Your Wormery will give you two excellent products. One of them is an excellent liquid fertiliser, the other a very nutritious and fine potting compost - nicknamed by enthusiasts as 'black gold'.
Our 'Classic Range' of Wormeries are all-in-one, self-contained units with an internal drainage system which seperates the solids from the liquids. Inside these units you have a raised drainage platform atop of which goes the solid waste and allows the liquid feed to drain through into the sump. However, when it comes to emptying the compost out, you first need to seperate the top few inches of solid waste to make sure you preserve the worms and to get to the processed compost below.
The eisenia fetida (Tiger) worms we supply with our Wormeries are surface feeders. By this we mean that they follow the food upwards as the bin fills leaving compost behind them. The majority of them will always reside within the top 3-4 inches. Therefore, when it comes to emptying one of our all-in-one Wormeries, we recommend trowelling off the top 3-4 inches first. Put this to the side, in a bucket or similar container. Then, empty the remainder of the compost from the Wormery - this should be the stuff that is good to use - before tipping the container you put to the side back in at the bottom to restart the whole process again.
This only needs to be done when the Wormery is full and typically this will take upto a year or so. Remember, the majority of what goes in actually comes out of the tap in the form of a liquid.
A multi-tray Wormery like The Worm Works, or the Pet Poo Loo if you have any additonal trays on it, are simpler to harvest the compost from because the solid waste is split up by the trays which stack on top of each other. The trays have a mesh base thus allowing the worms to move up from one tray to the next. Once the worms and the solid waste has reached the top tray, the bottom tray is ready-to-harvest compost and the system gracefully keeps on working this way.
Want to know more? Read our advanced Wormery FAQ?