I cleaned out my worm beds this weekend and thought some of you guys might like to see how I go about raising earthworms and harvesting their castings, which I use for fertilizing my garden.  Worms make some awesome compost, and they're so easy to keep I think everyone should have a worm bed or two.  Even if you don't garden, feeding your kitchen scraps to worms would go a long way towards reducing landfill inputs.  Anyway, onto the process!

This is my biggest bed.  

It's a missile shipping container made out of wood.  I have a couple others that are smaller missile shipping containers.  This one is divided into two halves, one of which I harvested this weekend.  I'll probably harvest the other half right before fall.  I wait at least six months (but usually longer) after starting a bed before I will harvest it again.  I stop feeding the worms one to three months before I harvest their castings.

This is what the material looks like after I scraped off the top layer of shredded newspaper.  

Notice there is shredded newspaper, cardboard, and straw mixed in with the castings.  I use this stuff for the worm's bedding, and it takes time for the worms and bacteria to break it all down (especially the straw).  The bottom layers had significantly less unfinished material in them.

Here I am loading the bucket.  

Unfortunately, this particular bed gets direct afternoon sun, so I load five gallons at a time, and go work through it in the shade.  Ideally, worm beds should be placed in the shade, but this one is large enough that the worms are able to stay plenty cool, even at the height of our miserable summers.

This picture shows my sifting arrangement.  

I use a cheap plastic and metal sifter with interchangeable screens.  If the material isn't too wet, I like to use a 1/4" screen, but with the big, deep bed, the bottom layers tend to be really moist.  This kept clogging my 1/4 screen, so I had to switch to the 1/2" size.  There are other ways to separate the castings without losing many worms, but they are generally too labor intensive for me.  Besides, I've got tons of worms, so I'm not worried about losing a few to the garden.  Plus, worms work well in the garden too (except the damn birds keep digging up my seedlings, trying to get at the worms!).  Realistically, well composted material doesn't have to be sifted before use, but I'm kind of OCD about things like that, plus I like doing it.

All finished!  

The other half of the bed is still full.

Here are the finished castings.  

That's a 55 gallon drum in the back, and a 35 gallon trash can up front.  Altogether, I ended up with about 75 gallons of black gold.  That's about 10 cubic feet or 1/3 of a cubic yard.  It doesn't sound like a lot, but this stuff goes a long way, and 75 gallons worth would be pretty damn expensive if one were to buy it.  I expect to use 5-10 gallons per 4'x4' raised bed, which should provide enough nutrients for my plants until my next casting harvest.  I will also use some to make worm tea for soil drenches and foliar feeding.

This pic shows the coarse material that I sifted out.

It's mostly hollowed out plant stalks, straw, roots, and some cardboard.  I also throw worms into this bucket when I find large clusters of them while I'm sifting.  All the unfinished material will get mixed with new bedding (mostly shredded newspaper) and go back into the now cleaned out bed to start the process over again.

Bones!  

Who says you can't feed meat to worms?  Actually, the only organic material I don't put in my beds is carnivore/omnivore shit and stuff that might be contaminated with something that could be harmful to the worms (lawn clippings that have been sprayed with herbicides, manure from herbivores that have been given de-worming meds, etc.).  Citrus and onions/garlic have anti-bacterial properties, so I spread those out and add them sparingly (since the whole process depends on bacteria), but they still go in.  I even put fat trimmings and grease in.  I just make sure it is spread out and not all clumped in one spot.  I pick the bones out while sifting so they don't end up with the coarse material.  I'll crush these up and mix them into my tomato beds.  Hopefully they will add a slow release form of calcium and phosphorous to my soil.

And finally, I found this little guy while sifting the castings.  He was probably a present one of my dogs left on the porch for me.


Well, that's how I do it.  Does anyone else on here have a worm farm?  If so, what types of containers do you use for worm bins?  What material do you use for bedding?  How do you separate the worms and unfinished material from the castings?

How much better then mushroom compost is the castings ? Seems like an awful lot of work for so little return, but defintley interesting !

