How We Screen Worm Castings and Harvest Red Wigglers 🪱
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- Опубликовано: 11 июл 2024
- People ask “How do you guys screen your worm castings and harvest your worm bins”. Check out this demo of the electric trommel screener that makes the magic happen.
We produce roughly 1-2 cubic yards of worm castings per week at our facility in Aberdeen, Maryland
You can learn more about our compost operation and products at www.veterancompost.com
Got questions or suggestions? Leave a comment or shoot us a message.
Happy Composting!
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Thank you guys for all you do for the compost and vermicomoposting communities. The visit to the farm was great. Justin thank you for taking the time to give our family a tour and answer our plethora of questions, you are tha man! Monte it was a pleasure to see you working the Skid loader and just plain crushing it with your work ethic 💪. Our kiddos loved the chickens, worms, and getting into every bit of trouble they could. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for coming by, it was nice to meet you and your family! If you need any help as you build your composting operation, let us know. We’re always happy to help
Thank you for making this series of videos. They are very informative.
Glad you like them!
Very cool demo of your trommel screener!! Thanks for doing a pros and cons of it and showing how you have made it better!! Excellent video!! You've got a new subscribed and fellow veteran fan!!🪱🪱🪱
Thanks! If there’s anything you want us to show or talk about in the future - let us know
Nice video gentlemen and thank you for your service. USA 🇺🇸
I've had a Can-O-Worms since 2009 and I love the Castings.
Thanks for sharing Justin and Monte
Thanks!
How cool! I recognized your company name immediately because I used to live in Maryland. Thanks for the informative video.
Cool, thanks!
Thanks for the tour!
Any time! Happy Composting!
Excellent video! - Cory of Greener Bay Compost
Thanks! Love watching what you guys are doing up there!
Great information. Thank you for sharing.
I say Hoo..zzz idea was this!?! Cause its fantastic! Good stuff guys.
Thanks! Happy Composting!
I just went and picked up my first load of free horse manure, so I can seriously step up my composting game. Have my first worm bin going and will add more bins as the worms multiply. Your videos have been very helpful and enjoyable. Keep up the good work and wish you continued success.
Thanks! Good luck with the composting, if you have any questions as you go along - let us know and we'll try to help out
Oh yes, horse manure is excellent for composting. Most stables have so much and they just want to get rid of it. I used to collect horse manure from one big stable in the Oakland HIlls in California for composting at home. Good luck!
Excellent video. Thank you for your service
Thanks!
This is great for castings❤
The central tube is simply an awning tube with tubular motor. Because I suspect that torque is irrelevant in this application, it allows Choice of motor from 14rpm to 48m ( thats only from my experience in blinds trade). Awning motors can also be reversed and could also have a mosfet power control for speed
Tey adding a second layer of 1/4 inch cloth and offset them so they make a smaller hole. Might be easier than switching them out.
That’s a pretty cool idea, we haven’t tried that one before…
Wow first time I saw this , I’m impressed.
Thanks!
I have had success migrating worms out of finished castings within a couple weeks - especially when the material is getting dry. Since you regret loss of many babies & cocoons, then perhaps a stage following this would be beneficial? One where the tiny occupants of the material are given an opportunity to exit on their own - either gradually in some sort of migration approach - or maybe even using a light-harvesting method. Maybe even include time to ensure that cocoons have had time to hatch. Interesting to see that you're using hardware cloth. Also interesting that you are screening for only one particle size on the trommel. Anyhow guys - I really liked this video. Thanks for the demo!
Thanks for the suggestions. We will try something for migration like you suggested to limit our juvenile worm loss. Happy Composting!
If you power your trommel with a 3-phase motor you can use a 120V or 240V VFD to run the motor at any speed you want. You could also use a DC motor and use a DC speed controller to run the trommel at any speed, similar to a treadmill motor and speed control.
Great video Justin and Monte (I apologize if I misspelled either of your names). I really appreciate the content your compost business is putting out this year, particularly SOPs and business backend insights. Below are my thoughts as I watch the video.
It's interesting you only screen the vermicompost once at 1/4th screen. It seems as though losing the baby worms and cocoons is a pain point for y'all, though. We have to cure vermicompost per our regulations so we bait the worms for 2-3 weeks, which pretty much gets all the baby worms. I notice on your website, under products, there isn't a mention that your wormcastings contain living worms or cocoons, yet where I'm from this would be a value-added marketing point that will demand premium price compared to standard marketplace.
Most people buy overly dry and powdered castings from big box stores with no real life left in the castings and when you test those big box castings to living soil castings the difference is noticeable even to an untrained eye. For us, screening is time and energy, and separating out the individual components means we charge for that accordingly. We've recently started to market vermicompost products not based on screen grading but on terminal use and frontend production cost, for instance, we recently discovered a huge market for unscreened vermicompost and liquid worm products that have cut our labor and energy costs by over half (think: screening and sifting and setting up new IBCs).
Precompost and coffee grounds is a lovely standardized feedstock. Do you add any biochar to the IBC totes, as well? Why or why not? --I heard you, Justin, on a recent curbside compost podcast and you mentioned you do in-house biochar. I would love to see that process and reasons why biochar isn't being added to precompost worm feedstock. I see you have a soil blend bio-charge, so I understand if this is your avenue for the biochar product.
Awesome work, fellas, thank you for sharing.
Respect.
Good points on the worm/cocoon content and moisture content. Def something we'll have to work into our product descriptions in the future. We have raised the price of our castings twice in the past year due to rising labor costs, and have not seen a change in consumer demand.
