If you are operating a Rubbermaid type of worm bin (and not a vertically migrating system like a Worm Factory 360) you will eventually need to harvest your castings. Once you have had a worm bin operating for several months all the paper products you used as bedding material will have disappeared and the bin will look like it is full of dirt. The dirt is all the worm castings (worm poop) that is so valuable for plants. The big question becomes how do I harvest my castings. There are two basic ways to harvest castings... a fast way and a slow way. The slow way is to feed your worms in one corner of the bin and then several weeks later most of the worms will migrate over to the food. This will allow you to scoop out the castings from the opposite side and replace them with some fresh bedding material. This is all fine and good if you are not in a hurry but you may be like me and super busy, and since I only get a small window of time to work on projects I enjoy, I would like this process to happen much faster.
The fast way is called harvesting by Light Sorting. The idea is to take advantage of the worm's natural desire to dive away from light. I have described this process over and over to folks and the premiss is very simple but I thought it would give folks more confidence if they just watched the process in a video. So I put together a short 7 minute video to help new worm bin owners harvest their castings.
The video link is included below but it is also accessed directly on YouTube by searching for WormFancycom (just like our website without the 'dot'). I hope that it gives you the confidence to light sort your worms so you don't have to wait on lazy worms and can have your castings whenever YOU are ready for them.
Harvesting a Worm Bin
