I have tried different meathods of harvesting my worms from the casting (hand picking, vibrating, flooding) and this seems to work best. I made a sifter tray using diamond hole grating with about 1/4 inch holes. I mount this over a shallow tray with moist bedding aprox 1 in below the grating. Scoop the cast and worms onto the sifter and train a heat lamp on it from about 2 ft away to raise the temperature of the surface to 90 degrees plus. The worms migrate through the grate to the cool bedding below,leaving wormless castings and can be boxed or returned to the bins with ease. The lamp can also be used to dry the casting for storage, killing off any straglers that didnt migrate and they are just added protein in the mix. I sided my grating with scrap L iron bedrail to make a tray.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), January 27, 2001

Answers

Thanks Jay ! I am planning on starting my own worm bin shortly. Just haven't had a chance to find a bait shop that sells the right sort of worms. They sell night crawlers only in our nearby little town. When I go "below" to the city I will have to look in the yellow pages. Don't fish or hunt so don't know where to go. But, anyway, I printed this out so that I will know what to do when the time comes. Thanks for all your advice. I am looking forward to my own colony of wigglers!

-- cindy palmer (jandcpalmer@sierratel.com), January 27, 2001.

Jay, how clever. I've raised worms for composting for about 7-8 years now--since I couldn't have a decent outside pile because of my neighbor's 11 dogs and the Bermuda grass growing up through it before it finished. (I sheet composted the garden--the worms just did the household stuff.)Harvesting the castings without destroying all the worms has always been a slow, messy and onerous job for me (Hey, I'm the lady who quit fishing when I couldn't hoodwink any one into baiting my hook for me!) This is a wonderful idea and thanks for sharing it. I plan to mail this to every friend to whom I've given worms for their own bins.

-- marilyn (rainbow@ktis.net), January 27, 2001.

Jay, I too appreciate the info. Read on worms in a prior post and got real excited. Have been racking my brains on what to do when we move to the country (besides starting small raising goats). I think this is one 'venture' I won't lose sleep over. I'm concerned I can't part with the goats but won't have any trouble selling worms!

-- Marsha (CaprisMaa@aol.com), January 27, 2001.

Jay, have you thought about giving them a little electrical shock? My Grandpa used to have 2 metal poles connected to an extention cord. He would push them in the ground about 10' apart and then come in and plug it in for a couple minutes. Night crawlers would be up all over. Seems this worked better when it was wet. Maybe they were closer to the top then?

Keep up the worm reports. My 18 year old daughter wants to start raising worms now. Who woulda thought? John

-- John in S. IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), January 27, 2001.

John, I tried electric shock to harvest them, but it seemed they were somewhat sluggish after enduring the static harvesting charge. Using the migration technique keeps them more active after packaging. I do use an electrostatic generator circuit powered by a 9v battery to transplant breeders from one bin to the other.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), January 28, 2001.

Yeah, I suppose I'd be a little sluggish too! I tell ya Grandpa really impressed me w/ the shocking 'em trick. Of course, we didn't get out much. I did wonder how much "juice" you'd use in a small bed. Doing a "Ted Bundy" on 'em could be a little traumatic.

Keep up the good work!

-- John in S. IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), January 28, 2001.