tovfla
Cool Member
Posts: 63
Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2011 12:56 pm
Location: Miami, Florida

Remove worms from finished compost?

I have lots of worms in my compost pile (I noticed quite a few small red ones). Is it better to remove them before using the finished compost or leave them in?

User avatar
Queenie26
Senior Member
Posts: 125
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2011 10:21 am
Location: Philippines

remove them, and use them for your new compost ingredients. More worms, the faster your ingredients to compost :) and don't forget to put compost on your new ingredients for your worms to survive :) happy composting!

john gault
Green Thumb
Posts: 461
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2011 4:53 pm
Location: Atlantic Beach, Fl. (USDA Hardiness Zone 9a)

You can leave them, but they'll probably die in your garden, unless you have a heavy layer of mulch. Reason being is that there are two basic types of worms, I forget all the technical names, suffice it to say you got the red wigglers (compost worms) and earth worms (ground-dwelling worms).

Red wigglers cannot bury too far in the ground so they'll stay in the compost, but if it isn't that thick they'll fry in the heat of the day, whereas an earthworm will burrow into the ground.

Only if you have a trained eye will you be able to differentiate between an earth worm and a red wiggler, but if it's in your compost it's a pretty good bet it's a red wiggler. However, if you dig into the ground under/near your compost and find a worm, it's an earth worm.

Size is one way to tell the difference, generally the red wigglers are smaller, if you're seeing really small ones they're probably just newly hatched youngen's.

tomc
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2661
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 2:52 am
Location: SE-OH USA Zone 6-A

How do I corral these wiggly worms?

Size is everything when it comes to culling worms out of a compost bin.

On the small:

Worms do not like sunlight. They will crawl to the middle of a pile. Peel off the outside edges till you get a ball of worms.

FWIW on a blazing hot day worms can cook in a pile laid out to rustle them. Do this in the shade in August. There will still be enough light to make this work.

On the big:
Mechanical harvest becomes nesisary when your worm collecting tilts to commericial size. Every mechanical harvester has been some kind of hardware cloth barrel, slightly tilted and rotatable, so that as the barrel turns finished compost drops out, with chunks and worms discarded out the bottom.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

I "screen" my compost with a wire fence -- I think it's 1.5"x2" grid or something like that -- and put back anything the fence catches.

Then if I'm using the compost in a container, I'll do a second screening with a 1"x1" grid.

If I'm using for seed starting mix, I'll do a final screening with 1/2" grid.

In each case, any worm or worm eggs/cocoons that fall through are used along with the compost to help populate the soil biology. :()

As mentioned previously, exposure to light and dry soil will cause the worms to seek darker, moister zones. In fact, if you want to "save" the worms, pile the compost on the screen and leave it without shaking so the worms will wiggle free and drop off. This way, they can be easily collected to put back in the compost pile before screening the compost. :wink:



Return to “Composting Forum”