worm bin

I have completed harvesting the vermicompost. It took about a month. I'm glad to finally have a process that works for me. Moving the worms over to the new bin via a plastic dish of food bait. I could tell masses of worms were getting transferred to the new bin each time I replaced the food, and I never really felt compelled to sift through the old bin, although I did about once a week to see how many worms were still left behind. The first few times each handful turned over exposed more worms than I could pick up before they retreated back under the surface. Next few times there were far fewer, I could pick almost all of them out before retreat. Second-to-last time I could easily get them all out, and on the final turnover, when handfuls went into a bag for storage, I had to search to find worms.

I was surprised to discover there was still a good amount of vermicompost left in the bottom of that old potting soil bag, which I had never used last year. It has been sitting outside under my deck. It was very wet. And there were some red wigglers still alive in there! I can only imagine they felt much better getting back into the bin environment. Regarding that, during the transfer process the old bin started to get very moist, and the new bin was drier than I like to keep it. Worms still look okay. My guess is this happened because I was putting the fresh food into the bait container in the old bin, and by the time I dumped it-plus-worms into the new bin, moisture had spread through the old bin and wasn't available to the new...

I'm glad to only have one bin to manage now that the transfer is complete. And that I have a method to use next time. Now going to find some hungry plants.