When do you harvest worm castings from a worm farm and how is that done?

The worm castings, or vermicompost, is ready to collect when the bedding material and the food in it has broken down well and all that remains is a dark, rich, fine, moist substance, in which you can no longer see the food scraps (or very little). It also smells very earthy and good.

The worm castings are ready to use - even with a little straw remaining

What I do is dump the tray onto a large plastic trash bag (not an absorbent material because of the moisture content) on a table. Then I rake it into a pile and put a light on it. The worms don’t like light and will work their way down. Use a plastic rake that isn't pointed or sharp.

A light on the worm castings will encourage the worms to go to the bottom

I slowly take a handful at a time and go through it as I dump it into a bucket to make sure I didn’t grab any worms. If I find worms in my handful, I pick them out and put them into the worm farm. This takes time. I tend to walk away after doing this for a few minutes so they can work their way down and then come back to them and do it all over again. Each time, I rake it back into a pile and expose the top to light so they keep going down.

The majority of worms are in the remaining small pile

If you don’t want to take this time-consuming approach, I know some people will use a sifter and sort out the material to catch the worms in the sifter, but I have so many baby worms I’m sure a lot would go into the soil bucket.

I also encourage the worms to travel off the lid while harvesting the worm castings

When you are done doing this you will have a pile of worms at the bottom and I just take the plastic trash bag and pour them back into the worm farm. I can get around a 5-gallon bucket of rich, dark, moist soil from one tray.

Worm castings ready to use in the garden!

I hope this series has helped. Enjoy your worms! Your garden will love you for it.

For previous topics, please visit these blogs: To view the first blog topic "Raising a worm farm and harvesting worm castings" - click here: https://www.peasbeewithewe.net/post/raising-a-worm-farm-and-harvesting-worm-castings To view the second blog topic “What kind of worm farm should you start with?” – click here: https://www.peasbeewithewe.net/post/what-kind-of-worm-farm-should-you-start-with To view the third blog topic "How to begin the first tray of your worm farm" - click here:

https://www.peasbeewithewe.net/post/how-to-begin-the-first-tray-of-your-worm-farm To view the fourth blog topic "How many worms should you get and what kind?" - click here: https://www.peasbeewithewe.net/post/how-many-worms-should-you-get-in-a-worm-farm-and-what-kind To view the fifth blog topic "How much should you feed, what should you feed, and how often should you feed the worms?" - click here: https://www.peasbeewithewe.net/post/how-much-should-you-feed-what-should-you-feed-the-worm-farm-and-how-often-do-you-feed-the-worms To view the sixth blog topic “How much water should you give them and what do you do with the excess run-off?” – click here: https://www.peasbeewithewe.net/post/how-much-water-should-you-give-your-worm-farm-and-what-do-you-do-with-the-excess-run-off

To view the seventh blog topic "What temperatures can the worms tolerate and when should you add the next tray?" - click here: https://www.peasbeewithewe.net/post/what-temperatures-can-the-worms-in-a-worm-farm-tolerate-and-when-should-you-add-the-next-tray

To view the eighth blog topic “Why do worms try an escape?” – click here: https://www.peasbeewithewe.net/post/why-do-worms-in-a-worm-farm-try-to-escape

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