Harvesting the Vermicompost

Although vermicompost is wonderful stuff for the garden, it’s not good for the worms. In fact, one worm’s vermicompost is another worm’s poison! It’s important to regularly harvest the vermicompost for your own use and to keep the worms healthy. Most wormeries will need to be “harvested” every three to six months.

There are three primary ways of harvesting the vermicompost: dumping and sorting, wormery rotation, or divide and dump.

Dumping and Sorting

This method is messy, but it gets the job done. If you have a smaller wormery, you can simply empty out the contents onto a table, gently scooping it into a cone shape. This will put the bedding at the bottom and all the rich vermicompost at the top. If you work in a well-lit area, the worms should naturally burrow out of the vermicompost and down to the darker bedding. This allows you to gather mounds of the vermicompost that is now free of worms. You can then gather up the worms to be returned to the wormery along with fresh bedding.

Wormery Tip:
When harvesting the vermicompost, be sure to look for small green or yellow drops. These are the “cocoons” of worm eggs. They should be gently returned to the bedding – far from the light – and with plenty of good food to eat to ensure they can hatch and provide more worms for your system. These baby worms especially love apple cores and melon rinds.

Wormery Rotation

In this method, you have to do less work, but it reduces the amount of space in your wormery by half. As soon as you’ve allowed your wormery to run for a few months, you can simply push everything to one side. Add fresh bedding to the empty side and start putting your food waste over there. In a few more months, the worms should have abandoned the older vermicompost side and taken up in the fresh side. You can simply scoop up the vermicompost on the now abandoned side and start all over again.

Divide and Dump

This method is less work overall, but more wasteful in terms of the worms. You can remove between half and two-thirds of the contents of the wormery and place them directly in your garden. You’ll be removing the nutrient-rich vermicompost as well as the worms, but the worms should be able to live in the garden and continue a small portion of their work.

Those worms left behind should be offered new bedding. You can repopulate the wormery by adding more worms or by waiting for the existing ones to procreate. If you are waiting for them to repopulate themselves, however, remember that they won’t be able to handle as much kitchen waste until they’ve had a few months to hatch and grow.

When you harvest the vermicompost, it’s also time to replace the bedding. You should not reuse bedding that is dark, too smelly, or unrecognizable from its original form.

Wormery Tip:
A well-maintained wormery should have little to no smell (if anything, it should just smell earthy). If your wormery smells like rotting food or ammonia, you may need to provide better oxygenation by stirring the contents, or you may need to reduce the amount of food waste you put in. You should also avoid meat or dairy products.

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