Vermicomposting

Today Jon and I bravely "harvested" our vermicomposter. Usually typical vermicomposters have several layers to them, so you can easily harvest the good compost from the composter as the worms go through the layers. You just take the bottom layer off, which has the rich stuff, and meanwhile the worms have already moved up to the next layer and are continuing their wonderful work.

Unfortunately all our worms live in one layer - a kitty litter box, now full of former-food, soil, and newspaper. They are very happily working away at all our scraps, however it was beginning to get full. To harvest the good compost in this situation, you have to dump all the contents of the composter onto a tarp! Yes, worm dirt, worms, rotting food, and all. Now it had been awhile since we had put new scraps in the vermicomposter, so we didn't see too many food scraps (excepting some eggs shells we put back there MONTHS ago. Worms don't like them, but they sure filled them with compost too!). We did however see lots of worms! They are busy in there. Once we got it all dumped onto the tarp (took awhile as it was pretty packed in), the worms seemed in a bit of a state of shock. Soon they were climbing away from the light into their dark heap of moisty dirtiness, and then we removed the rich compost from the sides of the mound. This took quite awhile.

I was surprised how fun it was. Now, we certainly looked odd, bent over a tarp of dirty and worms on our cement balcony in the suburbs, with our head-lamps on our head to shed more light on the mound to get the worms to move inward. However, it felt so much like childhood, playing the dirty, moving squilly worms around, working on a project.... it was just fun and a new experience.

We removed a huge bowl full of fresh compost, dropped the worms and their former work back into their bin, and put a heaping load more of our scraps into the worm bin. I'm excited to see their work again - it's always fascinating how quickly they move through so much food - and hoping the compost will help our plants grow a little bit. However if you are in our area- we have enough good compost to go around!