One way to help understand soil additive is to compare it to food. There is the food in the pantry which is valuable food but until something is done to it you cannot eat it. Most soil additives fall in that class including oyster shell and granite. Then there is the food on the table. It is prepared and ready to eat but if you don't like a particular food or you are not hungry you may not eat it. My daughter-in-law will not eat chocolate. You can set it out be she will always tell you no. Most soil tests test what is on the table, the nutrients that are water soluble and easily measured with chemicals. Just because the nitrogen is there does not mean the plants can use it or will consume it. It may be ammonium nitrate and that particular plant needs a nitrite form of nitrogen. So a soil test can tell you that you have plenty of nitrogen when you don't have usable nitrogen or the test will show insufficient nitrogen when your soil is loaded with nitrogen rich bacteria. That is the problem with soil tests. They tell you what is on the table but they don't tell you what is in the pantry or what should be on the table i.e. what the plants can eat. Finally you are what you eat. A leaf assay test will tell you what is in the leaf, what the plant is actually eating and/or what the plant should be getting but that it does not have enough of. Calcium, rock phosphate, granite will not show up in most soil tests but if fungi is there the fungi has the enzymes to break down the minerals and transport them via their hyphae to the root zone of the plants. If inorganic fertilizers have killed the bacteria and fungi then there may be everything you need in the pantry but the plants will not get it and the tests will not measure it. For most people the best way to handle soil is to give the plants a good humus rich friable soil to sink their roots in and then very little if any fertilizer. Thinks like cotton seed meal, rock phosphate, bone meal, and so forth may be excellent but either not available to the plants or not necessary and most tests won't show you anyway so learn to watch the vigor and health of the foliage. A trained eye can tell you as much as most tests. BTW I will be in Orlando October 25 - 28, next month for the fall board meeting and in 2009 for the National Convention. I usually stay with Dan Hansen while I'm in Orlando Gary

Ruth, I am so pleased to have enabled you to get September Morn. Isn't it beautiful? And the fragrance is the die for. Plus it keeps pumping out those big many petaled flowers through the heat of summer. The mounding pink rose is Rainbow Knockout. The red rose with the Larkspurs is Prospero and the pink is Pretty Jessica. They are David Austins, both very fragrant and highly recommended, but being older ones are hard to find. I planted them together since they both stay small. They are among the dozen or so roses that stayed.

"and left over feed" "But, I dug a little deeper this afternoon. I found some white grubs in the bedding. No idea how they got there. What does this mean? Are grubs bad for my worms?" Is there warmth being generated in the bin? Do not add food. Do not add water. Do not pass go. ummm skip the last one. Add two grocery bags of very dry shredded bedding such as coffee trays, egg cartons, dry peat, dry coir, or even water absorbing crystals and call me in the morning. I think the worms are escaping heat, and other things created by the rapid decomposition of the food waste by BSFL aka Black Soldier Fly Larvae. But do not worry. Your bin is in the hands of experts. BSFL are great at quickly turning kitchen scraps into the perfect feed for compost worms. When the BSFL have finished their job and the food is ready the worms should go back down. A lot of moisture is produced because the BSFL reduce the volume of waste 90% releasing all the water in the produce.

Thanks Jasdip and Wfike. Sorry it took me so long to answer, but I thot that it best to wait until some results came in. I really appreciate your advice. I'm using both techniques, and the scraps under the board seems to be working well. I also put wet hay over the scraps and then the board. I did it the day you left the message, and have been checking it every week or so. Finally there are some worms, (at first there were just lots of sow bugs) and the food is almost completely gone, so I guess I'd better put more food out, because there are still plenty of worms in the huge compost, just too good an environment for most worms to leave it. But I have high hopes for this technique of yours, Wfike. I've added some worms from the compost pile into my worm bin. The local worm doctor said it's OK to do that. In the other technique, worms come to the food in the net bag, but when I'd lift up the bag from the pile, all the dirt and worms just fall thru the holes. But I'll keep trying, maybe a different kind of bag. Yes, I'll leave my worm metropolis compost pile undisturbed until most have left, but I want to use the compost. When I first found the worms, there were lots of babies in there, so I'm very excited, and that compost looks great. I learned to make compost by the hot method, so now, I'm thinking of trying to replicate this cold compost, which was originally a mistake, because the worms seem to do so well in it. I worry tho, that cold compost doesn't kill pathogens or weed seeds. Is that really a problem? There's no one sick in our household, and I try to keep pernicious weeds out of the compost. I'd like to put this compost on my fall vegetable and salad garden. It needs it because the cauliflowers and broccolis need very rich soil. Plus I want to start another bed, for salad greens, so I need to use this compost, but maybe I should just use it on the flower garden because it's a cold compost.