Harvesting Worm Castings

Our Red Wigglers have worked hard all year - eating our leftover fruits and vegetables, reproducing, and pooping. The students have worked hard all year as well - it was all on them to take care of our vermicomposting station. They took weekly turns turning over the soil, spritzing the compost to keep it nice and moist, and taking uneaten produce from our snack table and feeding the worms. I honestly didn't do a thing once the initial set-up was complete.

Last week, it was time for hard work to come to fruition. We needed to separate the worm castings (poop) from the worms. But how?

It is actually pretty easy.

I dumped out the compost:

The worms hate light, so they crawl deeper into the pile. After a few minutes, children very gently took the top layer of compost off. Then they needed to wait for more burrowing, then more taking the top layer off. This process was repeated over about 40 minutes.

The final result - a great pile of GORGEOUS worm castings (black gold for any garden), and a big pile of worms. These worms are ready to start a new compost bin!