<h1><span style=”font-size: x-small;”>Did you know that worm castings are the absolute best enriching material you can put in your soil around your plants?</span style></h1>

This past spring I have personally found out how superior to synthetic fertilizers and other liquid fertilizer even a trowel full of soil with worm castings in it can be.

Here’s more about my experience with composting worms and using the castings at http://www.plantsandgardeningtips.com/.

Harvesting the nutrient filled soil or worm casting can be somewhat work intensif.  If you use a whole container or, as in my case,  the whole window box without dividing into sections for feeding the wigglers, it will take  a little more work to remove the nutrient-filled soil from the container and replace it with new soil because you have to be so careful about not harvesting your worms also.  You went them to remain in the new soil which you will use for bedding.

When I feel there is sufficient nutrient-rich super soil in the entire window box and I want to use it, I begin by shining a strong light on one end of the box, and the worms will bury below the soil.

Then I skim the top of the soil with a trowel and transfer the soil to a plastifc zip bag. If I happen to pick up any worms in my trowel, I fish them out with my fingers and throw them back into the window box. Worms don’t like having a light shining on them, so they will look for shelter in the soil.

As I skim more and more soil off the top of the pile, I get to the point where I see the worms. I then manually with my fingers or with the trowel pick up the worms and drop them over on the other side of the box and keep working my way down to the bottom of the window box.

When a there is no more nutrient-filled soil to be removed from that side, I then fill up that corner with new soil, moisten it so the worms will feel at home and bury food in the soil. Then it’s time to harvest the finished compost at the other end of the window box.

I go to the other end of the box, shine the light on this area and repeat the above procedure. This time you may see some of the worms crawling back to the new soil which contains food.

Little by little most of the worms will migrate to the new soil. Again when I happen to pick up worms with the soil in my trowel, this time the worm is placed in the new soil section. And when I get closer to the bottom, I will transfer the worms “en masse” with my trowel or my hands to the new soil section.

When all the vermicompost has been removed from the second corner, I add some new soil and food to this end too. Sometimes I retransfer some worms back to the second end, sometimes I don’t bother.

Since I had been transferring the nutrient-filled soil from the box to a large ziplock bag which had originally held frozen berries, all I need do now is zip the bag and store it in another plastic bag to keep light away from it as I want the vermicompost to remain somewhat moist. I will be using all this compost for my balcony containers.

I hope this all makes sense to you. However, if you don’t like all that work, here’s a video that shows an easy way to tempt the worms into moving from one tray to another:

So the bottom line is to recognize your vermicompost; that is, the soil is ready for using when you can run your fingers through the soil and it feels like you’re running your fingers through coffee grains (not quite, but it’s close enough).

Also your soil should have a different smell — like when you’re walking through the woods just after a lovely light rain and you can smell the mulch. Believe me, it’s a special lovely smell you cannot forget.

The next post will deal with what to use for bedding for the wigglers when vermicomposting.

Meanwhile, enjoy your vermicompost. This type of composting seems to be getting more and more popular. Even the big companies are starting to use this vermicomposting method more and more for nourishing the soil around their fruit trees or for growing their vegetables organically. It IS a faster way than hot or cold composting and it is easier to mass produce.

So good luck with your vermicomposting.

On the next post I will discuss worm bedding material.

Meanwhile….
Happy gardening!
Marcie

Popularity: 22% [?]

 Email This Post
This entry was posted on Monday, May 31st, 2010 at 3:58 am and is filed under 5. Worm Composting or Vermicomposting, C. Harvesting Vermicompost. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.