Liquid Feed From A Wormery

[ninorc]

I got a small wormery that's now yielding pints of liquid feed: 'this excellent plant food is typically high in the major plant nutrients - potassium and phosphorus - has a medium level of nitrogen, and is rich in essential minerals and trace elements.' I guess it's worms' piss!

I'm not (yet) growing myself but have given the first half litre to a mate who has this morning tipped the lot into his hydro system and is now standing back to see what effect it might have on his plants, which have been arduously regenerated.

I wonder if anyone is regularly using liquid feed from a wormery and what you can tell us about it?

[ninorc]

For what it's worth, the worm wee has proven to be of limited use as an organic nutrient additive in my mate's hydro set-up, at least in the flowering stage. It's very strongly acidic and he prefers a more nitrogen-rich food during vegetation but, hey, it's free and that's a hell of a lot cheaper than some of those products, innit?

[prawn]

I'd like to see what results you'd get from adding to soil, my missis is getting a wormery for the garden...

[Leprechan Sweet Leaf]

worm shite is most invaluable for getting plants to thrive and in my opinion it makes for less stressful transplanting.

Looking into getting a small worm farm for my apartment!

Not very

[oni]

You need the microbes to break the liquid feed down, otherwise it's just going to sit in your res and your plants will not be able to absorb the food.

[owlzahootin]

Hi

I was going to post the same question A friend has offered her worm juice to me for my grow, in soil, and i was wondering if it should be diluted, and to what strength?

Microbes? the ones already in compost?

Just really like the idea of all that recycled goodness.

Owlz

[Heavy Horse]

I've not used it on Cannabis yet, only the garden and houseplants. I always mix it 20 to 1. I add Organic Liquid Seaweed extract to it. This supplies some of the trace elements that the worms mixture may not have.

[obscure_shadow]

i have quite a large quantity of worms. i like them alot, i have currently about 8 pounds, in 4 different boxes...

been growin them for about 5 years, and i must say, when i first started i got alot of liquid comin out the bottom, but after a while i realized tha this was because i was putting too much water in them. there really shouldnt be all that much water coming out of the bin at all, it shoudl fairly self regulate, the only time i add water to my worm bin is when i put in new bedding. the only time there is water coming out of the bottom is soon after i add new bedding, and when i put somthign that has a huge water content in there for them to eat (ie watermelon and other fruits) you dont want that much water coming out of the bottom, becuase the bottom couple inches of your bin will get soggy and nasty and it will compact, and the worms wont go through it as much, which makes it harder on them.

although, the liquid that comes out will be very high in nutes, and i use it in growing compost, i dont know much about hydroponic, but worm castings are more boiavailible than most firts. which means that the nutes are in a form that the plants can use them better, not to mention they contain tons of benificial bacteria.

they dont hold up well in a hydroponic system though, because they arent as strong or as exact in their ph or whatever, arent consistant enough anyways from what i gather. however, it's all i ever use nute wise on my plants.

shadow

[ninorc]

Leprechan, mine is the Junior Wormery I bought from Green Gardener. It was a bit expensive for what it is - essentially, a dustbin with a tap and a polystyrene platform inside, some dirt, a bag of calcified seaweed and a bag of worms.

OS, my wormery is very wet and continues to produce copious amount of liquid feed. I only put vegetable peel into my bin and pulp from the juicer, plus tea bags, egg shells and the occasional handful of calc. seaweed, to add those trace elements heavyhorse mentions. I have put shredded newspaper in there once or twice, when it was getting really swampy. It doesn't smell too bad with the lid on, but it's pretty nasty in there!

I reckon my worm wee is fairly consistent - it looks and smells the same as I siphon off up to half a litre per week - but I'm not actually using it myself (!) and never test its PH or whatever. As nothing is growing in my dark little flat, I give all my worm wee away to friends. Likesay, one ganja farmer of my acquaintance has found it to be of limited use, but someone else I know who grows tomatoes is more enthusiastic. Other peeps use it as a general purpose plant food in their gardens, diluting it by 10-20 parts water.

[Leprechan Sweet Leaf]

thanks for link ninorc.

Shadow yes mate. The key word is bioavailability and what could be better than some lovely organic wormshite?

lsl

[obscure_shadow]

Leprechan, mine is the Junior Wormery I bought from Green Gardener. It was a bit expensive for what it is - essentially, a dustbin with a tap and a polystyrene platform inside, some dirt, a bag of calcified seaweed and a bag of worms.

i made my own out of some plastic tote bins, together the all cost about $5, though i have seen some really nice systems online, i don't think that there is much competition price wise...

