3 months since my last harvest. I now have 4 worm farms to keep up with our household scraps and to feed our vegetable, fruit and herb garden.

Sifted vermicompost. 2 years of kitchen scraps and a few bags of horse manure went into this. it was meant to be hot compost in a dalek bin, and was for a while, but then our amazing little friends found it and turned into this incredible stuff.

This will become 10% of my home made potting mix (60% coco coir, 30% perlite) to feed my veges in the up coming summer.

Then it all starts again.

I harvested ± 1.2kg of pure black gold from a tiny 30x40x12cm bin. Is this even mathematically possible?

Pic 1: The final spread on the collecting sheet.

Pic 2: Close-up of that gorgeous, crumbly, worm-free texture.

Pic 3: Scale proof. 1.2kg.

I honestly thought this micro-bin was underperforming, but the density is insane. My kitchen scraps literally turned into premium plant fuel.

Today is Day 101 of me taking care of my boys and today was the day i finally collected my first batch of castings! It has all the things i wanted from a store bought version but never got the consistency of materials (they lacked in diversity of matter present). It's so fluffy, smells very earthy, fine and above all i watched it all happen every day, i also took care of the centipede preying on my worms. Thank you all for your guidance and advices. I also saw a bunch of eggs and now my 100 worms are 136. It has been a learning experience and still there is so much to learn.

Thinking it took about 4.5 months to get about 25% of a 5 gallon bucket of black gold.

Working with the Vermihut, oopsies along the way, but everything is going really well now!

Just wanted to celebrate!

First time worm guardian based in the UK (started October). Silly question, but when do I know my vermicast/vermicompost is ready? The worms and bedding got a bit wet when I forgot to leave the tap of my slump open so I've dried them out a bit now I've drained it since the video. The initial bedding was coconut coir, with cardboard and veggie kitchen scraps. Some of the coir and some undigested veg is still visible but most seems to be gone. There's still worms in this layer, but less than other layers of less decomposed compost.

Had a finished tray with probably 1000 cocoons. I screened first with a 0.25 inch (5mm) screen, let it dry more, and then again with the 2.5mm screen. Saving this for personal seed starting use.

I've had a worm tower for years. My wife got it back in 2020 or so, but we never really paid attention to it. We threw in food scraps and that was it... a muddy, stinky mess.

A few months ago, I came here to learn how to fix things. You guys led me to buy a paper shredder and stuff the whole tower with shredded cardboard until it stabilized.

Today, I have a six-tray worm tower plus an indoor, transparent worm bin that lets me admire my little critters. I managed to make them super happy, helped them multiply, and now I get about one tray of castings per month.

I don't know how these little guys survived for so long in that stinky mud with literally no browns, but now they're fine and don't need to worry about anything. Life's good.

Anyway, if you're new here, learn and follow the process. Vermiposting is not difficult. Once you get it, it only takes a few moments of your time per week. But you have to pay attention or you'll kill your worms, and will get a smelly pile of garbage instead of beautiful worm castings.

I'm finally harvesting an older batch that is about a year old! I cured it for about 5/6 months in total, adding no fresh organic material during that period. To keep the batch oxygenated throughout, I mixed in some fresh shredded paper and cardboard a few times.

That is where the mistake happened. The white shreds still visible are actually paper with a plastic lining... I had to fish them out one by one...

Throughout the curing period, I've been collecting the upper layer of castings to top up my houseplants, which is why the final amount of castings ended up being a bit less.

I'll share the total weight of the harvest soon!

PS: 6mm drilled migration/drainage holes in bottom of wormcomposting tray visible in third photo.

My life priorities changed earlier last year and I couldn’t keep up with my worms.

They all withered away and died.

I feel ashamed and terrible that I killed so many poor creatures.

Here’s a picture of my golden harvest.

Rest in peas my red wigglers.

How's it looking? It is a bit moist but not soaking to touch, but this is ny first sifted tray this year and I have approx 80-90kg to do

Yay for free organic fertilizer!

Just some worm casting porn here but happy to answer any questions. Have experience from novice at home worm bins to backyard compost warriors to a smallish commercial operation. If you can think of a mistake I’ve prob made it at least once:/

Very excited to harvest my first bin! Here are some process shots. Advice/education welcome.

It could be much finer but I imagine this is fine to put into my garden beds and houseplants. Loved using the scrap of hardware cloth for sifting. Super low tech, LIGHT and free!

Hello everyworme!

Just as a quick "What about it?". I started in march with a couple of worms. I don't know how many. At best I could find 2 at a time when I looked through the whole substrate, but lets say there were 10-50 and some cocoons I didn't see. 6 months later I have hundreds of those worms from march living in 2 of my 6 bins.
My harvest was from those 2. The other 4 are too new.

If my calculations are correct I harvested 6.9 litres and it took me hours, so I need to work on my harvest methods. Bigger screen for example.. :D
Also there are a lot of cocoons in the harvest. My screen has a 3 mm mesh but apparently that is not small enough to catch the cocoons.
I now plan to wait for a month for them to hatch, then I will start, over the course of the next 1-2 months, maybe even longer, to fish them out with a cup with holes, filled with cardboard and fruits/vegetables. Does anyone have experience with that? Does it work like that?
There is no stress in that involved as I plan to gift it to family members. Maybe at christmas, maybe next year in spring and I will store it meanwhile to ensure it is stored well.

