Wow!!! I've only gotten this far into this thread and so much information I'd never even heard of. I am so super excited to start my homegrown organic nutrients and healthier grow set up. I swear, there really is so much to learn on the subject of growing cannabis. I just hope that one day I can hold the title of master grower of all things, lol. I currently am going 4 different strains of weed in a greenhouse, with what I had considered organic materials, but I am still using bottled and packaged nutrients that cost me a fortune and only have an organic stamp on the packaging, but is it really considered organic if it's being pre-packaged, stored, shipped, stored again, and then finally making it to your garden? Well, maybe, but it has been so expensive, a lot of driving around to the grow shops, and probably not the best quality nutrients for my plants. Along with my 6 marijuana plants, I also have 3 blueberries, 2 blackberries, 2 raspberries, a pumpkin patch, a watermelon patch, a new herb garden, 6 tomatoes, 3 squash, 6 bell peppers, 1 artichoke, 1 eggplant, 2 cucumbers, 1 jalapeño pepper, a sunflower garden, a strawberry garden, a huge succulents the garden, 50 Gerbera daisies, 10 African daisies, 6 Japanese maples, 2 hydrangeas, 1 camelia, 1 azalea, and 5 hibiscus plants. At least those are the important ones that I tend to daily. I also have many landscaping plants, and a few very large trees. I just planted 3 coastal redwoods out front, and have 1 silver maple left (lost 2 100 foot silver maples to disease as soon as we bought this place), 3 large mulberry trees, 2 different cherries, 1 orange, 1 pomegranate, 1 rose of Sharon, and 1 GIANT Juniper (which I really don't like and want to remove.) So.... eventually, I would like to be able to feed and care for all of my gardens completely organically and homemade. The information and the friendliness of the members I've interacted with thus far here at Grasscity have been, hands down, 5 star quality! Thank you so much for being fucking awesome!!!
i personally like to distinguish between organic materials and organic farming or organic methods. for me growing organically means creating an ecosystem where life can flourish. creating a thriving system that provides what i need with minimum input. giving the soil and plants more control instead of force feeding them chelated nutrients, weather they be organic or not. recycling materials (mulch and soil). a thriving soil that has diversity will not only allow plants to flourish it will also provide a multitude of defenses against pathogens and pests. can you grow using organic bottled nutes? but i wouldn't call it growing organically. especially considering all the wasted energy and money to obtain these materials, as you yourself noted.
Good morning Vermi-composters! Relevant: A few days ago I was at my local nursery supply looking at Gypsum and came across a Chinese to-go box of 300 red worms. I was going to order them online for cheap, but excitement got the best of me. I've now got a bin in my living room with 4 inches of soil mixed with, cardboard scraps, and voracious nutrient builders;all topped with a misted cardboard mulch. I'm so excited about this new adventure I've begun. A sincere thank you to everyone who has contributed to the knowledge base here. I've been trying to get back to healthier eating habits, and I realize now I am not only eating for myself, but now my worms and by way of streams the circle of life my garden and myself again come next season. I've decided to incorporate the 'rainbow' into my diet. This technique implies one eat a specific colored food each day of the week in addition to their regular meals. (I.E. Monday; Red apples, radishes, red potatoes. Tuesday: Apricots, carrots, pumpkin. Wednesday: Bananas, yellow squash. ETC.) I'm super pumped about the nutrient diverse food scraps I'll be producing for my worms. Super Stoney rant: It dawned upon me this morning: We are truly blessed, spoiled and fortunate. When you look at our history, we were mostly restricted to our local environments containing produce and climate until import and controlled-environment gardening methods were developed. We now import an unbelievable variety of crop and resource for cultivation and consumption. Our ancestors would be amazed by our potential to create the best crops this beautiful little planet has ever seen, and ashamed that we have fallen so far off course; moving in the opposite direction, damaging our delicate and nurturing ecosystems. I feel as though our purpose and place is in the garden, caring for our lands and aiding mother natures process. I've never met a person I knew I'd always want around, but I think I'll always have red worms in my life from here on out.
Glad I checked this out. My dumb ass bought crawlers from the bait shop to add into my no-till. No wonder I have dead worms on the soil LOL. I will be ordering red wigglers over the internet. Thank you GC and growmies!!! Edit: Also, I will be constructing a worm bin. So excited to start work on the bin.
How many of you guys are using compost/aeration vs the traditionally built cardboard bedding setups??
All compost and shredded leaves with minor amendments. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Screened compost. dynamic acc leaves, rice hulls, pumice, rockdust, and amendments. I like it to look like a soil mix that has too many rice hulls. When its done, I add more rice hulls and a touch more amendments. Perfect for top dress! The aeration really helps to keep moisture down in the bin. os
This is actually not my worm bin but rather the top of soil layer in one of my pots. They all look like this. I do a top dress when its needed and the handful of worms I initially added to each have multiplied exponentially. Now my worm bin is used solely for recycling waste while these worms get mostly compost kelp, neem, blah blah blah. I plan to add some europeans to each pot to see if they help with the lower levels of the soil.
