RED WIGGLER

- Technique One

1. Gently stir up existing bin and tip/scoop contents into a temporary storage container.
2. Put new bedding material, moist soil and food into your now empty bin.
3. Place shade cloth with big enough holes for worms to crawl through over new bedding and food.
4. Tip contents from the temporary storage container on top of shade cloth.
5. The worms don’t like the light and will move down through the shade cloth to the new bedding and food.
6. Once all worms have moved out of castings the shade cloth can be lifted and emoved.
7. The harvested compost can then be used.
8. There are likely to be eggs in this compost. One of two things can be done, either use compost and eggs or place the harvested compost into a temporary hatching container and place loads of moist newspaper over the harvested compost. The paper will provide food for any eggs that hatch. Once eggs hatch
and the worms become visible they can be removed by hand and placed with other worms or the same harvesting technique mentioned above can be carried out. The worms usually congregate in and around the newspaper so are fairly easy to remove still attached to the newspaper.

- Technique Two

1. Place a layer of moist newspaper or plastic sheet on a table or the ground or you can use the lid of your worm bin. (If you have a tray or large piece of flat wood it helps with moving the compost once harvested and cleaning up afterwards).
2. Gently stir up existing bin and tip/scoop contents onto paper/plastic sheets.
3. Make pyramid shape mounds.
4. Leave for about an hour. Worms will all move to the middle of the mounds.
5. Gently remove the outer layers of compost from the mounds.
6. Towards the middle you will find all the worms knotted together in a ball.
7. Gently pick them up and place them back into the bin. (Obviously you have prepared the bin with new bedding and food).
8. Some worms may still be in the compost so you can repeat the pyramid making process if you like.
9. The harvested castings/compost will contain eggs see point 8 in technique one.

• Worm castings/compost

Worm castings is a very concentrated compost so it should be mixed into compost orthe soil. It is most effective if dug into the drip line of plants, or mixed with potting soil when potting plants. You can also dilute a handful of worm castings in a bucket of water to make a “tea” and use it as a liquid fertiliser.

• Vermiliquid

The liquid that collects in the bottom of the tray/collection container under your bin is “worm wee” or “worm juice” and is a great liquid fertiliser. Simply dilute it to the colour of weak tea and water it into your plants.