the song I hear from Laura crow I hope you guys are having a great day today I want to talk to you about how to harvest your work castings and also want to clarify some things about the recent worm bin video that I uploaded just a few days ago so first of all I think I had mentioned something about feeding the worms on one side of the bin so you can do that and they do eat and poop on the same side of the bin and you want to keep this other side of the bin just with some bedding but don't put foot in that side the reason why is because when it's time for harvesting around 3 to 5 months is you want to slowly have the words migrate to the opposite side of the band where they're not used to eating the food and what you're going to do is you're going to eventually stop feeding on the side but they've been feeding on the past 3 to 5 months and start putting food in the opposite side of the bin and that way we'll get the worms to migrate on that side and eventually in about two to three weeks the castings on the previous side where they were will be ready to harvest to be harvested and most of the worms are going to be on the other side of the bed so I'm going to show you every bit the cell it looks like and also I just want to let you know about blog and it is called earthworm technologies they are very helpful and they did recommend to go ahead and drill holes on the side of the band which I have done that yet on my beds that I have made so I told you I think I just loved it leave it ajar but it's a good idea to drill extra holes around the side of the band that way just more air can get in there or more air can get in to the band to help the key to help the worms breathe and keep them healthy and happy so anyways I'll leave the length of earthworm technologies they are on Twitter Facebook and they have a blog as well as Google+ they're very helpful lots of information so go ahead and check them out there's two parts of this video I recorded earlier on how to harvest the castings doing it by a mount that mounts and the other method is the one where I be the one side the benefit time so I'll be showing those two methods and if everyone obviously is harvesting on the opposite side of the bins so it's much easier it's not as time consuming as doing it by mounds so but you can think out whatever works for you that you know it's up to you and it's actually it might be a fun project to do with your kids so getting more involved you know in with your worms and harvesting and learning about compost wait to tell when your worm castings are ready to be harvested is it's going to be this dark rich color kind of like a color of soil or coffee grounds or consistency consistency as coffee grounds so it's not too wet not too dry and a lot of these are going to be pieces of be composted fruits food scraps the fruit and vegetable scraps as well as the bedding so these are pretty much ready to be harvested so nice and rich color and again great consistency so generally when I'm feeding one side as I harvest all these castings on this side I will not have that many worms unless there's still some food in there but most of this as you can see when I scooped up the casting here there's barely barely any worms on the side of the bin just because they migrate towards the foot on the other side so here's my current worm bin and I just harvested some more castings on this side here so I'm going to let this slide dry out and in about a week I'm going to put new bedding in there and I'm not going to put any more food in this side because this side is also pretty much ready to be harvested as well so there's lots of I'm casting see all that dark stuff and we just worn the bottom here I wanted to serve the worms again but so in about a week I want to put new bedding and put food on this side and then I'm going to wait another two to three weeks and have until the worms have migrated to this side towards the food and they do eat and poop on the same side so that's why you know you want to get them out of that side that way they don't you don't leave a favorable unfavorable environment for them so in the too much warm poop and eating this you know the same area where they eat it's just not going to be healthy for them so this is my favorite way to harvest them and you do have to plot it ahead at least three weeks ahead of time before your harvest the castings but it works so much better just because you can harvest more castings you know in the bigger amounts is the smaller smaller mounds words I think it's time-consuming this way of harvesting your worm casting is we're making little mounds and what I'm doing is just kind of shaping up this little mouse into slightly cone shape then what happens is the worms will eventually migrate to the bottom of the mound away from the light so I don't think you want to do this around in the sunlight because it's too hot so just a you know just a regular house light will be okay so what happens is give it at least two to three minutes and then you start taking off the top all the castings as the worms migrate towards the bottom show you this mound here so I'm going to go ahead and take a take off the top here and I'm going to carefully check for worms and let's see maybe there's that one little baby one right there and this will be the casting that we'll be harvesting if I don't see any worms in there or pick them out then I'm going to put this aside so again wait at least at least two to three minutes in between before you harvest the top of the castings so when you get to the bottom or close to the bottom of your mound as you can see all the worms have migrated towards the bottom of that and as soon as you collect all your castings and you might end up finding some worms in the pile of casting so I'll just pick out those worms and put it back in your worm bin this is the last mound I'm working on and want to zoom in show you all the worms that have migrated towards the bottom of the mounds I'm going to zoom in pick this up real quick and there you go I'll see all the worms there so I'm going to go ahead and put them back in the worm bin here is my ten gallon bin where I keep all the worm castings that I've been harvesting so this is my third harvest and this bin feels like it weighs at least 12 maybe 14 pounds now it's about a third fold it is a 10 gallon bin and again I'm leaving it here to cure or letting it air dry so I'm not going to put the lid on this container for at least two weeks that way I can preserve them for my spring garden and you don't want it your castings to be too moist you want it just the texture of maybe just freshly brewed coffee grounds so not to wait just a little moist if it's too sludgy then you might run into a problem of fungus growing moles you know and such so this is a great texture for worm castings so I'm excited to use this in my garden and spring and I'll be making some compost tea from it as well I hope they guys find this video helpful if you have any questions comments suggestions for me please leave them in the comment section below and again thank you so much for watching my name is Miss Ella and I hope that you guys have a wonderful day happy gardening your leg it's just matter you will know Oh crawl and that in that pile okay but yeah this is the warm pool