Page 1 of 3
Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 4th, 2015, 3:09 pm
by RedEyeJedi
As the title says, would any of you use worm castings if they were available in the market?
Some info on the benefits of using Worm Castings and what they are:
Worm Castings - What are they? How do they work?
http://www.tastefulgarden.com/store/pc/ ... s-d114.htm
5 Benefits of Earthworm Castings
http://sdhydroponics.com/resources/arti ... m-castings
Re: Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 4th, 2015, 4:25 pm
by Izhar
These castings will be the best compost (depending on the starting stuff)..
Re: Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 4th, 2015, 5:07 pm
by RedEyeJedi
Great point. What they produce will be as good as what they get fed.
Lets assume for the sake of discussion they're fed purely vegetable leftovers and kitchen scraps.
Re: Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 4th, 2015, 5:10 pm
by Izhar
It will be very low in plant nutrition..
Re: Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 4th, 2015, 5:35 pm
by RedEyeJedi
How so? Based on this diet or just worm castings generally?
Re: Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 4th, 2015, 5:38 pm
by Izhar
Based on this diet...
worm casting from manure mixed with oil seed cakes, fish meal, bone meal, blood meal will be excellent in terms of nutrition for plants as well as soil microbes..
Re: Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 4th, 2015, 5:49 pm
by RedEyeJedi
That's a solid... aged, compost manure would be great to add along with the above. Would imagine blood meal good too if used sparingly. Not sure about fish meal, i imagine one would want to keep protein out of bins. Seed cakes are a great idea too, specifically neem
Re: Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 4th, 2015, 9:09 pm
by Izhar
Fish meal is an excellent source of nitrogen and trace elements.. other good oil seed cakes which are easily available too are Cotton seed cake and Mustard seed cake.. i was reading about the use of sugarcane waste which decomposes very quickly due to sugar content...
Re: Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 5th, 2015, 10:34 am
by Muhammad Arif Khan
I would rather let loose worms in my flower beds and forget.
Arif
Re: Would you use worm castings?
Posted: March 5th, 2015, 2:49 pm
by RedEyeJedi
Izhar wrote:Fish meal is an excellent source of nitrogen and trace elements.. other good oil seed cakes which are easily available too are Cotton seed cake and Mustard seed cake.. i was reading about the use of sugarcane waste which decomposes very quickly due to sugar content...
The reading i've done so far suggests that although adding blood meal (in small quantities) will work, the nitrogen i would get in the final castings from feeding leafy greens and veggies should be sufficient for plant needs. So from the above, using these veggies and scraps, which are very freely available to me (family has a food processing business), should give me optimum quality castings.
Using aged cow manure as part of the bedding though is a very good idea. Everything i've read supports this.