A Return Visit To The Worm Farm

I am going to preface this blog with a warning.  It is somewhat gross if you don't like worms.  I blogged about this subject before and was told by some that they wouldn't read it.  That's ok but some of you will find it interesting and may want to try it yourself some day.

My previous post was an introduction to my worm farm.  If you haven't read it or couldn't read it, here it is.  Just click on this link.  Worm Farming, An Unusual Type of Farmer

In the blog I told that I take the worms and the casting dirt out of the trays in the spring, and then I start the process all over again.  Today was that day.  I left one working tray in place because the worms were still working on the latest carrot peelings and removed the other three.  There were a lot of worms left in these three trays so there must have been some bits left to eat, but it was mostly lovely dirt.   At least I thought it was lovely dirt.

Tray of worm castings that used to be kitchen waste and paper.

It was nice and sunny outside.  I spread out an old tablecloth on the sidewalk and dumped out the first tray.  The worms don't like the bright sun and immediately embed themselves under the dirt.  By doing this, it made it a little easier for me to retrieve them.  If anyone has a better way, please let me know because it still wasn't easy.  Then I noticed it.  Oops, someone had shredded a plastic credit card.  That someone was probably me.  There amongst the dirt were pieces of plastic.  I mentioned before to be careful not to shred the envelopes with the clear plastic windows, but credit cards are a definite no no.  I started to pick out the plastic and pick out the worms.  It is a good lesson. It may take millions of years to decompose every piece of plastic that goes into a landfill because even worms won't eat it.  People shouldn't ingest it either but that's another topic.

Bits of plastic in the dirt.

This looks like more than one card.  I think it's the AARP cards we received.

This tray took a while to sift through, but the other two trays went faster.  I ended up with thousands of worms.  I'm not sure what others do with the excess worms, but I would love some ideas for this too.   I kept out a pound container of worms and put the rest of the dirt and excess worms in my outside compost pile.  I also spread some of the dirt around a few plants that were just starting to come up.  Now here is the gross part.  Don't look any further if you ever want to eat spaghetti again.  It's time to return the lucky ones to the farm, or maybe the lucky ones were set free today.

I started a new tray with a lot of shredded paper.  Then I put the worms back to live another day.