Harvesting worm castings

Finding Brown. Have you found brown? If you haven’t then you better!! Here’s why ….

Brown material in your worm farm will determine whether your castings are any good, so you should always remember to ADD BROWN materials as well as veggie scraps. Otherwise it’s going to be a horrible sludgy, stinky mess. (I think we’ve all been guilty of that, if we’re being totally honest now). 

I get a regular supply from these different sources:
🍂 fallen autumn leaves around the neighbours
🍁 dry twigs from pruning the fruit trees
🥚egg cartons & shredded office paper
🐇 bedding waste from local guinea pig (or rabbit) breeders

When you harvest your castings from the bottom tray, you often still have worms in that tray, so a little hack I’ve discovered (and you will too if you if you keep reading) is to put this tray on top of the worm farm and leave it exposed to the light. The worms don’t like the light so they wriggle down into the tray below. 

I scrape off a bit from the top and then come back about 10 minutes later and scrape a bit more. I keep doing this until I’ve got the whole lot of castings and all the worms have wriggled their way out of the tray.

After I put all the castings on the garden, I give the tray a good rinse and then put it back on top of the worm farm as my new working tray. 

REMEMBER – always feed your worms in the top tray.

I run regular worm farming and composting workshops through local councils so keep an eye out for one near you. Otherwise, you can hear some of my pre-recorded webinars on worm farming and composting when you join my VIP membership to the Veggie Club.