The worm bin can be a delicate space, requiring more tender love and care than your average pile of dirt. Carelessly slashing, digging, and cutting through the worm bin will wreak havoc on your worms, making it harder for them to eat, mature, and reproduce.
Keep the worms in your bin safe and happy by using the right tool for the job. In order from best to worst, these are the best tools to wield while maintaining the worm bin.
- Gloved Human Hands
- Rakes and Claw Cultivators
- Garden forks
- Hand trowels and handy hoes
- Shovels and Spades
Gloved Human Hands
Human hands with opposable thumbs and pure intent are THE BEST tools for handling the worm bin. While a well-managed worm bin is naturally disease-resistant, consider using gloves because things can get kind of gross in there. Regardless, always be ready to get your hands dirty.
Without any other tools, explore what you can do with your hands. After digging around in the bin for a while, you will develop a deeper appreciation for your worm bin as the worms munch away and create immaculate soil for your garden.
With your hands, feel free to pet your worms, collect/redistribute worms, test the moisture content, pulverize organic material, and deliver castings straight to your plants.
Rakes and Claw Cultivators
Rakes and/or claw cultivators are nearly perfect tools for managing the worm bin.
These tools best serve the worm bin because their design allows you to move the most soil around without distressing the worms. The claw’s pointed end allows for penetration into the substrate but nothing about this tool is necessarily “sharp”, making it safe to use around worms.
Worms are soft, slimy, and easy to cut. With the claw cultivator, you might pick up some worms with the tool, but this tool will never cut them into pieces as a shovel and spade would.
The claw tool is great for aerating the bin’s substrate, moving worms around, pulverizing organic material, shredding paper, and most other worm bin activities.
The claw tool falls short only when digging out the worm castings. In a small plastic bin, I recommend using a claw tool to separate the worms from the bin. Only after the worms are safely separated, use a spade or a shovel to collect the castings.
Garden Forks
A garden fork tool is GREAT for larger vermicomposting systems. The garden fork provides all the benefits of a handheld claw cultivator but is built to throw around larger volumes of materials.
Take advantage of the garden fork when treating a large compost pile or applying materials like straw and paper. Again, this fork should not be sharp enough to pierce the worms and strong enough to carry a modest amount of material.
On the contrary, a large garden fork might be too clunky for a smaller household vermicompost bin. Essentially, this tip comes down to using the right tool for the job. As an analogy, don’t go opening cans with a samurai sword.
Hand Trowels and Handy Hoes
The hand trowel/handy hoe is sharp enough to slice up your worms. While earthworms can regenerate and reproduce via segmentation, Chopping up your subterranean workforce every time the bin needs aeration is inefficient and will slow the system’s productivity.
If you absolutely must use a hand trowel inside the worm bin, take the time to relocate any worms in the way before you start digging. Relocating everyone out of harm’s way can be done using your hands, extra food, or bright lights. Using your hands is the most deliberate and immediate strategy. Enticing the worms with food in another part of the bin also works but this strategy is not 100% effective and there will be stragglers lingering in the danger zone. Finally, shining a bright light over the area you want to work on works well because worms absolutely detest light and will squirm away from it.
Once the worms are in another part of the bin, you may collect castings or process food scraps as much as you like.
Shovels and Spades
The WORST tool you could ever use to maintain the worm bin is a clunky and sharp shovel/spade. Shovels and spades will not only chop up your worm, but they will also damage the bin itself if you are not careful.
Ideally, there is one use case for shovels. I would only ever use a shovel in a large outdoor vermicompost pile. After most of the worms are lured into a different sector of the system, you can use it to scoop up large clumps of worm castings to be sifted or used directly in the garden.
Other than that, this is just not the right tool for the job, but that does not mean shovels are bad. In fact, shovels are ideal for many other jobs around the garden, just not in the worm bin.
