You have "well rotted" manure that you spread, and you find the local worm population has already moved in to break it down further.

You feed your kitchen scraps and other compostables to pigs.

You haven't mentioned wanting to go into the business of selling worms or worm casts.

Unless you simply want to do more work for the sake of work, your job is complete.

Thanks for the reply buckstarchaser, point taken.

I have no plans to go in to business selling worms/casts, though maybe there is a small local market for vermicompost.

I was thinking/hoping the casts would make superior liquid feed compared to the well-rotted manure tea I currently use. Maybe the extra work isn't worth it.

The other plus I'd envisioned is having the worms as a source of protein to raise organic chickens/eggs.

If you have an inexhaustible supply of horse manure, failure at worm composting is impossible. God made horses to supple worms with perfection.

Just keep the horses healthy, and don't feed the manure fresh because of heat problems and/or de-wormer medications that take days (weeks to be safe) to dissipate.

Lucky (expletive deleted)!

Chuckiebtoo

My worm bin is set up for collection of what I call "worm juice". Leachate would be misleading, and using the word "tea" would likely get me slapped... so I spray the bin with a hose and collect the worm juice in a bucket or two.

In my experience, the worm juice contains a large amount of dissolved solids that will readily settle out if the pH changes. The pH will change due to any number of reasons. I would not recommend using worm juice in a constricted space (like drip irrigation), because of high maintenance requirements.

I do have a very basic and small drip irrigation system that is fed by semi-filtered fish tank water, and it requires daily examination and maintenance to keep flowing reliably.

The clogs occur at the 1/4" poke-through hose to hose fittings and the 1/4" on/off valves. I don't even use the ##GPM end pieces. I just let them flow. The particles accumulate and are biological and slimy in nature. They will stick together and clog any small passageway.

If the output is anywhere near the ground, roots will grow toward the source, up into the source, and clog the source. This is also a maintenance task that often presents its self as a surprise disaster.

This growing pile of roots will soon reach into the pipe and clog it, as it has on the several previous iterations of that pipe. The pipe is 3/4" thinwall PVC. The plant is an indeterminate tomato and doesn't care.

Here is a farther back shot of that same plant's roots. Note that there was no overflowing water in this area before the plant caused it and proceeded to expand and chase it over the edge. You can imagine this plant has made a strong advantage for its self. The overflow is caused by capillary effect from the roots actually lifting the water, and the water level is well below the rim:

OK, thanks chuckiebtoo, so do you think if I go with 100% horse manure the worms will thrive? The manure is piled outdoors and I'll be sure to use manure that is 3+ months old (any worming meds etc shouldn't be a problem).

Reading around high salts in manure might be a problem, but my source of manure is open to the elements so rain should leach these away.

I should add bedding makes up % of the compost...straw and wood shavings mostly.

That's some crazy root growth buckstarchaser, thanks for sharing.

My thought process was:

1. Produce vermicompost
2. Dissolve in water, and filter.
3. Use a fertilizer injector (a diy "pump it" injector most probably) that is placed up-stream of the irrigation system filter.

Most likely this would be done on a weekly basis.

Not much but a small comment to add to the above excellent responses.

When I mentioned to a local vermicomposting "guru" that I had an almost inexhaustible supply of goat manure to feed my worms, so I could "make" soil for my plants, she responded; "Why go to all the trouble of worms? I'd just spread the goat manure directly on the plants." I felt a bit stupid, as I had actually created a Rube Goldberg for myself where "simple" was as clear as the nose on my face.

"More power to ya" if you want to raise worms, but based on what you describe as your goals, I'd say "Keep it simple" and stick with plowing horse manure into your garden.

Paul

I spread the worm juice manually and recommend that method over automated systems.

The fish water is a constant nuisance, but the worm juice is highly variable and involves mineral deposits and insect related clogs. For a farm-sized weekly application, I would use an ATV or tractor based spray system to deliver the liquid. That way you will be able to spot and correct clogs as they happen, a luxury not afforded to fertigation infrastructure. If your fertigation equipment operates once a week, then you will have to perform your inspections and maintenance while the system is running, meaning much of your crop will not get its share of solution.

