Harvesting Earthworm Castings

Worm farms are a great way to recycle waste at home and they provide the most amazing compost for your garden. We were lucky enough to be given a worm farm over a year and a half ago. Far from the beautifully designed shop made worm farms, this one is good and truly homemade and very rustic, with a discarded old beach chair being used as a lid. The rocks on top are to keep the monkeys out, as they love to eat the food bits that we add to the worm farm, and also sometimes the worms.

We gratefully accepted this gift and each day we now put aside any leftover fruits, veg, and salad items or cuttings and keep them in a bag in the fridge. Once the bag is full enough these bits are added to the worm farm for our worms to enjoy. It’s such a great way of using any leftover produce instead of throwing it away, and you can reap the benefits of having incredible compost to use in your garden. Upon opening the lid you can see that the worms haven’t finished all of the food yet. Underneath the veg is the worm soil. The worms eat the vegetables and the organic waste material that has been processed through the earthworms digestive system is worm “compost” actually called castings, which builds abundantly over time as you feed them.

According to experts, you shouldn’t feed the worms any leftover tomatoes, pineapple, and citrus fruits. The worms don’t like these and some of the items are too acidic and will actually dissolve the worms. Experts also suggest adding carbs, in the form of old leaves, straw, leftover grass clippings and newspaper, if you find that your worm farm is getting too water-logged. You will know this when it becomes quite ‘mushy’ or you see the worms climbing to the top to try and escape. Dig into your compost and add some of these carbs to soak up some of that moisture.

Upon digging into our worm farm, we find a host of worms that are living life! They have food and the perfect conditions to live and grow in. Most worm farms are closed systems with an outlet at the bottom. During the worm composting process, worms will secrete liquid as well as castings. This liquid, or worm wee, is liquid gold and will do wonders for your garden. Our worm farm has been going for several months now and we are very excited to reap the compost, which will be used for our herb garden. When it comes to reaping the worm compost, you’ll need a shade cloth placed in the sun. The idea is to separate the worms from the compost. Worms don’t like the sun so when you tip your worm farm out onto the shade cloth, the worms will start to move to the bottom of the pile of compost. Wait a bit to allow the worms to reach the bottom before you harvest the compost from the top. This makes sure that you leave the worms so that you can keep your worm farm going and start the process again.

We share the harvesting of our earthworm castings with you in this video below. Watch for all the awesome crawly worms. Just delightful!

Stay tuned to follow the progress of our herb garden that we’ve made using the worm castings.!