeks into it. If it hadn't been for this site I would have thought that they were competing with the worms. I normally don't add bedding unless I notice wet conditions. I was concerned with the moisture because I was adding an cup sized ice block on those really hot days to keep them cool. But it was only wet on the bottom at harvest time.

I tend to fluff the bedding every once in a while to aerate it (I'm also a bit nosey). I split the BSF larvae between the two bins. I also put a few of the older BSF larvae that were big and dark outside, hoping to increase their chances. It took a while to get used to the adults flying out and on you when you open the lid.

Charles
teenee65
18 years ago
Charles (I love your user id name),

Thanks for the info.

Mind a few questions?

Once the newspaper finally runs out (gets chewed up), where do you hide the food if you are pocket feeding?

BSF flying out when you open the lid...I have little guys flying out but they are pretty small - I thought the picture i saw from this forum showed the BSF to be big flies. The larvae do look like the BSF pictures I have seen - 10 or so segmented parts, starting out white and greying over time. Could the hatched flies be small?

How do you know when it is time to split the worms into more bins (or is that a preference thing)?
:)
Thanks!
Tina
Frogonalog
Original Author
18 years ago
Hey Tina,

The nick name is from an old folk song:
"There's a frog on the log in the hole at the bottom of the sea"

I'm not an experienced worm wrangler like the other counterparts here so take my advice as such.

The bedding breaks down to a mixture of rich humus and worm castings. The organisms take a while to break it down even further to that ideal carbon to nitrogen ratio. As long as the foodstock is buried an inch to two inches deep in that bedding you'll be okay. Some systems or methods do a layering where new bedding is put on top of the foodstock and the vermicompost is harvested on the bottom. You might want to search the forum for top feeding versus pocket feeding.

Yeah the BSF adults I had are about the size of a large horsefly 1 to 2 inches. I don't know if they get larger. The BSF can't fly that well so they would land on my arm or my shirt. I guess when they saw the bright light they would fly and then they saw me as a landing pad. For a while there it was one or two every evening I opened it. There haven't been any the past couple of weeks.

As far as splitting the worm bin. It really is a preference. It also depends on what you want to do, i.e, do you vermicompost for the byproduct or do you do it to recycle food waste, or a little of both? From what I've read here from other experienced people and from other resources, the worms will adjust their population (biomass) to match their living space. If the space is large they will increase the population and vice versa. I split them to get the population to a point where they better match my waste average and to get a good soil amendment. Others may split the bin to share some of their worms with neighbors or for a workshop they plan on doing.

Even though I'm splitting the bin, I probably will still have to put some of the foodstock in the lasagna bed when it gets cold and the worm activity slows down. It's still in the 80's here so I have a while.

Good luck with your harvest. Let us all know how it goes.
Charles
vermicathvic
18 years ago
Charles,

Haven;t harvested my worms yet, thanks for sharing your info.

Cath

First Worm Harvest - Very rewarding experience, Thanks everyone!

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First Worm Harvest - Very rewarding experience, Thanks everyone!

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ShenValleyJoe

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