Best brand of Worm castings

DocTim420 said:

Ahhh, buying local is nice (part of that sustainable thing)...40lb bag of Agrowinn EWC (not compost) set me back a whopping $30 at OC Farm. Some say Agrowinnn (sourced from San Diego area) is too dry (about the consistency of used coffee grounds) but since it is packaged by weight (not volume)...I say it's all good. No reason to pay for moisture if it is not needed.

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Proper moisture content keeps the microbes active and happy.

KIS said:

Proper moisture content keeps the microbes active and happy.

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Yep. Agrowinn uses their rock dust minerals as their primary source of worm food--no compost. Not saying the bag is dry, just repeating what some have said. Some EWC I have used are almost 100% clumps and you can see pieces of wood and what not (compost) in the mix--not so with Agrowinn. 100% EWC.

Also when storing EWC, in 5 gallon buckets--I don't seal the lid tight--all living things need 3 things to live: water, food & air.

bio-bizz ;D

yes I have also used the biobizz previously and can attest it is usually fairly good, the choice in Europe is much slimmer than in the States. Biobizz castings are cheap; think I can get that 40L bag for about 19 euros. According to Biobizz themselves, they feed them heavy on potato skins and rock meals apparently; the high K reflects that I guess, and that is how they ensure relative consistency too, by controlling the food stock precisely...

I have also looked at a luxury brand made locally that is about 30 bucks for a 10L bag LOL damn stuff wasn't even almost straight castings, cut with some sorta fiber (probably peat). This would maybe be a superior choice in terms of microbiology and if we are talking a handful for a compost tea then yeah maybe the better product, but for a soil mix it is not in any way economically feasible

but yeah those you make yourself are the absolute. It takes little space and little time and creates no bad odour if you do it right. I have a couple of indoor plastic bins and a I started a massive outdoor pile (about 5-6 cu yards or so) which I sorta threw into this huge pit I had dug, mostly horse stall mix from some horses I had on the property for a while, but I dig in whatever I have going too, fruit and veg waste, lots of apples falling from trees etc. Have to see if we can keep it going through winter, it's nice and warm in the pile and it is already populating with local reds, so I reckon if I add some fresh stall mix and autumn leaves to the top layer as the cold really comes on, the fresh breakdown should keep it warm enough with a tarp over it helping it sweat while still letting air in. if that sounds crazy to anyone please go ahead and say so, I'm here to learn as much as the next guy

I look at the worms sort of like a way to take all those amendments you might wanna use and pre-digest them ready for topdressing. So I feed the indoor bins in a luxury type fashion: alfalfa, comfrey, kelp, malted barley, eggshell powder, rock dust, various seed meals and some fruit and veg and bedding of course. Obviously not all at once in a big mix or you make hot compost and worms die. I just do plain bedding in the bottom and then fine layers of stuff on top, adding some bedding over time as the volume of overall material fills the bin. I only ever had one near-disaster so far, but even that quickly recovered once I figured it out and made changes

Water control is the key for these plastic bins and most people who don't have success with them, it's generally because things go anaerobic from what I have seen, or they feed too much too fast and let things go too acid and you get millions of little white worms etc and a sick looking red population

sorry, don't wanna take us too far off topic, I apologize for the distraction, just with the prices I saw people talking about I thought maybe this conversation was worth considering... or for those that live out in the sticks and have no access whatsoever to a bagged castings product, make your own, start today and you will have some before you know it. It's honestly worth the small amount of trouble to get started IMHO

a bloody good sunday to all

i get my biobizz bags 10-15e season in north is so short outdoor wormstuff might be harder and slower to produce and i fear it turning to antnest or mitenest if i put it outside.. not much room indoor to do it myself.. maybe someday i try

BioBizz works well!

So I found a local company making high end castings. But the dude won't let me pick up my order. He wants me to order from the website and have 50 lbs of shit shipped 10 minutes down the road. Fuck that!

When sorting through worm castings, the biggest problem we see are like those above, some super high level of iron. If one calculates the Fe/Mn ratio, it is well above 5. This means an induced iron (and most probable Al) toxicity from day 1.

Remember that it is often not a deficiency that hurts us, it is usually an excess.

It's not so much about the brand but how fresh it is, that is why, even if you suck it at it, making your own castings is always going to be 100 times better than any store bought. It is so easy to make I mean literally rake the leaves in your yard into a pile and that is your vermicompost farm. If you dont have a yard ask your neighbor. Then throw your food scraps on it, whatever you got, everything from the kitchen is fair imo, coffee ground, hay, comfrey are my main ingredients, ... a hit and miss, there isnt always ground beef looking patties of worms cluster but there is always enough worms around that it is still a healthy living worm compost.

