hi it's not my green shorts and it's finally time to test the harvesting bar again on my simple flow through worm composter this thing's been actually in my basement this winter and it kind of got behind some stuff in my storage room slash workshop and I didn't feed the worms like I should have they're fine but I don't think the colony has really thrived through the winter so my plan for today is to harvest what's in here and hopefully the harvesting bar shows that's how it's going to work a little better than it did last time if you remember last time it was still mostly this startup soil that I had in the bottom of the bin and it kind of crumbled out but the castings are going to be a lot more soft and squishy and they're going to really need that slice to make them drop down got here in this tray just what fell out of the bottom during the winter a little bit of castings here but again it's mostly the clay that I had in there the native Georgia soil which is kind of opposite of castings so I'm gonna put this underneath and then we're gonna give this harvesting bar a test but I'm gonna empty it out first we see exactly what we're working with I'm gonna give you a nice low angle so you can see what happens and you can see the metal plate here that I used to replace the trimmer wire the term wire just wasn't conducive to this thing sliding here we go all right so that was a pretty decent harvest there and let's take a look at the top so the worms that are still in here pretty small you can see how our finished castings are looking here on top still a little bit of bedding left over oh yeah so here's some healthier worms here a little bit bigger that's what I'm looking to see and those are some finished castings got some other critters in here as well which is what you should expect is an ecosystem not just the worms but mites and a lot of times I'll see your wigs so you can see how the castings are just supported in an arch there basically I want to push down on this the whole thing would probably fall out see let's tilt this up real quick and take a look so here is our harvesting bar here but those of you didn't watch the first build video it's actually got a sharpened edge a slightly sharpened edge on the other side here to be able to slice through so there is still a good bit of clay left over from my preload there so so I can scrape a little bit of that out the true test of this would be when we're dealing with 100% casting which looks I'm like on this side that we were down to just castings on the bottom all right so a pretty nice batch of soil that's supercharged with worm castings and I'm actually gonna use this to start some seeds in a tray a great use for something like this and there's a few worms in here I'm not surprised by that just because there I didn't have a super tall soil column in there to let the worms migrate up here's a nice chunk of finished castings it's so good School of Rock is happening again this week which you can hear in the background my son is not over there this week but I have a different set of campers they rocked out by the way here's a clip here's our screen meet this side when it's in the composting position versus the harvesting position little diagram here to show me which side the blade is on slide this back over that is a nice take I'm happy with that beautiful stuff and the clay that's in there is actually started to darken a little bit and it's a lot more brittle which tells me that it's also getting infused with nutrients from the worm bin you can see there's the the native red color went in with all right we'll set this aside and use it to load up some plant trees all right let's reset it actually gonna start by just kind of working down what's in here the last of the clay might just pull this out and see the top of the harvesting bar right there so that's as deep is that next slice is going to go so I'm going to start out by a nice thick layer of newspaper bedding and then I met that down with some rainwater chlorinated water is okay our tap water is okay as long as you let it sit out for 24 hours the chlorine will dissipate over that time into the air it'll evaporate and then it won't have a negative impact on the worms or on the biological community that you want to foster in your composter also here on this bottom layer I'm going to add in some charcoal just from my bread oven leftovers of some untreated wood that I burned there to make bread you courious it to see that build I'll put a link above here to that for my cob bread oven I'm going to crunch this up and not super small chunks but the reason I'm adding this isn't for the worms but it's for to provide a substrate basically a habitat or bacteria that also are in this composter that's basically going to activate this charcoal and when I add this to the garden that this the bacteria colonies in here are going to really help the soil so this is something you can add to your own composter charcoal just make sure it's from untreated wood even sizes like this or just fine another thing I'm going to be adding to the composter is grit in this case my grit source is sand that I've scavenged from the creek across the street it's gonna put a little bit down here as the worms process the compostable material there actually will bring grit in with that and that these actually function like the teeth of the worms to kind of break down the matter as it passes through the worm itself so grit is an important addition to your worm composter so because I'm operating multiple composters my solidified log of a composter which I'll link above and a couple worm composters several worm towers relying on my own family's food scraps is not enough to sustain everybody so I go over to the local restaurant and with their permission get their food waste and I'm working with restaurant food scraps I'm always going to want to wear a a glove so in here in this bag I've got a lot of food waste some of it is going to go into this soldier pride lot of a composter because they can take pretty much anything meat dairy bread a lot of stuff worms won't but I'm going to pull the the vegetable the lettuce mainly out of here and put it into the composter this was not something that they pre sorted for me which they ooh I just grabbed this out of the dumpster there are easier ways to get this the next I'm gonna be adding a layer of food scraps into the composter a little more bedding a little more grit and a little more water uncle Jim's ships the worms dehydrated so they are less susceptible to temperature so the first thing you do when you get them is get them out of the bag put them into a bucket or a bin and add about 1/2 a cup of water to start their rehydration process I'll let this sit like this overnight and I'm gonna