How to Sift Worm Castings from Vermi-Compost Worm Bin / Grow Box
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2016
- Year after year, my outdoor worm box planter performs very well! I get buckets and buckets of castings that need sifted. The red wigglers survived another Winter outdoors. I insulated them with a massive pile of Autumn leaves. Underneath, I fed the worms with my usual bedding of cardboard and garden waste.
By the middle of the Summer, these worms had chewed through ALL of it! All that was left was a massive pile of deep, rich vermi-compost. So I had to scoop out bucket after bucket of worm castings. In total it was about 36 gallons (loosely pre-sifted)!
In order to finely sift the worm castings at this larger scale, I had to devise a slightly better system. So I upgraded my basic screen door method. I used some recycled wood to construct a basic frame. Then I wrapped the metal screen mesh around it. This allowed my to quickly sift the vermi-compost into my wheel barrow.
Generating worm castings is a highly sustainable way of generating your own natural organic nutrients. The castings work great as a fertilizer, especially in container gardening. In fact, this past Winter, I did some tests using worm castings to make a seed starting mix. The results where impressive!
Check my site for more tips:
► link.albopepper.com/worms
VIDEO 1:
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UPDATE 2:
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UPDATE 3:
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#WormCastings #Permaculture #SustainableGardening #SaveTheWorms #OrganicGardening #VermiCompost
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Read more about vermi-composting at my site:
► link.albopepper.com/worms
This box has been working really well! Be sure to watch the update videos:
Part 1:
► ua-cam.com/video/-1U2Oh-FhuY/v-deo.html
Part 2:
► ua-cam.com/video/HittDAeJeA4/v-deo.html
Part 3:
► ua-cam.com/video/fU4gANW57S4/v-deo.html
Very well done. The video is easy to watch, my complements. Cheers from Ottawa, Canada🍁
Intelligence!
Great video thank you. Liked and subscribed.
Thanks so much for watching. And welcome to my channel! 😀
Clever I love it
That is soooooo cool. LOVE the strings from the rafters!! Ingenious!
Awesome video. Very helpful!
Wow!! Perfect free rich awesome fertilizer & planting medium!! I love it!👍🏼🌞
Awesome! Thanks for watching Cheryl!!! :-D
Great informations n tips there. Thank you
I'm laughing at your "problem"!!! Good for you!!! 😁👍
heheheh Thanks so much for watching!
Einfach nur perfekt 🧡
💪
Agreed. Love the Moustache lol, To give your worms and you vermipost a kick start, and to powerfeed your worms, Get some cheap seconds wheat from a produce store and soak it in water for 24-48 hours. Put some layers of soaked seconds wheat into your lasagna. Love the compost sift, I am going to automize the shit outta that idea lol
Use pet screen. It's reinforced and will last longer. Also love the 8 bit ending. Great 'stache, Mario!
LOL Good suggestion! Thanks for watching. :)
Best sifting system I've ever seen. The screen you use is also way finer than any I've ever seen used before. Your castings must be really dry(ish)?
Thanks! Yes, those were drier castings. I used them in seed starting potting mixes.
Very helpful, I've been searching for a video of how to get castings this fine for a long time!
My question: any suggestions how to dry mine out more? I use shredded newspaper and keep the lid off but it seems my food scraps just soak the castings. Should I feed them something different? Thank you!
Yay!! Thank you.
So good to fine your video. 🌻 Beautiful earth you have there
Hey maybe send your strawberries up...
I watched a video of growing things up by "Roots and Refuge Farm." She has some good ideas for things that take up a lot of ground space.
Enjoy!
Hi there Al G,
My question to you is when you sift your wormcastings it seems to be dry-ish. Do you extract your castings and then let them dry a couple of days and then sift them. When I sift my castings it does not want to sift, when wet.
If you had used a plastic coated mesh, I guess it'd go more easy on the worm skin. Also why do you need so finely sifted casting btw. Have you done an experiment with sifted vs unsifted castings?? That wud be great right :)
That's a good point about the advantage of a plastic mesh. My main reason for finely sifting is to recover as many worms as possible. I've found some super tiny baby worms that filtered through, even use a fine mesh. Basically, I just want to keep the population as high as possible, especially since they're outdoors.
As far as quality goes, I would expect the same plant growth from sifted or unsifted. But experiment would be the way to know for sure!
That's crazy, holy!! Very cool. How cold does it get in your area that you are able to keep going all year long?
Hi Art! Thanks for watching. I'm in western PA in Zone 6. The extreme lows have hit -5 F. I show more about my methods in the early videos on this box. But so far, they keep coming back! :D
This looks good and gives me some ideas. A question for you though: Did you get millipedes in your compost pile as well?
