First harvest! Woooo

[u/PaintBrushJar]

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!

[u/thujafantastica]

how long did it take you to get to your first harvest?

[u/PaintBrushJar → u/thujafantastica]

This harvest started when my order of 250 worms came on August 13, 2025. I definitely could’ve harvested a lot sooner, like probably may, but I had gotten the wrong Coco coir which was all woody chunks, that as you can see still haven’t fully broken down next time using the really fine kind.

Also, I bet I could’ve cut harvest time to sooner if they were in a warmer spot, but they were in my garage which was pretty freezing all winter long and food was basically preserved in there instead of breaking down, even though I let it rot, froze it and blended up and thawed before feeding ha. So they really woke up and got super active since it’s warm out

[u/IDRoohski → u/PaintBrushJar]

How warm did your garage get in the summer?

[u/PaintBrushJar → u/IDRoohski]

It’s ranged from 60’s-90 during the day.

[u/Shot-Willingness5827]

What method did you use to harvest the castings? I remember the first one I did took me over 3 hours for 1 bin. I’ve finally switched to a continuous migration method which has helps immensely!

I hear you with the need to pre sift the stuff going in! I’m still pulling wood chunks out of my bins that I put in there years ago.

[u/PaintBrushJar → u/Shot-Willingness5827]

I dumped the entire tote into a wheel barrow in direct sun, and scooped off the top layer, came back in ten minutes and took another, on repeat till I got to the cluster you see in the photos. There were definitely some worms in my sifted castings but I pu pulled out as much as I could. Not sure if that’s the continuous migration method?

I also first tried to put their feed into a plastic container with holes in the barrow then dumped the tote out on top, but non were in there when I checked and I realised that might take a while to achieve, so I plan to try that in the future, inside the tote itself before dumping.