Wormery help ?

[gingerneil]

Note sure where to post this.. hopefully I've got the right area.....

A colleague has come up trumps with a wormery that needs to be loved
elsewhere. From what he tells me, this is a compost style, single bin with a
tap to train the lovely worm wee. Looks great, and looking forward to giving
it a go.

However, one small niggle I have about a single layer bin is how to get the casts out of the bottom. Is it reasonable easy to remove the worms, remove all of the casts to use in the garden and then set back up again? The layered wormeries take care of this, but the single layer bin may be a little more difficult.

Any tips or tricks to help ?

[snakeshack]

at the price its gotta be worth a go anyway

[bazzaboy]

Sorry about the time lapse GN, didn't spot this thread till now... I've got two wormeries and although they're both "multi-tray" I encounter exactly the same problem as you're foreseeing as IN THEORY the worms move to another tray but in practice do they 'eck! Well fair enough, some DO move to another tray but a lot seem to hang about in the stuff you want to use, some get in the sump, some get in the lid etc....

To get to this emptying stage takes quite a time - even though well established I only "empty" them of casts/compost once a year (in fact I think the "worm tea" is much more useful than the casts/compost and I empty that frequently but that's easy). I retrieve the casts/compost on a bright sunny day in the summer. And for a reason - one thing you've got on your side is that worms hate light and can disappear under the surface with extraordinary speed. So pick the brightest sunny day and expose the surface of your container to sunlight and any worms sitting on the surface will immediately go under in just a few seconds. If you rough up the surface with a small fork that will both help them dive and expose those near the surface to the light encouraging them to dive deeper! You can then remove the top layer inch/2cm or so, rescuing the odd dozy one. Repeat the process as needed, worms will be concentrated at the lowest level..... I then leave the bottom layer as "home" and add more "food" and damp shredded paper etc. If you want to totally clear it out I can't think of an alternative to tipping the last layer onto a polysheet and picking them out by hand. Bit messy but not unpleasant if the casts/compost is well formed.

The other thing to guard against is stray/dead worms blocking the sump tap so that worm tea, rainwater,whatever, collects and threatens to drown them. I've had that happen once (never quite found out why they all migrated south en masse) and that was extremely messy and unpleasant. I protect them from harsh frosts through the Winter as I think that was partly the cause (and they can't freeze of course though the decomposing process does generate some local heat). But otherwise useful and hardworking pets (I don't give them individual names).

[bazzaboy]

If you want to see a completely batty (if inventive) commercial way of separating worms from casts see YouTube:
HARVESTING WORMS - YouTube

I can't see you investing in one of those 10' gadgets but while you're there you'll see there are quite a lot of other short vids on YouTube on aspects of wormeries that you might find useful.