Hi Karl! Yes, I had some millipedes. Also centipedes, pill bugs and black soldier fly larvae. Quite a biodiverse group actually.
the only other person ive ever heard of that sifts through a steel fly screen, i bet wed make great buddies haha
Hi, how hot do your summers get? I have a similar box but without the front planter and I put my worms inside a 20 gallon tote and then put cardboard and newspaper in between the wood and the outside of the tote to act as insulation to keep the worms cool in our hot summers. (AZ) I also had to put ice packs on the top of the cardboard covering. This year I am going to dig a trench in the ground and create the same environment and see if that is cooler for them.
so when composting with worms you can use the soil for planting after you get the castings out?
Please forgive me if this has been answered in one of the other vids. But do you find you dont have to water the plants as much due to the wet material going into the bin? Thank you in advance.
Hi Andrew! Thanks for watching. Of course, weather patterns are the biggest factor. But in my area, I didn't have to water the plants in the front planter too frequently. On thing, I noticed was that the soil tended to settle over time. So I would advise using annual plants since you can easily top off the soil level as needed in the Spring.
How long did your box work to get the 36 gallons? One year?
forgive me if you answered these already but I have a few questions. I'll be starting this soon. 1. is that bin in full sun? 2. what food did they like the most? 3. did you need to water them? how often?
Hiya! The bin is shaded from the western, afternoon sun. I've found that the worms like browns: soggy cardboard, shredded Autumn leaves and even dead plant roots from the garden. They also like soft, squishy plant foods like watermelon rinds. I typically don't water them since their leaf bedding retains lots of water. But in a hot, dry spell I might sprinkle them once in a while. I partially cover the pile with a plastic tote lid, which helps too. :-)
It would probably be easier to tie all four corners of the sifter so it's fully suspended. you could probably hook up a shaker, something shake weight like, to sift it for you.
Thanks for the tip Corey! I mentioned about how I could tie up all 4 corners. If I was using a large tarp, it would be perfect. But I found that I had better control and was able to keep all of the castings inside the wheel barrow this way. Also, it saved me from a Gym membership! LOL ;-)
Love to see other examples of outdoor worm bins. How is yours going after all these years? Check mine out and give me your thoughts!
does this bin require a lid?
Hi John. It isn't necessary to have a lid. But in super dry climates, placing something on the top can help to conserve moisture and protect from sun and animals. Sometimes I'll place a lid from a 30 gallon tote on top of all the scraps. Without a covering of some sort, the top layer of materials tends to dry out, until it is buried under further scraps. One possible covering would be a piece of insulation. This would add protection against extremes in temperature.
I know the video is quite old but why did you go with such a small mesh and not for instance 1/8 th inch which is small enough for the eggs?
Thanks for watching! I didn't put a lot of thought into the screen size and simply used what I could find on hand. However, in my situation, it worked out better to keep the eggs separate from the castings. My castings were stored for many months. But the eggs and non-sifted materials were put back into the box for further composting.
i think the issue with growing IN wormcastings is that you can never really sift pure castings therefor there is always going to be a bit of material thats not broken down and just stays in the pot and then starts robbing nitrogen to finish breaking down by bacteria, hmm seems like instead of this sifting stuff what we should be doing is letting our compost to mature for a year or so till its actually 100 percent bacteria castings
cant you just go out to your garden and scoop up shovels of dirt and sift it??? after all thats where the worms live
Pure worm castings are not the same as topsoil.
@@Albopepper im saying worms live,eat,breed,poop already in any garden/farm/flower pot, green houses, .... anywhere you dig they'll be tons of worms... with that theres poop in all them sites mentioned, ..... why cant we scoop dirt from there and sift that stuff??? ........
Because topsoil is comprised of varying amounts of silicates. It doesn't simply have 100% worm poop. It contains silt, clay and/or sand. Obviously soil samples vary great between regions and even in different spots within the same site. Structurally, it is completely different than pure worm castings. And the nutrient levels are totally different. Typically, you'll find a much higher concentration of available macros when working from vermicompost.
If you choose to scoop out and sift topsoil, I don't know what your ultimate goal is. Obviously you can't do that and expect it to be some sort of amazing soil amendment. And it really isn't a good way to construct potting mixes either.
@@Albopepper so you saying the big difference is what the worms eat? whether you hand feeding them in a tub or they feeding themselves in natures soil determines the quality of poop you harvest??.......
Red wigglers are composting worms that can be kept in a small confined area and fed nutrient-dense scraps which results in castings that are highly concentrated. This is not the same as what occurs in random soil samples in the wild. Topsoil will typically be high in silicates with a lesser amount of organic matter. Topsoil does NOT have the same NPK as castings from a vermi-compost pile.