Harvesting worms!

This summer, for the first time we "harvested" the compost from our worm composter !
There are many types of worm composters on the market today, some are very fancy and look nice, but a simple Rubbermaid container with some holes drilled in the bottom has worked for us for a number of years.

The compost in this container needed to be separated from the worms. This is quite simple but time consuming. I enlisted the kids to help and they were happy to save the worms for me!

First you need some newspaper or garbage bags, or both like I used. You simply take out the compost and the worms make their way to the bottom of the pile. This is best done on a sunny day in the backyard. Once the compost is spread out you remove the worms,(you could keep some in the compost you are going to use in the garden) We took them out very carefully and returned them to the container.

In the end we were left with many buckets of beautiful compost to add to my garden!
This was in June, and things sure have grown since then! Gotta love those worms! They eat your garbage (food scraps) and give you compost! yeah!

the worms live!

As I posted a while back we are now composting all our food scraps and yard waste into a large composter! It was always my intention to start using the big compost bin, and had my old worm composter in the backyard for a number of months untouched. I feared that I had killed all of my worms! When I started we had 300 red wigglers. The worm composter was so successful we were emptying the bottom tray every week as it filled with "compost tea"
After we moved we had many distractions, family visiting, a big wedding and general new house issues and the composting fell to the bottom of our list.

When I saw the "One Small Change" challenge posted by hipmountainmama, I renewed my resolve to start composting again! I moved the large compost bin and began. I still left my old poor worms for "another day" as I thought it may be a lost cause.

I was pleasantly surprised to find so many worms in it I couldn't count them! Those little wigglers are hardy! So my old balcony worm compost bin is half full of compost with food still in there to keep the worms going for some time. I am not sure what to do with the worms now, maybe I will leave them for a while and then harvest them in the warmer weather.

Who knows maybe we will go fishing this summer with some of our own home grown bait! Talk about full circle!