worm leachate
8 years ago
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- 8 years agolast modified: 8 years ago
- 8 years ago
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Do you like Can-O-Worms?
Comments (22)I like my Can-O-Worms very much. I keep it indoor. Use coconut coir for the bedding. Feed veggie kitchen scraps. No meat or cooked food. It is a low maintenance bin. The worms do migrate up to the next level for food. They don't all go up. They do have preferences where they're the most comfortable. The trays have different functions. Some come with two trays and some with three. You start with one tray, feed until the tray looks like it has more compost then bedding, then you start the next tray on top. You then only feed the top tray and the older tray finish up. The worms will then move up to the new tray for food and then you can harvest the old tray and start a new feeding tray on top. If you have three trays then you can compost more food with more worms and get more compost. I have the two tray system. It's easy to harvest. I bring the trays outside in bright light. Put the finished tray on top of the working tray. Fluff up the compost. The worms remaining in this tray will move down to join the rest of their family in the working tray. Scoop out layers of worm-free compost until done. The compost is light, fluffy like chocolate cake crumbs. There are cocoons in this compost. I pick out the cocoons I see and throw them back in the working tray. I start a new working tray with coir, sand, and pulverized egg shells. I feed only in this new tray and let the worms finish eating through the old tray and migrate up. I harvest when the old tray looks like chocolate cake crumbs, sometimes every six weeks if I've been feeding regularly. Sometimes I go six months between harvests. I like the drain spigot. I do leave it open all the time with a container underneath to catch drips. There is always extra liquid when i feed watermelon rinds. I don' t add extra water or bedding. I dig a hole in the coir, dump in scraps and cover. No fruit flies. No mites. Occasional potworms. The legs are spindly and can tip the bin over if you klutzy and bump it too hard. The aeration screens at the leg housing can let liquid through. I cover the five leg aeraration screens with plastic because I didn't like the puddles of dark worm leachate on my laundry room floor. The trays can get heavy to carry around for harvesting. Wheels on the COW would be a big improvement. I prefer the COW over the Rubbermaid bins. I started with those based on "Worms Eat My Garbage". They were relatively cheap and easy to make. Those were a pain to manage. Sticky gooey like compost. Smelly bottom leachate bin. A lot more work to harvest. If you want a lazy no maintenance vermicomposting system dig a pit outdoors and throw in your scraps. Vermicompost on, however you want to. There is no wrong way, just find the method that works for you. Vermicomposter for over 10 years, Wormsical....See MoreRoses before even more rain
Comments (9)Khalid: Frank Gatto lives in Raft Island, WA. Here's his climate "Raft Island, Washington, gets 44 inches of rain per year. The US average is 37. Snowfall is 14 inches. The number of days with any measurable precipitation is 155. The July high is around 76 degrees. The January low is 34." Mr. Gatto gets rain every other day, plus cool climate at 76 F max. If I do NPK 15-15-15 in my hot & dry summer of over 90 F, my roses will burn !! Mr. Gatto's cool & rainy climate leaches out nitrogen and potassium, so he can use 15-15-15 without burning his roses. Plus most of his roses are grown in loamy potting soil, which leaches out nutrients. My heavy clay retains nutrients too well, thus low-dose, low-salt organics is best. For pots, I use SOLUBLE organic & low-salt fertilizer NPK 4-3-2 every other day. For hot climate, tiny doses, and more frequent SOLUBLE fertilizer is best. I don't even apply granular after June when the temp is over 80, it's too risky, that applies to gypsum with salt index of 8, compare to chemical fertilizer with salt index over 70. I burnt a few roses recently with gypsum. I like what Carol wrote: " Once a week (in normal non rainy weather) I give worm leachate and Alaskan Fish stuff mixed in a large wheelbarrow with sprayed in water (to make the worm leachate nonaerobic). Then once a month a more powerful organic like Plant Tone NPK 5-3-3 or Gaia stuff." That's similar to another nursery in cooler Connecticut recommended: Once a month with Rose-tone NPK 4-3-2, and weekly soluble fertilizer NPK 10-10-10. I prefer Tomato-tone NPK of 3-4-6 for my alkaline clay (more potassium via green sand for blooming)....See MoreLeachate watering