I've got a compost pile that's mainly greens. Its full of worms. I'm gonna mix browns in real soon. Before I do, I want to trap a bunch of worms for a new bin. I've been catching worms by hand and works great, but I'm getting pretty busy. So I did this IMG_0302 by Organic sinse posted Sep 3, 2016 at 9:19 PM its a 1/4 inch screen basket filled with melon rinds. I then covered it with a piece of cardboard IMG_0374 by Organic sinse posted Sep 3, 2016 at 9:21 PM Then I buried it in the pile down where the worms are working. IMG_0375 by Organic sinse posted Sep 3, 2016 at 9:21 PM Any body ever tried anything like this? As I'm sitting here writing, I just thought of adding a little comfrey as well. Anyways, if anyone has a favorite tec for worm traps, or hints, I'd love to hear em. OS
Never saw one that fancy, the rind sorta became the trap, but this was how we trapped worms for fishing and I still do in my worm bins. Would take a decent sized rind (for outside), like 1/2 cantalope or 1/8 - 1/4 watermelon rind and put flesh side down in a shady spot, like under a hedge or bush. Come back in 2 days, lift the rind and scoop up the worms. Replace the rind as it was and more worms will come in a day or 2. The size of the rind offers both cover and a bunch of worm 'fast food'. Inside, I use hand sized rinds that have been frozen for a day or 2. Try it in your compost pile. If no shade, bury the rind slightly and cover with cardboard or a bit of compost to block the sun. The rinds only last a few days till they get too broken down to keep raising to harvest worms. Freezing is really handy here, simply take a still frozen rind and treat it just like a fresh one. Repeat as needed. Never tried comfrey for trapping, gets too gooey to be digging in, but is a main source of food. Wet
It really depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If you are in need of VC in the shortest possible time...give them a lil heat. If you are looking to increase your worm population 50F is pretty close to the optimal temp for cocoon production. (I believe it's 55F according to "VC Technologies") This is a survival strategy for the worms. The worms themselves will die below 32F. However, the cocoons can survive a whopping -40F. Here is a pic of my outdoor windrow around the first week of June. I had just moved it from the left side of the pic to the right side, next to my faithful pooch. It was left unprotected like this over the winter and survived here above the 45th in Zone 4. If I had to guess there is probably 50-100lbs of worms in there. Ok, rant over.
With regards to my worm trap. Trapping season is over. I managed to attract every slug in the neighborhood. Never crossed my mind, melon rinds would attract slugs. I always used beer or yeast to trap and kill those guys. They really seemed to like the cardboard covering the fruit. I have noticed when the slugs show up somewhere, the worms migrate away. Live and Learn Wetdog, I would have just used big pieces, but I didn't think about trapping till after I had diced em and froze em. I had to get "fancy" in order to use the little pieces. OS
Hey man, what are you using the worms for? Have you been able to identify what species of worm you are trapping? I've yet to have any luck with my local redworms in a bin type situation. Just curious.
I am using my worms for indoor bins, vmc production. I realized how well the local compost worms work last year. What I did was empty my compost pile into large totes that I brought inside. I did this originally so I would have compost to feed my bin all winter. I did this right before I mixed up my "piles" outside. I live in AK so the idea of chainsawing chunks of frozen compost, and then allowing it to thaw, was not gonna be an option during the winter. What I found was that the local compost worms in the totes, were vermicomposting the bottom 6 inches of all the totes. And they were doing a darn fine job too. I would just transfer compost plus native worms to my tray / stackable style bins. Its slick cause I don't need to do any worm sorting. I do "feed" the opposite end of a tote, relative to the end I take compost from. This is an effort to not harm worms, and leave as many as possible in the tote "working". I know they reproduce, cause every so often I find a ton of little fat ones, all the same size. The biggest thing that I have found with the native compost worms, is they really like the bins a lot wetter than the red wigglers born in the bins. This makes perfect sense to me, as it is extremely humid here all the time. I also think the transition time, in the totes, in the native compost keeps them from stressing. When I catch worms by hand from a compost pile, I try and take some the material they are working with them. As far as types of native worms. I have found what I am pretty sure are euro nightcrawlers, but mostly redworms that seem to be bigger than red wigglers. I think the large redworms are Lumbricus rubellus, But I could be mistaken. I use the old rule, if they live in a compost pile, they are some type of compost worm. This is a simplified overview of what I do/did. If anyone is interested I could elaborate on what I add to compost etc. We were kind of talking about it a little a page or 2 back. Pretty much whatever goes in my soil mix goes in my totes and bins, and then a little more in a finished bin. OS
Wow...that's pretty cool I'm in MT. I remember flipping over logs in Northern B.C. on a lil fishing trip with some guys that were paving the Al-Can damn near 20 years ago. Anyway, they asked what I was doing...and I said ''looking for worms'' which they thought was hilarious and they declared there was no worms up that far North. So now I'm curious what Zone you're in? Must be on the coast. I'm sitting at Zone 4 here. Yes, Rubellus same worm that shows up in my piles outside. True red wigglers far, far, outnumber them though. Perhaps this is why they don't work so well for me in a bin situation. I run a couple horizontal flow throughs and a vertical too, along with my outdoor windrow. I'm actually glad they die in my case because they would feed too low in my vertical and muck it all up. I'm with you...separating worms really sucks!
Rancho, I am coastal near lat 61. I just poked around the pile and caught another hundred or so. They are mostly red wigglers, I'm assuming that some are rubellus because they are at least 6 inches and so much bigger than my red wigglers in my bins. Maybe they grow bigger "free range" and are wigglers, don't know The worms I assume to be euro nightcrawlers are based on only 2 things really. 1).They are really large, but otherwise appear identicle to red wigglers. 2.)they lock there tail and really fight when you grab one. Rancho, I envy the windrows! OS