Probably about 1,000,000x.  Honestly though, I couldn't tell you for sure without having a given sample of mushroom compost analyzed, then another given sample of worm casting analyzed, and finally comparing the two.  The nutrient analysis of all types of compost will be affected by the inputs and there's just too much variability in the ingredients.  Part of what makes worm castings so good, aside from the plethora of beneficial microbes, is the variety of stuff that goes into making it (at least on the backyard scale).  I feed my worms banana peels, apple cores, leaves, spoiled lettuce, garden waste, chicken frames, egg shells, carrot and potato skins, coffee grounds, news paper, aerobic compost, manure, and about a bajillion other things.  That's a diverse source of nutrient inputs that you aren't likely to find in a commercial compost product, especially mushroom compost.  I would consider myself lucky to get mushroom compost with more than 5 ingredients in it, and even that is probably pushing it.  Where mushroom compost would have the advantage is in improving soil structure, because it would be more fibrous.  A person wouldn't want to plant in pure worm castings because 1) there wouldn't be sufficient drainage (worm castings have excellent water holding capabilities), 2) air would have a hard time penetrating to the roots, and 3) it would be a waste of worm castings, because the plant isn't going to be able to use all of the nutrients available.  

As far as the work involved, there isn't much aside from harvesting.  I dump my kitchen scraps and garden waste into  the worm bed, then cover it with shredded newspaper.  The worms and microbes do the rest until it's time to harvest.  Properly managed, a worm bed isn't likely to require watering (there's plenty of moisture content in the kitchen scraps) or turning for aeration.  For harvesting, it probably took me a total of 5 or 6 hours of sifting to get the 75 gallons of finished castings.  If I wasn't OCD though, I could have just shoveled it onto my garden beds and dug it in with a hoe or garden fork.  For the backyard gardener, especially those without livestock or access to large quantities of organic material, worm farming makes sense.  Homemade worm castings are cheaper than fertilizer (basically free) and richer in nutrients and microbes than any compost product one is likely to be able to buy commercially.

You stated "earth worms" are these night crawlers? Red worms? Just regular old run of the mill earth worms like I have in and around my property?

Where did you get them?

I have thought of doing this with red worms but just never did anything with it.

Thanks for the post.

For composting worms, you want "red wrigglers."  Don't try to use nightcrawlers; they occupy a different ecological niche.  I bought mine eight or nine years ago online from a place out of New York state.  I wish I could remember the website, because I would recommend them, but it's been too long.  I've seen people around my area advertising red wrigglers on Craig's List, so that might be an option.  Local nurseries might also be able to help you.  I think I paid around $15 per pound/thousand.  I started off with two pounds of worms.  I would recommend starting with at least one pound, just to get the colony off to a strong start.  If conditions are right, the worms will multiply pretty rapidly, and will adjust their population to the conditions of the worm bed.  Unless you screw something up, the purchase is a one and done kind of thing.  After harvesting a bed, I make sure I throw at least a couple handfuls of worms back, once I put in new bedding.  These worms, plus the eggs that are left in the coarse material I sift out get the population back up pretty quick.  Plus, with my big bed, the worms in the other half can crawl through the divider once I stop feeding over there.  Alternatively, one could just do a partial harvest of the bed, thus, never having to worry about adding enough worms back in.

The nice thing about having a large bed is it is less sensitive to fluctuations in temperature and feeding.  If there is more food than the current population can handle, just spread it out it out and cover, they'll get to it when they are ready.  An important note: avoid making large piles of densely packed organic material.  This creates anaerobic zones and makes it harder for the worms and microbes to break down.  When feeding the worms, I used to dig holes in the bed and dump my kitchen scraps in, then cover over.  Recently however, I've taken to just spreading a layer across the entire bed surface, then covering it with shredded newspaper.  I find this helps avoid anaerobic zones and helps me get rid of my stack of newspapers faster.  I store my kitchen scrapes in a plastic bucket with a tight fitting lid.  I think it is around 3 gallons.  When it's full, I empty it into the bed.  The lid prevents it from stinking up the kitchen or attracting fruit flies.  I usually empty mine twice a week.

Thanks for the info. I have a website that I book marked last year for a guy who sells worms.

Soon as I can get some sort of bed I think I am going to do this...


Edit to add:   Do you keep the lid closed on your box all them time?

I do, but my beds are wood, so they kind of get airflow all around them anyway.  The wood is warped, so there are gaps for additional air to get in.  I'm also in a hot, dry climate.  I want the humidity inside that results from keeping the lid closed because it keeps me from having to spray the bedding down.  I've seen other setups where there is no lid and the bedding is just covered with thick sheets of newspaper or burlap (doing this, the worms will work all the way up to the surface of the bedding).  There are a lot of ideas for beds.  Blue barrels and old chest freezers/refrigerators are some of my favorites.

Neat project, thanks for teh pics and descriptions.