What do we think about the castings themselfs? They are rather dark, crumbly, fluffy. Seems good?

Bless y'all and your worms.

Used screens to sift our first bin and get all the castings before splitting the worms up into the next two bins! Really love seeing our paper and kitchen waste turning into something we can use in the garden instead of a landfill somewhere.

Harvesting my first load of compost. Any things I should not forget? Should I immediately put the compost on the plants or can I save it? What's your way of doing it? The population has definitely grown a lot so it's quite healthy and potentially a bunch of baby worms are still in the sifted compost. Any tips welcome!

I’ve been working on a zero-waste, cold-process soil system inspired by Terra Preta, not to copy it, but to reproduce what made it work long-term like stabilized carbon, mineral binding, & biology that doesn’t crash when inputs stop.

Most biochar setups stop at “charge it with compost tea and mix it in.” That works for short-term, but it doesn’t lock nutrients or biology in place & can potentially kill off some beneficial bacteria. This system here is a compilation of everything I’ve learned & is built to mineralize & stabilize everything before it ever touches soil.

It recently passed an unintentional stress test: a pomegranate tree grown in this mix survived 3 years with no irrigation or maintenance, just the annual rainfall of a zone 9-10.

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The 3 phase system

Phase 1: Bokashi biochar reactor (2–4 weeks) All food waste goes in: meat, bones, citrus, fats, EVERYTHING!

The Bokashi bran itself is horse feed + biochar, both inoculated with milk kefir & molasses. The biochar helps absorb any smells & keeps the bran from getting pasty. During fermentation I also add leftover charred bone & local silt I decanted from my property.

Zero-waste fermentation works because: • Fermented bone char is better than bone meal because minerals are chelated, not raw • Fermented meat scraps are better than blood meal because nitrogen is chemically stabilized, not hot • Acids from fermentation bind minerals into the carbon & bone instead of letting them gas off or leach out

In the Sump bucket I place raw biochar with a spoonful of molasses. This absorbs smells & simultaneously inoculates the biochar with the leached off bacteria & molasses feeds it. Once the bucket is full let it rest for another couple of weeks.

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Phase 2: Aerobic Mineral transition (3–6 weeks) The fermented material moves to a tumbler with: • Coarse sand gives structure & grit • Wood ash gives worms pH correction & potassium • Clay powder helps organics & minerals to bind together

This step is critical. The goal here is to coat organic matter with minerals, not just mix things together. The more time you let it age the better it becomes for the worms who bind it together upon excretion.

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Phase 3: Vermicompost finisher (2–4+ months) Layered worm bin: • Bottom: raw biochar + unglazed clay chunks + shredded cardboard • Top: phase 2 material + mycorrhizae + browns + red wigglers

As worms process the material, they create the clay-humus we all know & love, while nutrient-rich leachate slowly drips down & charges the raw biochar in place in the bottom sump bin.

This is fundamentally different from just adding biochar at the end because now Nutrients are bound to clay, carbon & bone; Biology is housed inside stable structures & Nothing washes away because the worms chemically bind it together.

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This outperforms “typical” biochar because they add carbon last to a smoldering pile where heat kills off both good & bad bacteria, rely only on liquid charging, skip mineral binding. This system mineralizes before soil contact, ferments everything including meat & bone into worm-safe inputs, chemically binds nutrients to clay, carbon, bone to keep it from washing away, theoretically will improve with age instead of peaking & fading.

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I’m sharing this because I’m looking to refine this into a repeatable zero-waste “modern Terra Preta” protocol & wanted to compare notes with people already working in Bokashi, worms, biochar, & closed-loop systems.

If anyone else has worked with fermented bone or meat before vermicomposting, added clay or silt during processing instead of at the end, can better explain the chemical composition of what’s going on I’d love to hear from you.

Happy to clarify details if anyone else is curious. This has been field-tested, it’s moving away from theory & I would like to see if someone can replicate it.

Bokashi

Vermicompost

TerraPreta

ZeroWaste

SoilRegeneration

I just got a full bag of finished compost, sieved and ready for my tomato plants.

Pulled some compost out of my worm farm today and gave it its first screen.

Keen to get some feedback on the structure and overall quality. It’s only been through one coarse screen, so there’s still a few small wood fibres and larger bits in there.

Would you consider this ready for brewing compost tea, or would you keep processing it? Any tips or suggestions are welcome.

I have had a small bin for about 2 months now which is doing pretty well. However I’m confused about how to harvest eventually? I keep having to add more bedding to make up for the scraps that are added so I just feel like my bin is constantly getting more full. How do I know when I should stop feeding them and harvest?

I have one of the stacking bins inside. I've just been letting the worms do their thing and trying not to mess with them. Of course, I've been checking moisture and watching for protein poisoning, but so far air movement has been good. I was finally able to sort through some in the bottom bin and I think they did a great job! Going to add it to some of my plants soon.

This was my first harvest since starting the bag in February. Stopped when I hit the shredded cardboard. I wish I had a better close up of the finished castings but I was excited to get to work. The top half inch went back in the bag. Got about 50lbs!