We do make biochar at our site in Aberdeen, MD using a double barrel retort. It's cheap and simple to build and operate. The only downside is we can only make small batches at a time. We grind the uncharged biochar and add nutrients and microbes to create a "charged biochar". It's our highest priced item at $29/cubic foot due to the labor involved and ingredients (nutrients and mycorrhizal inoculant) we add. But even at that price point - it sells really well.
We'll make a video of the biochar process sometime soon!
Thank you for the response. I agree with you about raised casting prices and consumer demand--we've seen the same here on the west coast of USA.
There are a few very large vermicast enterprises in the state I live that produce literal truckloads of ultra fine (often ultra dry) castings and competing with them at the large contract level (read: golf courses, flower farms, muni parks) or at the big box store pallet level is just a race to the lowest price and economies of capitalist scale. But for us, we have no interest in producing 'commodity' level castings as a business so we highlight the aspects of our living soil, regenerative organic vermicompost that builds fertility and releases proper nutrients for annual and perennial plants. Like y'all, we also use our vermicastings in craft soil blends. There's a lot of snake oil out there when it comes to (organic) fertilizers and worm castings and soil amendments so it's important for us to stick with lab results, microscope work, garden test plot trials, and published science facts.
Like y'all, we also use our vermicastings in craft soil blends: seed start mix and container/raised bed mix. We do this to be a resilient, diversified vertical integrated business and to support our bootstrap budget with higher efficiency value-added products, but at the same time we have no desire to purchase single use plastic soil bags to bag our soil then let it sit on pallets in the sun/stores--so we really aim marketing at direct to consumer market gardens/home gardeners who deeply care about sustainable circular economy principles who are focusing on edibles and medicinals. When we do screen our vermicompost, the vermi-mulch overs gets put into an aerated air lifted water tank (IBC) and the extract is used to charge our biochar. After water extraction we add back the vermi-mulch overs to the worm beds or blended into a top dress amendment mulch, and excess worm water from the extraction is water we use to hydrate worm beds or ASP.
Love the double barrel retort, but small batching biochar at your scale has to be a challenge--I built mine using the double barrel retort design from Living Web Farms. $29/cubic foot is comparable to what we see here for crushed charged biochar, and often see higher prices for screen micronized charged biochar. Micronized biochar is great for seed start/soil block mix blends for us, but crushed biochar really is a regenerative game changer for us in terms of our craft soil blends, mushroom cultivation, and vermicompost operation.
Please, no need to respond to this--I appreciate your insight and your video series and wish you all well. Looking forward to your future content. Thank you.
Kindly.
Outstanding video. We are making the transition to a continuous flow through system, with cut off bar. So basically bottom harvesting your casting instead of top harvest. This is supposed to help alot with keeping eggs and juveniles out of your castings. Will let you know if thats the case. Cheers!
Please let us know how that goes. We tried building our own continuous flow bins years ago, but could never get it to work (the material at the bottom always seemed really dense and we couldn't get the bar to budge through it). Would love to try something like that again if someone shared a good design with us
Great video dude. Do I have a video on setting up vermicompost from the beginning? Thanks
Very informative video, thank you! After you process the bins try adding avacodo half’s to the top of the bin…. The remaining worms that passed through will go to the avacado and are easily retrieved
Never tried that before. 🤔 So, you cut an avocado in half and place it on the top of the bin?? We might have to give it a go....
Fancy!!
Cool tool, a must have for next level business.
Have you ever tried migrating the worms out with food first? A surface treat like oats and molasses water or something and scoop a bunch out or is too big of a step at that level?
I would like to know more about the motor setup, like horse power, RPM, gear reduction. I think I can make one if I can find a motor.
- Thanks
Look at grain precleaners in want adds. There might be lots of them sitting in farm building not being used by farmer as they were to slow for bigger farms.
That’s a good idea. The speed of the drum spinning and the size are almost identical. Might want to get one soon, I think everyone is going to be a grain farmer this year if commodity prices stay high 🤣
Hi
How many RPM is your trommel doing. Looks to be around 10?
What it the diameter and length of the trommel?
Did you build this yourself or did you buy it? if you sell the how-to patteren I would like to look into it, if you bought it would you please list the company name thank you
Not sure if I missed it but what speed or how fast do you want the machine to rotate?
Not sure exactly how fast ours spins, but we have seen 12 rpms for worm harvesters listed elsewhere. This is slower than a diesel powered trommel used for screening regular compost which might be around 18-20 rpms
@@veterancompost thank you I appreciate it! FYI fellow vet and trying to start my own worm business out here. So happy I found your channel. Great motivation and information.
Consider replacing the wire mesh with expanded metal.
Good call, that’s solid material. What size have you tried?
Can you use bait worms for composting?
Just depends on what worms you're using for bait 😀 Check out this blog post for some good worm info - www.epicgardening.com/composting-worms-types/
What do you do with the larger screened out pieces after you remove the worms?
Since we feed our worms prescreened material, what usually is left as "overs" (aka the portion of material that didn't pass through the screen) is clumps of material that didn't break apart as they went down the screener drum. So, we simply place that material back in our worm bin with the worms and give them a good soak. Then we add the first layer of "Worm Food" and start all over again. Usually those clumps will break apart over time and hopefully screen out next time.
If we see any odd pieces of woody material in the "overs" we will pick those out since the worms won't be able to break those down. But, by pre-screening what goes in as worm food, that helps us avoid too much of that happening.
Thanks for the reply!
What are your thoughts on collecting it and selling it as “vermimulch” … or perhaps it would take too long to collect a large enough quantity before losing freshness?
@@bryang.thomas3630 There would be a market for that. Most mulch is full of artificial dyes - so an all-natural product with microbial life like you are suggesting would have buyers. You would just have to figure out the price point that is viable.....