How to Harvest Your Worm Castings

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Vermicompost is a great way to get compost quickly. Unlike a regular compost bin, a worm bin can be done on a much smaller scale (we use the 5-gallon bucket system) and you can get completed compost much quicker than in a large bin! Why? Well, worm casting (aka worm compost) is basically worm poop. The worms help to break down your compost quickly!

We’re here today to talk about the process in actually harvesting the finished compost - if you’d like to read more about the process and why we love vermi-compost, check out our article on What is Worm Composting (Vermi-Compost).

If you’ve already started a worm bin and are ready to harvest some compost you are in the right place! Harvesting your worm compost is easy, just takes a little time to ensure you don’t lose any worms. The best way to do so it with a compost sifter. You can build one yourself, or use something around the house (like us, we used a plant container from a local nursery). You just want to use a sifter with holes big enough to let dirt through, but small enough to catch pieces of compost that need more time to decompose. It’s difficult to be able to have the sifter catch all the worms, so you will have to take it slow and be sure to pick out any worms that fall through so you can continue your compost bin!

Set the sifter over a bucket and gently shake out some of the compost. Using your hands, gently rub the dirt back and forth allowing the ‘ready’ compost to fall through. Shaking the sifter back and forth works too. You’ll find that the sifter is catching bits of compost that hasn’t fully decomposed yet, so once you have most of the ready compost through dump the larger bits back into your worm bin. Before continuing on, you’ll want to check over the ‘ready’ compost and pick out any worms that fell through and place them back into your worm bin. This ensures you have plenty of worms to continue your worm bin!

And now repeat! We found it easiest to work in small batches in order to make sure we caught the most worms. You may also find that your worms have had ‘babies’ and these little ones have fallen through the sifter - no fret, just pick them out and place them back into your worm bin!

And that’s truly about it. How easy is that! If you’d like to watch a video that shows the process, check out our video on YouTube.

Happy worm composting!

-L&B