Composting worms in vegetable garden

If you have read about vermicomposting, then you have read that composting worms can not survive in the garden.

Having composted with red wigglers for several years and seen them in the garden, I would like to dispel this myth and give you some of my insights in to composting worms in the garden.

I started like most vermi-composters and read the literature about separating worms from compost because they wouldn't survive in the garden and it would be a death sentence to the worms. So I would meticulously sort the worms out by exposing the compost to direct sun, have the worm go deeper in the pile, scrap off the top level and repeat until I was down to a ball of compost worms in the bottom. I would also look for the worm casing that would have the baby worms and separate as many of those as I could as well. But I knew that no matter how good of job I did, I would never get them all.

Months later I checked the garden and much to my surprise there were tons of composting worms just below the surface. Was everything I had read wrong? How did they survive?

To answer those questions and to know if you can expect to have composting worms survive in your garden, I will tell you a bit about how my vegetable garden operates.

First, I hot compost a mixture of grass, animal hay bedding, coffee hulls and kitchen scraps for 4-6 weeks. Once the pile has cooled down I move the compost into worm composting bins, and let the red wigglers work it over for 2 months. When I put it into my garden there may still be some hay still breaking down that the worms can continue to work on.

Second, when my compost gets ahead of what the worms can work on, I put some of the hot compost directly into the garden. This is done when trying to build up an area between plantings. The worms love this and often migrate to this area.

Third, for slow growing plants or when I am trying to cool down the hot compost pile (not add more greens, I use the weekly grass clippings as mulch. You need to keep grass clippings mulch 6 inches to a foot away from vegetables until it cools down (give it a week or so) otherwise you can burn vegetables with the heat generated from the grass.

So if you are working lots of organic materials into your garden all the time, then you don't need to be so picky about removing all of the composting worms before you place this rich fertilizer into your garden. I still sort out worms, but I don't worry about the worm casing and I don't get caught up into breaking every lump of compost down to make sure there isn't a worm hiding in it. I let them enjoy doing some extra work in the garden.

Remember that because of the enzymes that worms release and the way they break down organic materials, that even with lower nitrogen percentages, worm compost is considered a better fertilizer because it is closer to what plants can use, and what they do use in nature. Which makes for a happier healthier garden.