How to harvest your flow through worm bin

[Sandy Christenson]

The other day, my husband helped me to make a video showing how to harvest the castings from my flow through worm bin. The clear advantage of having a flow through worm bin is how incredibly easy the harvesting process is. During this harvest, I got about 13 pounds of beautiful vermicompost, but only found a grand total of eight red wiggler worms and no cocoons. There is no other in-home red wiggler composting system that is so quick and easy to harvest.

Here is the link to the video. Please let me know if you have any questions!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QZ0B2hAGT8

[Ben]

Great video, wasn't able to watch it with sound since I'm at work, so forgive me if you answered this in the video. The castings you're pulling out look pretty wet, and I've found the lower reaches of my flow through (so far that is, haven't havested yet...) to be significantly drier than that. Should I be concerned that there's not enough moisture in the lower reaches of the bin if the castings I can see down there are much more crumbly? 

[Sandy Christenson]

Thanks for the question! I have found that each flow through is a little different. Even if you maintain them basically in the same way, there is variation. My very first flow through produced castings that were pretty dry and incredibly fluffy. I think as long as your castings have moisture that would allow worms to live (even though they are not down that far), but not any wetter than you would want (definitely no dripping water in the bottom of the flow through), it is probably appropriate. I did notice that the castings in this video actually looked wetter than they felt. Glad you liked the video -- thanks for watching!

[Ben]

Appreciate you posting it! I've seen a lot of "harvesting castings" videos, but none that focused on flow through. Like you said, it's an easy system to harvest from, so people probably aren't as inclined to post videos. But it is nice to see an example or two before I attempt mine!

[Sue]

This is what I made to "scratch" between the grating. It's a shelf bracket you can buy at any hardware store and choose the size you like. Screw it down on a piece of wood. For a small bin you can use it "as is". BTW, Peter Barnard did this dwg. for me. Thanks again Peter.

[Sandy Christenson]

Sue -- that is AWESOME! What a clever idea! It would work way better than using my fingers. Thanks so much for sharing this!! I will be building myself one this weekend.

[Sue]

You're welcome Sandy. I was thinking about the beautiful ring you were wearing, LOL.

[Sandy Christenson]

My poor class ring! Every night when I scrub my fingernails, I make sure to scrub my ring, too! Thanks again!

[Rick]

Sandy,
Great video, thanks. That was a lot of castings for such a small bin. How soon would you be able to harvest about that same amount again?

[Sandy Christenson]

Hi Rick! That was a lot of castings. I had let it build up for quite a while. I knew I wanted to do a video of a harvest, and my husband and I just kept getting really busy, so it took a while before we could just crank the video out. It is really hard for me to estimate how often I harvest that bin, but I think you asked an excellent question. I will start a record of dates and amounts of harvests from that bin. I know it is very productive, but actual data is a great idea. In the commercial side of vermicompost (but not vermiculture which is raising worms to sell worms), flow through set-ups are the system of choice. Of course theirs are on a much larger scale, but apparently those whose business is producing compost have found the flow through design to work best. I am sorry I don't have a better answer to your question. I would estimate its output to be a little higher than a Worm Factory 360.

[George]

Very informative video Sandy and enjoyable to watch.

Thanks.