Greetings everyone..

Across the pond here in AU some of the local government councils have large nursery's and worm farms.. Some of them give away the liquid juice and the castings from the worms for free.. This stuff is in raw form..

What do I have to do, if anything, to prep before using the stuff?

Should the liquid be diluted at all or can it be used in raw form?

Any other input regarding raw castings and liquid would be greatly appreciated..

Currently the medium I'm using is 100% coir.. Next round I am going to mix up a version of Ot1's mix used in the 48 baby cuts thread.. I also would like to use the liquid juice in the veggie garden this year..

There is no reason why you should not use worm castings, what they contain depends on what goes into them of course. Thats chemical residues and its nutrient balance, there can’t be large amounts of chemical residues as it would kill the worms.

Most local council composting schemes don’t use worms in fact I have never heard of it being used as a technology. All the schemes I know of use traditional methods of composting, this is not suitable for use in making growing compost.

If the council riddles the final product and runs it through a partial drying/sterilising this should be the dogs dangley bits for compost making.

I don’t use the liquid on cannabis as its very variable in makeup, I do use it with brassicas lettuce basil and all green crops I dilute it by rule of thumb but between 4 to 1 and 6 to 1 I also mix it with comfrey extract with Tomatoes, peppers, egg plants and all soft fruits.

Thanks for the input Ot..

QUOTE

If the council riddles the final product and runs it through a partial drying/sterilising this should be the dogs dangley bits for compost making.

If they don't do this, can I do it myself? How would one riddle and dry/sterilise?

Sorry it prob will be riddled to get remove the worms.

The only prob if not heat sterilised is that it can carry fungus gnat larva. I used to give mine a flash in the microwave, but the misses was not keen to say the least LOL. The biobizz worm poo I think is steam heated.

If you have a wallpaper stripper steamer device handy, take the flat steaming panel off the hose at the end, and you have a nice steamer. find a sieve or similiar with a very fine mesh so the goo don't fall through, and hold the steamer nozzle underneath. Do it till the steam comes through the top, and make sure you do the edges, and hey presto, sterilised castings!

Oh, this is also handy for cleaning out the grow space between grows. Get the steam nozzle into all the corners and nooks and crannys, it'll even kill off Botrytis spores.

Baba Ku. That is excellent advise. Once having the idea I can think of several uses for a steamer.

For all your worm casting needs try this link : http://www.willyworms.co.uk/

sicknote They are pretty expensive £25 for 40 litres 62p a litre

So are http://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/

who charge £15 for 24 litres, which works out at guess what 62.5p a litre. A bit of price fixing do you think.

BioBizz Wormest from the organic grow shop is £10.50p for 40 litres and thats been transported from Holland and is being sold by a reseller not direct from the producer. 26p a litre is a much better price I think.

Yeah oldtimer, looks like price fixing to me as well.....I'll give that growshop a look over.....cheers

Or you can make your own worm compost for free, as I do. I bought a worm composter and a bag of worms from my local garden centre (you actually get a postcard that you send off and the worms arrive in the post - no kidding). You can put virtually any organic waste into the bin (food scraps, peelings, old veg etc) and the worms munch it up. Liquid feed comes out of a tap in the bottom; the compost you remove by first removing the top layer of rotting matter with the worms in it, then removing the castings from underneath. Its so simple a child could use it.

As to how suitable either substance would be to grass growers, I don't know as I've only ever used them on the garden. I suspect that, as oldtimer1 says, the nutrient levels in the liquid would be hard to predict, making it virtually impossible to use for hydro.

The worm compost, on the other hand, might be useful in soil grows. It certainly wouldn't be appropriate as a hydro grow medium though, as it is exceptionally nutrient-rich and would really cock up your nutrient levels.

Hope this helps.

I’ve been running worm farms for over 40 years, used the resultant worm castings in my own compost with great success. I don’t believe you can use organic nutrients as a hydroponic solution, as so much is locked up within the organic particles, in natural soil these feed the soil fauna which in turn release the nutrients in a form that plants can absorb, ok some of its content are immediatly usable by plants but that only represents a small portion of the total nutrients within the fertiliser. It is a continuous living process that has developed over millions of years involving thousands of types of different fungi, bacteria and invertebrates.