If you are running a business, then this represents a loss of control over your inputs. The person who does maintenance on the lines is already on the clock, but using the juice manually will give tighter process control on the management side and reduce your employee hours per plant. The drip emitters will also restrict your flexibility when it comes to rotating your crops, changing crop density, and expanding or contracting field size. If you are already depreciating a farm vehicle, you may as well increase its utilization, rather than investing in rapidly depreciating drip hardware that will add significantly to your incremental costs via paid maintenance and management hours wasted on clogged emitters.

Toward the end of the worm juice supply run there will be a lot of settled solids. You have a choice of stirring these into temporary suspension and getting the benefits of them while quickly clogging your distribution method, or filtering them and clogging your screen and nozzles. The particle size is really small, like clay or silt, but highly variable and chunky. It tends to settle in the slow moving pipelines while the larger solids and mush clog filters. The stirred solution should be pumped quickly, and with a large deposition orifice, instead of relying on thorough screening. Such screening would be removing viable nutrient anyway.

Perhaps you could use a technique from beer making called vorloffing, but I can't say how much improvement this would make. The process would translate to taking the first liquid to come from your bin and returning it to the bin. This is repeated until the liquid is relatively free of sediment. The method turns the source of the solids into its own filter bed.

Paul:

When worms process whatever they eat (manure included) the extrusions from the exit end of the worm are much different than what is ingested. To say what happens is....dare I say, magical....isn't too much of an overstatement.

Basically, all the bad biology in that matter is nullified, removed, sanitized, destroyed, etc, whatever.

This is why we go to all this trouble. I mean,, anyone not deficient in brain matter pretty much will understand that animal feces fertilizers are basically beneficial for soil applications.

Those applications amended by being processed thru worm magic become beneficial-er.

I would be glad to provide you with some scientific justifications that authenticate the benefits of worm poop versus almost all other biological soil enhancements.

Chuckiebtoo

duplicate post again!!!

This post was edited by chuckiebtoo on Tue, Aug 26, 14 at 23:00

Several comments:

Yes, horse manure on its own is excellent worm food.

If you have a lot of worms in the soil just from plowing the manure into the soil, I don't see any reason to complicate things by using some other system.

Flow through systems of the type you linked to often collapse under their own weight when they get full.

You would need a LOT of worms to do what you want to do. You either need to start with a lot of worms, or be very patient.

Vermicompost does not dissolve in water. It may break down into very fine particles, but it does not dissolve. Filtering will simply remove much or even all of it from the water.

Given your situation, I would simply keep plowing the manure into the soil as you are doing now.

Chuckiebtoo - I appreciate both your love of worms and the processes associated with using them for 'composting'. However, based on a growing body of reading-based 'knowledge' and a small but growing bit if first-hand experience, I don't share your "almost magic" perspective of what worm guts do. While there is little - but some - doubt on my part about the "fact" that worm-gut-processing does indeed "add" some beneficial component to the output, I am beginning to strongly suspect this is yet another in a long and growing list of "scientific facts" that is technically/scientifically "true", but practically/real-life exaggerated. In order to illustrate my point and attempt to demonstrate that I am not just being "contrary", let me provide an example in a completely different field.

Some years back - over 2-decades - a graduate student working in completing their Master's degree in fisheries performed a perfunctory examination of the effects of "over-crowding" spawners in a couple of TINY streams in the state of Washington. As part of the requirements for a Master's degree in fisheries, one must produce and "publish" the work at least through the university's press.The field work was "good" and the results were unambiguous: It was scientifically "true" that above a certain density, increased fish numbers resulted in reduced production. The scientific explanation was not complex: increased numbers of spawners meant that fish were constructing their redds (salmon 'nests') on top of previous spawner's nests, and thereby destroying the first one. Sounds perfectly "reasonable", and there was not doubt about the "scientific" fact. However...

"More fish "allowed" in the river means LESS fish production" was a clarion-call to commercial fishermen. They could now claim the SCIENTIFIC "high ground" and DEMAND that fisheries managers prevent "over-escapement" by allowing the commercial fishermen to catch more fish out in the ocean before they reached the spawning streams and "harmed" the stock. Commercial fishermen are among the most politically powerful groups in the natural resource exploitation/management community. They were very capable of hiring "scientists" (in this case AKA "biostitutes") to "verify" the "scientific proof of the "danger" of "over-escapement", Soon - VERY SOON - "over-escapement was the watchword for every government "scientist/fisheries manager" in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, it became - BY LAW - a requirement that the state fisheries managers incorporate "over-escapement" prevention in the state's salmon management plan.