LOL,I'm too lazy: I just let the manure build up to 18" or so under our suspended rabbit cages, and there are ZILLIONS of woms in it.
Clean it out every 6 months of so, and start again.

My last bed was in an 18 or 30 gallon rubbermaid container with holes in the bottom of it.  It was on the shady side of the garage under a sheet of plywood leaned over the top to keep the rain off of it.  It did fine for about a year or so and I harvested it a couple times.  Mostly by hand at night with a flashlight cause that's when i had time.  It was a slow and time consuming process.  But relaxing so I didn't mind but I won't do it that way again.

Eventually though I started to find planarians in there?  They looked like worms but were smooth and black and I found out that they were parasites and nearly impossible to get rid of.  So I dumped the bed and moved on.  

I'm down to just two rabbits and there's plenty of worms under neath there to harvest instead.

Might make another bed in the future but just don't have the time now.  My son enjoyed seeing em.

Would like a black fly larvae harvester but wish there was a cheaper alternative than the $200 or so that they ask for em.

Well, I cleared most of  the cool weather crops out of a couple of my garden beds and replanted them with some more heat tolerant cultivars.  Of course, I incorporated plenty of worm castings.  Before doing any of that though, I needed to crush up the bones I sifted out of the worm bin, because I wanted to incorporate them into the soil for the tomatoes and cucurbits I was going to be planting.

I started by wrapping the bones up in an old towel.


Then I placed it on the ground and proceeded to pound the ever-loving shit out of it with a sledge.


After a few minutes, this is what I ended up with:

Still pretty rough, but I bet they will break down over time.  Not visible in the picture is the fine, powdery substance that made up the bottom layer of the bucket.  Hopefully this dust will be more available to the plants.

Now it was time to incorporate everything into the soil.  I started by turning the soil over and raking it level.


Next I added 10 gallons of worm castings and a few handfuls of the crushed bones.

FYI, 10 gallons of castings per 4'x4' bed is an arbitrary amount I came up with based on the quantity of castings I have available and the total number of beds I need to fertilize.

After spreading the castings out and digging them in with a hoe, I planted.  

This bed got three mortgage lifter tomato seedlings, a few cucumber seeds in the back right corner, and a whole heap of carrot seeds in the front.

I also planted another bed using the same procedure.  

It received three Beefsteak tomatoes and a few zucchini seeds by the lettuce.  The zucchini will be thinned down to two well-spaced plants after they sprout.  The three heads of romaine and lone carrot will be harvested before the zukes are big enough to need the space.

Finally, I transplanted a sickly jalapeno that I over wintered in a pot.  

It's been getting eaten up by aphids, and just generally not doing well.  I added a bunch of worm castings around its roots system.  Hopefully it will bounce back and give me an early harvest of jalapenos.

Next up, I need to transplant some of my more advanced green chilies into another empty bed, then start digging more beds for my bush tomatoes and the bulk of my jalapeno and bell pepper seedlings.

I'm surprised you moved the Jalapeno in. I have 4 green chile plants that made it through winter, only covered once or twice. One of them is the size of a shrub and is loaded with peppers already. I pulled some last winter that probably would have made it but they were in my best bed and I wanted to put something else there.

I actually had a few different peppers left outside in pots and they got taken by the frost even though I covered them.  They might have survived if they were planted in the ground.  Winter was pretty mild at my place but we had a few nights where it got down to around 27-29.  I think for next spring I'm going to invest in a lighting set up so I have really advanced seedlings ready to go on March 1.  With the heat  that sets in during June and stays through September (and even October last year), there's not a huge window of time for tomato and pepper plants to set fruit before they start dropping blossoms because the temps are too high.  I ended up composting about 3-4 gallons worth of green tomatoes because they didn't have time to ripen on the vine and they got touched by a surprise frost before I harvested them.  I picked 'em and tried to get them to ripen inside, but they just rotted.  I think it was because they were exposed to the frost.

ETA:  The jalapeno spent most of the winter outside; I'd just leave it inside on the days where the low was forecast to be in the mid-thirties or less.  Temps at my house tend to get a little lower than what Tucson proper gets, so I like to leave a few degrees margin of error.

My wife has a worm colony. She uses plastic storage bins for containers.
She uses shredded newspaper for bedding. She split the colony in half today.

Am I wrong for thinking unlimited bait?

They work just fine for bait, and they replace themselves.  The only thing some people might have a problem with is that compost worms aren't as big as night crawlers.