Comments (3)Leachate is really a waste product, not an asset. I'm afraid we have the worm bin manufacturers to thank for the over-hyping of leachate as "worm tea" which is supposed to be wonderful plant food. Because a commercial worm bin has to have some kind of way of handling leachate/excess moisture, I suppose it's understandable that the manufacturers want to depict the drainage spigots as something catchier than just an overflow valve - still, I think it's misleading. The thing about leachate is that it's not really concentrate of "black gold", i.e., fully processed and plant-available vermicompost. It's just excess moisture that has drained through the system, including, to be sure, *some* nutrient rich material from whatever finished castings are in the system, but also indiscriminately including the excess juice from yesterday's melon peels and everything in between. Some people will make a fuss about the possibility that worm bin leachate can actually have harmful bacteria in it, too, in case there was harmful bacteria on some of the food waste that didn't get overpowered yet by the beneficial microbiome of fully processed worm castings. I think this possibility is usually pretty remote, myself. Maybe more concerning is the fact that lots of moisture draining off means there is lots of moisture in the system, and that can be a red flag because if the bin contents are too soggy, there is probably not enough air moving through the system to keep everything aerobic. Everybody gets excess moisture in the bin from time to time and some runoff is inevitable, but if you're producing lots of it regularly, you may need to adjust the amount of bedding and the amount of food in the system....See MoreQuestions and possible solutions for plants & roses
Comments (19)Carol: your roses are grafted on multiflora, which DOES NOT LIKE lime (shoots up the pH, and pH of garden lime is over 9). Multiflora stays as cluster root forever, and multiflora can take tons of acidic rain without blackspots like older own-roots or grafted-on-Dr.Huey. Lime is used to balance the acidity of alfalfa only. I moved own-root Bolero in spring, which has cluster-root (several spaghetti strands), rather than woody & chunky long-stick like other French roses. Bolero is a floribunda with shorter growth and lots of branching & cluster-blooms. Roots of Bolero look very much like multiflora-roostock. Even cluster-root Bolero died with alfalfa meal when I put alfalfa meal in the planting hole, I did mix in pelletized lime to neutralize the acidity, but I did not realize that pelletized lime is TOO SLOW of a release, and can't neutralize the acidity of alfalfa during tons of acidic spring rain. That's why Roses Unlimited recommended 1 cup of GARDEN LIME (a dust which raise the pH fast) mixed with 2 cups of acidic alfalfa meal for the planting hole, plus 1 cup of gypsum. I tried such recipe with 4 gallons of potting soil (about 1/2 cup of calcium per 1 gallon), and it worked great for tiny-own-roots (with very tiny cluster roots). Langbeinite has 10% magnesium which neutralizes the acidity of its 22% sulfur. Langbeinite pH is neutral thus perfect for multiflora-rootstock, REGARDLESS if those are French roses or Austin roses with pale leaves. Sulfate of potash is more acidic and will burn roots if not diluted with water (1/2 TBS per gallon since its NPK is 0-0-50, extremely high in potassium). The problem with multiflora-rootstock (a much thinner & cluster root than big & fat chunky Dr.Huey-rootstock): 1) Its thin strands of roots are sensitive to chunks of acid, such as alfalfa meal. Alfalfa pellets is even more acidic. 2) Its thin strands of roots are sensitive to salt, and can't take lots of salty chemical fertilizer like Dr.Huey rootstock. Organics is best like the amazing results you got using Worm Leachate for nitrogen in pots. Worm Leachate has pH 8.5, but that becomes slightly alkaline when diluted with water. https://gardenprofessors.com/whats-in-the-worm-juice/ 3) Its thin strands of roots can't push through soil hardened with magnesium and high pH (such as Garden Lime). Gypsum is best as the source of calcium for multiflora (pre-mixed with soil in advance). CONCLUSION: I would skip Garden Lime altogether unless one uses it to neutralize the acidity alfalfa meal during acidic rain. Topping pots with alfalfa meal is OK if alkaline tap water is used, but that gets too acidic during rainy week (pH of rain is 4.5). pH of alfalfa is 5, and alfalfa gets even more sour (like vinegar) if fermented or buried under soil. The glossy & dark green leaves will benefit the most from Langbeinite since glossy leaves need a higher amount of potassium and magnesium....See More- 8 years agolast modified: 8 years ago
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