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Harvesting
Worm Cast, Vermi Cast How to harvest your worm cast,
vermi cast
After all of the hard work that the
worms have done over the past few months consuming all
your house hold organic waste and yard trimmings, you
will have noticed that even with all the food and waste
that you have put into the worm farm that the level has
not increased, and is lower now than when you first
started. If you move the top layer of material aside you
will see that it has changed into a dark soil looking
material. This is worm cast, vermi cast. Worms cannot survive in
worm cast, vermi cast so now is the time to harvest the worm cast
and reset your home worm farm.
If you notice that you have large
numbers of compost worms you can:
- Separate some and start another home
worm farm.
- Give some away so that other
families can start their own home worm farm.
- Move some to an outdoor compost pile
or well mulched moist garden bed.
Part one
1. Make sure that you have some new
bedding, moist and ready for your worm farm.
2. Remove the top three to four inches
of material from your worm farm and put it aside, as
this will contain lots of worms and mostly unprocessed
organic material.
3. Empty your worm farm onto a large
piece of clean plastic, and start to reset your worm
farm - Put in a couple of sheets of newspaper to prevent
the fine material falling out the drain holes.
4. Put the moist bedding in and then
the organic material and worms that you saved from the
previous worm farm set up. [The three or four inches
of material off the top of you worm farm you saved.]
Now it's the time to sort your worm
cast. You should have a nice pile of worm cast, worms
and some organic matter in a pile on a plastic sheet.
Part two
Method of harvesting worm cast,
vermi cast
Method one: Sifting with a coarse
screen-
The method that I like is when you
have a pile of unprocessed worm cast on your plastic
sheet (see previous description in part one.) I like to
sort my pile with a sifter, I simply put a couple of
hand full's of material in my sifter, give it a few
shakes and all the fine worm cast will fall through
leaving only the worms and unprocessed organic material
in the sifter. I then tip this in on top of the
material in the worm farm, It only takes a short time to
do the whole pile and you end up with a very fine pile
of worm cast for your garden and the worms and
unprocessed material back in your worm farm. The sifter
that I use is just a round container with a coarse
screen in the bottom that the material falls through.
Method Two: Dump and sort with
light-
As before, continuing on from part
one, you have the pile of worm cast, worms and organic
matter on the sheet of plastic. Build small piles or
heaps (I usually build four.) Place a light above the
heaps so it shines down on them. The worms will then
quickly bury themselves to get away from the light.
Carefully remove the material off the top of each pile.
As you start to see worms, stop and wait a little while
and repeat the process over and over again until you
only have a pile of worms left. Carefully put all of the
worms back into the worm farm that you have prepared
with the bedding. This method can be used with sunlight
but don't expose worms to direct sunlight, as it will
kill them.
Method Three: Migration -
In
this method you do not have to remove the cast out of
the worm farm to harvest it. You move all the material
in the worm farm onto one side and then reset the empty
side with moist bedding. Now only feed and apply
moisture to the new bedded side as required, the worms
will move across to this new side. After 4-6 weeks all
of the worms and newborn worms from the hatched eggs
will be on the new side. You can now remove all the old
material and put new bedding in this empty side. Any
unprocessed material can then be returned onto the top
of the worm farms bedding and you can start feeding on
either side once again.
Worm Cast, Vermi Cast is the
best natural soil improver money can buy
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