Where's the 'flaw' in the above, "you" ask? The "science" was performed in an excruciatingly small "piece of the world". TWO, SMALL (you could STEP across them), streams in the Puget Sound drainage. Secondly, ALL subsequent "science" performed around the subject was directed at "proving" the concept of "over-escapement", NOT TESTING/CHALLENGING IT, which is exactly what Science, REAL Science, is supposed to do! In fact, when a few scientists tried to point out the error of applying the result of a VERY small scale scientific project to a GLOBAL scale, they were shouted down. To put it mildly. The result has been a STEADY decline in salmon production in the State of Alaska. The almost complete collapse of salmon fisheries in California, Oregon, and Washington. I am reminded of "What are you going to believe, me (the "scientist") or your lying eyes." By the way, when confronting the voodoo witch-doctors - aka fisheries scientist proponents of "over-escapement - I would ask; "What did all these salmon do before we humans came along to "help" them with their "over-escapement" problems? True to their form, those witch-doctors raised up in violent anger, but had to initially tuck tail and run. However, as is so desperately sad with today's "science", they simply went off and schemed an explanation. It goes like this.

"What we are doing is "leveling" the peaks and valleys in the long-term population trends, thereby assuring a STABLE SOURCE OF SALMON FOR THE COMMERCIAL SALMON FISHERIES. (Emphasis mine.) This rationalization - by way of "science" - is the bread and butter of the priests of the religion of science that pervade the scientific community today. They can "explain" ANYTHING they want to, and when challenged, simply retort to laymen that it is "too complicated" for "you" to understand, and simply screech "Heretic" at those that have the technical ability and credentials to point out the obvious flaws in their ecclesiastical assertions.

Was all the subsequent "science"of "over-escapement" "peer-reviewed"? Yes, at least most of it. Was all the subsequent "science" published in a "peer-reviewed" journal of "SCIENCE"? Most of it, yes. Was all of that peer-review highly corrupt? MOST OF IT, YES!

And so goes most of what I have seen in the past 40+ years as a professional "scientist". I "see" the same sort of thing with worm "tea", worm "compost", and other "scientific" "facts" about the "magic" of worms. Is there "scientific proof" that the "output" of a worm's gut is "better" than the "input". Yes in proper context. Is there a MOUNTAIN of evidence that such "betterness" is something less than the "magic" so widely claimed? Yes, also I would assert.

Having said all of the above, I am perfectly "fine" with using terms like "magic" to report on surprising results we all observe in our hobbies and personal passions. I do it myself. As Arthur C. Clarke is quoted as saying: Any technology sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.

So, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the beneficial effects of "worming"; I acknowledge that the "scientific "truth" " of those "facts" are "scientifically" undeniable, but I am increasingly convinced that the magnitude of those effects are greatly exaggerated when applied to the "real world".

In the case of the topic of this thread, I remain comfortable with suggesting to fulofwin that all of the extra effort of "worming" MAY not produce the "magic" results he/she has read/heard about. I believe he/she is probably capable of evaluating the relative merits of the comments he/she receives in his thread regardless of who posts them.

I don't think you and I disagree as much as it might appear. I think the primary difference in our points of views is a matter of degree: You "love" worms, and I just "like" them.

Paul

This post was edited by pskvorc on Wed, Aug 27, 14 at 14:40

sbryce, thanks, that's a very helpful post indeed. I think you are both right, no need to over-complicate/create even more work. I'll continue adding the manure to the soil and ploughing under.

I may just start a small vermicomposting project for fun....to teach my little one about the amazing-ness of nature.

Paul, I managed to miss your initial reply, thanks for the input.

For sure, start a small project for fun. The aged manure will be the perfect bedding. If you intend to add additional food (kitchen scraps), you will want to add another carbon source, such as shredded cardboard. In time, your small project may grow to the point where it may be worth the effort to feed much or all of the manure to your worms before adding it to the soil.