Amending soil mix vs. amending worm bin

[InjectTruth]

After several years of recycling soil in varying ways, from partially to completely, from remixing to no till, I have had varying degrees of success and a small share of issues.

One issue that comes up continually is reamending and cooking soils. Ive had a few batches of soil that i mixed that i didnt turn or wet sufficiently during the cooking process, and so when I transplanted and watered, my plants would get funky twisted up, discolored and stunted, as the cooking process commenced in situ.

Now that I have had a worm bin cranking for about a year, Ive been wondering more and more about feeding my worms my 'uncooked' soil mix, and then growing in the resultant 'pure' castings. Perlite and turface make it through the worm feast no problem.

It seems with this method, one would never have too hot a soil and the microbial populations would already be well established.

Once you got your compost/casting schedule on point, mixing up medium would be simply castings and a little additional aeration, if needed. Could even use the mix for clones/seedlings and give em a bit of a headstart.

Anyone actually done this? I know everyone with a worm bin has thought it at least once.

 

[LilMan72003]

I have not done this, but heavily pondered the concept as well. I think the worm digestion would be a good way of 'stabilizing' the medium, especially in regards to any excess salt build up, which I believe can happen when using fish/guano products (even in an environment rich with microbes).

That being said, I still think the need to re-ammend exists, perhaps at a lower rate than without worm digestion. My thinking being, the worms might make help make what micro/macro nutrients are left more available, just at levels depleted by the plant's needs.

Looking forward to more informed responses.
Lilman

 

[LilMan72003]

Your idea would lend itself well to a 2-mix grow/worm digestion rotation.

I've been thinking about even running a 3 mix grow/worm-digestion/cover-crop rotation. The digested worm material can be amended as needed and used in a raised bed or smart pot to grow a cover crop. Drop the cover crop, let the organic material break down, and THEN you have a super stabilized, HIGH organic material ready to go. The timing would be a bit tricky, but if dialed in, would be sweet. I could also see it being "overkill".

 

[SpicySativa]

The only issue I see there is that your process will produce a "soil" which is actually just wormcastings and aeration. Your peat will get processed by the worms along with the old roots and any added ammenents.

You may end up with a soil that lacks proper structure.

 

[InjectTruth]

Good points, guys.

SpicySativa - thats a really interesting point. The pendulum swings to the other side. The nutrients would be accounted for but now the properties of the non nutritional elements in the soil need to be accounted for.

I wonder though, since peat is just holding moisture/air/nutes and acting as a 'cut' for the compost. Using turface brings some of clay's CEC goodness to the mix, as opposed to straight perlite for aeration. It also goes through the worm bin and comes out the same, just coated in goodness. Finely screened castings mixed with turface/rice hulls I imagine would have a proper structure in the proper ratio.

The more I think about it, especially with people using smart pots as worm bins, you should be able to simply unleash a load of worms on each smart pot, let them process the mix for X amount of time based on the size of each pot, then plant right in the pot!

 

[SpicySativa]

I don't exactly do that on purpose, but all my pots and all my bins of composting/"cooking" soil have worms living in them. They get carried over accidentally from my worm bin, and seem to do just fine.

When I reammend my soil, I sometimes add some new peat moss along with fresh worm castings and ammendments. This is how I've done it since I started reusing my soil, so I can't really compare it to other methods.

 

[h.h.]

I put most everything through the worm bins. Including aeration material. (DE)
If you use coco fiber, it is very slow to break down. I've basically used coco from recycled soil, palm , and yucca. Fibrous monocotyledons. The worms use it for bedding material. Screen it out with 1/4" carpenter's cloth before it all becomes fine castings. There may be bits of leaf litter and pieces of dried out avocado peel in it. Usually a few worms remain along with a number of eggs. Top dress and mulch provides them with food. Sometimes a dusting of Epsoma Organic along with different seed meals. Tea if I feel like it, but it's probably somewhat redundant. There's already a lot going on.

 

[Ichabod Crane]

I would think that the worms may get to hot when the microbs start to digest the food. I think it may be better to compost the ingredients first before feeding it to the worms. In which case it defeats the purpose of just giving it to the worms.

In my compost pile this is exactly what happens. When it cools down the worms move in to the pile.

Just thoughts on it as I am far from a expert.

 

[SpicySativa]

I have had small areas of my worm bins get warm, but I always feed in pockets so the worms have somewhere to hang out until it cools.

You have to be extra careful with alfalfa meal in the worm bin... It heats up quick if you add too much to one area.

 

[h.h.]

It's easy to pickle a bin but it's just as easy not to.
Use a lot of brown material. Lots of coco. Lots of aeration material. Feed as Spicy suggests. Compost your hot items as Indigo suggests or use them sparingly. Don't bury them, you want air. Again as suggested, in small pockets.

 

[SpicySativa]

h.h. - You do want to bury the food scraps under some bedding, but NOT down in the bottom layer of finish (or nearly finished) castings. Keeping the fresh feed buried under some eddying material keeps fruit flies and fungus gnats away.

 

[h.h.]

Food scraps yes. If I was adding blood, guano, alfalfa, or similar, most of what I don't really use anymore, it goes on top, away from the worms.