OS, my wormery is very wet and continues to produce copious amount of liquid feed. I only put vegetable peel into my bin and pulp from the juicer, plus tea bags, egg shells and the occasional handful of calc. seaweed, to add those trace elements heavyhorse mentions. I have put shredded newspaper in there once or twice, when it was getting really swampy. It doesn't smell too bad with the lid on, but it's pretty nasty in there!

if i were you i would cram as much dry newspaper as i could in there, and then make sure to leave the tap at the bottom open because that much runnoff is really not good, and it shouldnt really be very boggy in there at all. it sounds like you are feeding them some very heavily saturated things, most fruits tend to have a lot of moisture in them. having trouble completing an idea, rather far gone at the moment, but it will come to me

anyways.. uh yeah.. shouldnt be too wet in there at all really, i'd let it dry out a bit, loads of newspaper. egg shells are good cause they have alot of calcium in them and the worms need that to make their egg cases, so that will help out alot in the growth of your worms. it's a good idea to smash them up quite a bit, and the worms like it because they also use the tiny fragments to grind their food in their gizzards. 'ss cause they dont have teeth and such...

I reckon my worm wee is fairly consistent

first off, it's just water that has soaked through the worm castings, worms dont really pee or whatever, they take in moisture and exchange moisture through their skin, so there's not really much wast material there, what you are getting comes from when there it too much moisture in your bedding for the bedding to hold, and it drains off...

another though i just had, you should dig down and put some dry newspaper at the bottom of the worm bin...

your bin shouldnt smell much at all really even when you have the lid off, if it does than there is somthing going wrong..

and finally... what i meant when i said it wasnt consistant... i meant that as far as i know, for hydroponics, all of your additves have to be pretty exact in the amount of nutes you are putting into your res, (i'm not 100% as i grow in dirt and could care less for hydro) and the acidity of your worm bin can change on a dayly basis. yes the end result will be pretty similar in characteristics that are easily detctable (ie smell, coloration) but there will be big differences in the amount of what chemicals are in them when you look at it in a presicion manner.. which makes a difference to those who gro hydro....

my bins are generally speaking a bit acid, and i like it that way because it keeps some of the predatorial bugs down... and i'm suprised that yours are not, becuase of the amount of fruit that you feed them, most of the time that's where all the acid comes from...

anyways, i think that's all i have to say for now been spouting off a bit too much...

shadow

[Guest funky worm]

Well helo fellow worm-masters!

I have some comments about the moisture level of teh worm farm and the use of the 'worm liquid'.

Worms can survive in very watery environments as long as theres enough oxygen, however a moist media is better than wet one for worms. See the attached photo, its moist as in moist ground, but not swampy or soggy ( as if it shows in the photo).

Worm farm leachate, worm wee, can be useful, but not always - sometimes it contains stuff that needs to be decomposed further. If it smells bad, do not use it.

I suggest you aerate tha worm liquid for 12 hours with tiny dashes of molasses (or fruit juice) and seaweed, as in aerated compost tea for your plants. I am trying to start a UK420 tea revolution here.

Some relevant quotes from the Worm Farming FAQ

Do you need to mist a worm bin from time to time to keep it moist?

Not really, as the vegetable waste seems to contain enough moisture to keep things moist and juicy. Sometimes one has to add a little water.

But a worm bin should indeed contain a lot of moisture. A 50% to 85% saturation (of the full saturation) favours worm growth, digestion and breeding. If a bin gets too dry, one can add water by spraying or sprinkling (or however).

What if it gets too soggy in there?

Often a worm bin gets too moist. But if you add newspaper on top, in two or three days it will soak up the excess moisture and can be removed. Repeat until desired moisture content has been achieved.

...

They are talking about the red wriggler Eisenia Fetida:

* Optimum pH range 5-8. The worms die under pH 4,5 and over pH 9.

* Optimum Humidity 80-85%.

* Dissolved salt leves should not exceed 0,5 % (5000 ppm?). Ammoniumacetate is toxic to the worms when concentrations exceed 0,1% (1000ppm).

* Greatest growth rate in temperatures between 20 and 25 C degrees, greatest feeding rate in 15-20 C degrees. Temperatures above 37 C degrees cause worm deaths. Can adapt to live in temperatures close to 0 C degree.

the worm wee has proven to be of limited use as an organic nutrient additive in my mate's hydro set-up, at least in the flowering stage. It's very strongly acidic and he prefers a more nitrogen-rich food during veg

Interesting that its acidic - over here its usually close to neutral. Muts be the dolomite lime in the bins.

For potttt plants worm castings/juice is a bit low in Nitrogen, ime. Adding 1% N or so should help, maybe with a bit of Mg if you are not using dolomite lime.

Edited August 21, 2006 by funky worm

[Guest funky worm]

Note on the '1% N' above - I dont know what I was thinking there??! Regardless, added nitrogen punch is usually needed with castings, your situ may vary.