wormadmin Staff answered 7 years ago
Hi Kyle,
It really depends on your system. Some vertical migration systems should be almost worm free in the bottom tray, but still need you to pick thru the VC to rescue stragglers.
The EASIEST way is to have a CFT, then you dont have to separate worms from the VC and can harvest whenever you need some VC. (If anyone is CFT-curious, there’s my free CFT Guide available here on my site).
My next favorite would be migration harvesting – where you only feed one end of your bin for several feedings, then remove the material from the old end.
There will usually be a lot less worms to deal with that way. I’m feeding only one end of all of those blue barrels now so I can harvest the other end.
Then, to harvest, you just leave a light on over the bin/lid off and scrape off a one inch layer of VC (you can keep scraping until you see worms).
Then after 30 – 60 minutes scrape off another layer (or until you see worms). The worms move down, away from the light.
In this way I harvested my bath tub farm in about 2-3 days – just scraping off a layer each time I went out to the shed to do something.
When you find a heap of worms at the bottom, you can either light harvest them from the rest of the VC, or just leave them there in the old VC and start feeding again.
Thanks for asking your question
Regards
Brian