install the worms into my bins and worm towers tomorrow I'm gonna put a lid on this bucket tonight because they might crawl out see how they're doing so they were in the dark they're in my garage and I see there's a few here on the lid ahead something heavy on this so that it kept them from being able to crawl up underneath the lid so I'm gonna record here and let you see how the light will chase them back down into the bin give them a try and escape over the top just gonna put them back down so this mingling up here on the sides of the bucket that's where baby worms are made so they're Nightcrawler so when it's night this is when they climb up and you can see there's some castings up on the sides uncle Jim's recommends that you get them into a proper habitat a proper worm composting bin within 48 hours I want to accelerate this process I can simply move them into the Sun this is filtered sunlight so it's enough just to get them moving some of these guys are just stubborn those are the worms you want around they got moxie I'm gonna help these last guys down you can also do this at night with a light so now I'm going to add worms and another layer of bedding got my temporary home here and there's actually some compostable stuff in here that is leaves and some spinach that was going bad and some paper towels I'm just going to go ahead and add that there are some worms in there too uncle James was kind enough to send me 2,000 worms and they gave me these worms in exchange for me talking about them in a video but you know I've talked about Uncle Jim's before even when I was buying wormed from them just because they're a great source Jim actually was the son of a Vermont fisherman and started selling worms to his dad's coworkers when he was 8 so he's been in the business for a long time now his sons are in it as well just a great story of entrepreneurship and creativity I mean selling worms he's put three boys and two girls through college with these guys we have a special coupon for green shorts viewers use the coupon code green shorts with a Z one word then you get 10% off so check out Uncle Jim's worm farm dot-com if you're ready to get started worm composting so I've probably put 500 to 750 worms into this unit and that's going to basically supercharge this thing I'll need to pretty quickly get in another layer of vegetables I'm going to go ahead and top this with a layer of bedding more newspaper just to cover them up and protect them adding bedding whenever you add new food scraps is also a good way to keep any odors down one thing I try and avoid when daddy newspaper is ending it's got a shiny coating on it most of these newspaper inks are going to be soy based except for metallic inks which you rarely see a newspaper and so none of these even though this has a lot of color on it it's not shiny which would indicate a varnish so let me go ahead and be okay adding it this color a little more grit so make sure they can find grit wherever they are a little more water just to moisten this newspaper down all right this is all set up I'm gonna take the rest of my worms and install them into the worm towers in my garden so I've actually got three worm towers here in this garden bed the two PVC worm towers and then a experimental one that I've hollowed out the inside of a log I'm gonna put about 200 or so a handful of worms into each of these towers along with grit and bedding and food scraps in addition to newspaper corrugated cardboard is also an excellent bedding material [Applause] leaves and wood chips are also another acceptable bedding material getting worms food scraps grit and water the last type of warm tower that I have is what I call a bucket worm tower so it's a five gallon bucket buried in the garden same setup so worms bedding grit and water and food scraps can't forget the food scraps and see what the output of this is this is actually been sitting all winter with just a few worms in it and that's a pretty rich stuff down there and the rest of my worms probably 500 or so we're gonna go in here the beauty of these worm towers is that they're no maintenance or very little maintenance if you don't have any food scraps which come out of them right now I'm just gonna add some weed waste here my paper towels go in the worm composter just as a case in point the green pepper plant that is next to the worm composter here has three peppers on it and the one that's further away has one now that plant just might have been more sturdy to start but I like this nutrients right to the roots right down there organic nutrients at that this basil is going crazy also right next to this I've got holes in the top of this that allow rainwater to go in allow that water to push out into the garden bed deliver nutrients to the soil right where it needs it all right there you have it folks there's the set up of all of my worm composters and I've got plans for all of these devices the flow if your worm composter my bucket worm compost or I have a two bucket worm compost for that's got one that bucket at the top one that captures the liquid underneath it's leachate not quite worm tea but you can make it into worm tea the worm towers are really simple to build but I've included the plans for all three of my worm towers in one set I'll include the plans for my wooden worm tower as well which I've decommissioned because what I'm gonna do is break down and become soil themselves so you can see it's a nice rich soil inside I just pulled this one up it's the beauty of wood for those of you who don't want to use plastic and all that stuff is available on my website and it's also a way that if you like what you see here on green shorts DIY then you can help me by supporting the channel by buying plants again special thanks to Uncle Jim for sending me some free worms thanks so much and I'm excited about seeing how they produce in the flow-through now that I've got the proper amount of worms in here as well as the worm towers in the garden we watching those green peppers grow as always our mission here at green shorts is to help you see green so you can be green and save little green by doing it yourself this worm composter purchased on the market would probably a hundred and fifty to two hundred three hundred dollars so you can build it yourself for about 40 under 40 maybe even as low as twenty depending on the trashcan that you buy and if you have some scrap lumber on hand please like and share I also love the comments that you leave with ideas and suggestions and feedback I've used a lot of them to improve my designs so this is a community here of ideas and I appreciate when you share yours with me so thanks for watching please like and share and subscribe for a new green shorts DIY video almost that refried it [Applause]