Agrowinn castings at .62% iron
http://www.fertilizeronline.com/wormcast.php

Vermaplex 'black castings' sitting at .02% iron.. http://www.monroeworks.com/worm-castings-analysis.html

How about the east coast brand worm power ??

I actually paid to have a medium size bag shipped to me for top dressing. Would love to find a good source near me.

I've got acres of leaves, but the only real healthy population of red earthworms I have here are in potato field, where it sits over my leech field (which means some amount of increased warmth in the soil there, when compared to the rest of the property), and earth worms don't do well in -40 or -50 f., which we can reach, and way back in the past, stay at for some time. Haven't seen winters like that in a while, but....

And no room in the house.

So.. I'm more or less stuck buying what ever black granules someone throws into a bag and calls castings. Some good, some very good, and some are garbage... and not -good- garbage, as might otherwise be the case with good worm castings.

I guess I'll look at the selection in Los anchorage in a week or so, and go with what appears best, and offers the best deal for the product.

Gr33nSanta said:

It's not so much about the brand but how fresh it is, that is why, even if you suck it at it, making your own castings is always going to be 100 times better than any store bought. It is so easy to make I mean literally rake the leaves in your yard into a pile and that is your vermicompost farm. If you dont have a yard ask your neighbor. Then throw your food scraps on it, whatever you got, everything from the kitchen is fair imo, coffee ground, hay, comfrey are my main ingredients, ... a hit and miss, there isnt always ground beef looking patties of worms cluster but there is always enough worms around that it is still a healthy living worm compost.

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Grow your own worms and never look back.

I got some European Nightcrawlers recently and want to try and make my own.

Cheers

how many litres of worm humus your worms produce at 1 month ?

troutman


winter time how can i get the frozen worms out of my yard?

gr33nsanta

metsäkana said:

how many litres of worm humus your worms produce at 1 month ?

troutman


winter time how can i get the frozen worms out of my yard?

gr33nsanta

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I have been experienting with this for years without putting too much effort into it.

Keep in mind that I dont raise the worms to harvest the worms but simply to make my soil, if the soil you use was freshly made by worms you don't really need the worms...

Now lucky me I live on Vancouver Island and Winter are pretty mild.

I now raise my worms in a windrow style, less than a meter high, but very long.

When I need soil, I rake the top layer off, I try to scoop some of the second layer, the layer with most worms, and have them in a separate bucket, they will go into my soil mix about 4 shovel full per garbage can. I don't care about bits of food that have yet to compost since its diluted in the soil mix.

I don't even use a tarp to mix my soil, way simpler than that, I throw some shovel full of the darker compost that sits just above soil line, throw in the perlite, vermiculite and I stir quickly. done!

I just move down so that next time I need soil I go farther into the row, takes me about a year to use the whole row but by then I can start at the beginning again.

Now to answer your question, haha, years ago, before settling on current way of doing things, I experimented with making hot compost right next to the worm farm, so that the worms could migrate towards the heat on cold days/months, Ive had mixed results mostly because of my ignorance at the time but I think there is some food for thoughts there.

am i rambling!? LOL

Oh yeah also do not spend money on worms, unless you really have to, because if you know anyone with horses chances are their property is loaded with red wigglers, just go out with a pitch fork!

yeah i trowed my soil in summer time for mixing in yard after i picked it back to pots it was full of worms.. i guess biobizz worm humus also have ''worm eggs''

last time i bought i think 10bags so its 400litres of worm humus.. how long that would take to make?

yeah im sure the wormhumus has eggs now that i googled how they look.. it always have those yellow balls :d

metsäkana said:

how many litres of worm humus your worms produce at 1 month ?

troutman


winter time how can i get the frozen worms out of my yard?

gr33nsanta

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I'm not sure about how much worms castings they produce. I only purchased a 1/4 pound of worms.
It will take time for them to multiply. I read that if all goes well they can triple their numbers every
3 months. All I know is I'm trying this out.

My worms are indoors and won't have to worry about digging them up in Winter.

at some point the there is limit in colonies =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM

if you can produce 10bags in 3 months (400l) (100ga) say me how to do it and how much room did it take, ok im intrested if you can produce that even in half year

Wow,

One needs to get worm castings from Archer, Florida to get reasonable iron levels in worm castings. Amazing!!