Question about worm composting.

I use some veggies but mostly my espresso grounds and pulverized egg shells for bedding. Should I be concerned about the use of the vermicompost I generate ie too acidic or too much calcium?

I use a fair amount of grounds and egg shells and haven't had a problem. Having said that I do use coir, leaves and some cardboard for general bedding and besides my scraps also add some of the same amendments that I feed to my plants - kelp meal, oyster shell flour, alfalfa meal, greensand, rock dust, etc. You can also provide them with compost which they will further process; I feed them rabbit manure occasionally and the worms make a quick meal of it.

damp cardboard is a really good bedding to add. just plain brown cardboard though nothing with plastics or ink (black ink is ok)

snowdog203 said:

Should I be concerned about the use of the vermicompost I generate ie too acidic or too much calcium?

Click to expand...

No; 1. Eggshells take an extremely long time to break down unless they are pulverized to dust, 2. If the worms are loving life then plant roots will be loving life too, worms thrive in optimum conditions and excrete castings slightly in the acidic range but not too far from optimum.

Castings are an amendment, but they usually aren't super hot. I use nightcrawlers in 20 gallon containers with no drain holes. I add it to my used soil 1:4 to make new soil, and amend with; 1/2tbs Coffee grounds, 1 tbs Marine Cuisine, 1 large tbs Dolomite lime(dust), and 1/2tbs Azomite in each 5 gallon batch. So far I haven't had any problems with acidity or calcium lockouts. My soil has thousands of bits of eggshells in it at this point, as I go through almost a dozen a week.

My 20 gallon container finishes once a month, so I'm able to make 100 gallons of fresh soil each month which is more than I will ever need for transplants and super soil. Unless you have plants showing signs of acidic soil or calcium lockout, I wouldn't worry about your castings. Just make use of that awesome free soil amendment!

Happy growing,
ILovePlants

Yeah I recall now something about the worms are self correcting so the castings are usually neutral also the ph of the coffee+/eggshells- help to negate each other. I checked my runoff with litmus and it looked to be a perfect 7. I guess I was thining about calcium lock-out but since the message above about pulverized bits is doing good, so should mine do the same.

I am really proud of my new vermi tea set up. The 5 gal pail I used to use produced too much, was cumbersome and required more energy than was necessary.
My new set up uses one gallon milk containers, I put my aquarium test tube heater in the spout and my air tube goes into the hole I put in the handle, I get plenty of turbulence so I drop the compost and molasses straight down the spout. Getting pix is a pain but i'll give it a shot. Now I can water my plants and house plants w/compost tea on a regular basis w/out much effort. I now realize I haven't gone truely organic, I have been using the three part HG brand stuff, esp since my leaves looked chlorotic and seemed N hungry. My mistake, I believe now from recent reading is that I didn't allow the time for the soil to form a strong flora before transplanting or planting.

I look FW to testing this hypothesis. I look FW to my next grows, if anyone is interested in the one gallon tea set up I'll try and post sooner.


peez