Worm Castings

Sochi

Sochi

New Member
Any opinions out there on the use of fresh worm castings in a soil mix for indoor cannabis plants? I have a very healthy worm bin and have just harvested a batch. Just wondering if others have used fresh castings--not dried store bought castings. Fresh ones haven't been processed and harbor lots of beneficial microorganisms, but I wonder if they have the potential to carry unwanted organisms. Thanks :peace:
 
My understanding is that what you have is gold, but you need to be careful with how well you separate the castings from everything else when using indoors so as not to attract unwanted pests. You can certainly make some tea. Also, with tea, and I believe with your castings, the key between beneficials and unwanteds is oxygen. If you store your castings sealed you can run into problems. I wouldn't just run with what I'm saying, but I think thats the general premise. Good luck. Go Bruins.
 
Thanks, ma420 :blushsmile: I think you're absolutely right on all points. I'm keeping the castings in a container loosely covered to keep air flow going. They look great (no pests) and have no odor. I'm making tea today and have already added some castings to a few plants.

My set up is a bit relaxed
--My mj plants (Green Crack) are sharing a room with my vegetable seedlings, so it's a bit of a jungle in there.
--I have HO T5s for smaller seedling and a 315W LEC as they get larger.
--Room is approx 9' x 20' 8 ft ceilings.
--Sealed off from any outside light
--great airflow, fans
--72-78 F RH 50-60%

This is my first grow, and I'm growing organically because it's all I know at this point.

--I give them King Neptunes and add Mykos to the soil
--Adding fresh worm castings in small amounts ~10% of soil mix (use Promix)
--I have Azamax in case of bugs...

Like I said, kind of relaxed. I'm overly controlled and precise at work and that creates a lot of stress in my life, so this is an outlet to let go. If it doesn't go well, I'll apply a stricter grow regime.

I am truly amazed by the precision and expertise of the growers on this site and their enthusiasm to share their knowledge and encourage others. I am learning a lot!

I think I'm going to have to step up my game for my next grow, but I'll see wha happens here. Like I said, I need a respite from the stress of my work. Life is too short, and I'm ready to get out of corporate hell.

I've put a few pics in below... hope I added them correctly.

IMG_068548.JPG
IMG_075950.JPG
IMG_075542.JPG
IMG_071840.JPG
 
Sochi,

I'm envious of your beautiful worm castings and 8' ceiling!

Your little ones are looking great and everything you're doing is going to promote happy, healthy plants. There are more ways than one to skin a cat; the simplicity of your setup is sound.

Words of wisdom: Keep the same great attitude throughout the grow! Judging by the environmental setup and the neatness of your room, you already possess the knowledge and care needed to do a pretty good job. You'll most likely run into issues here and there, but most everything is survivable. If this is meant to be a reprieve from the rat race, then treat it as such, and sit back, relax, and enjoy. It's a bunch of work, but when done with the right mindset, the act of growing can be a rewarding and powerful medicine in and of itself.

I'm also juggling a jungle of juveniles in the veg. room. We have similar setups and I'm a bit ahead of you (day six of flower), so feel free to ask questions if anything comes up and I'll do my best to help.

Cheers
 
Thanks, ma420! I love your advice about doing this for the "rewarding and powerful medicine" it is. It's helping me gain long needed perspective on what I really want to do in life, and staying in the endless, often meaningless (at least to me) rat race isn't really a plan I intend to stick with much longer.

It sounds like you have 2 rooms--one for veg and one for flowering. I need to move to that set-up soon because I want to start some new seedlings and will need different conditions..

In any case, I'm excited about your plants in flower! And thank you for the offer to share your grow experience!:thanks:
 
Hey there Sochi - worm castings are an essential ingredient in my organic soil recipe. You can use up to 20% of your total mix by volume of your EWC (earthworm castings).

No worries about anything bad coming out of your worm bin... you will be fine.

There's always going to be critters, they come in all shapes sizes and from every place imaginable. Best defense is healthy plants. They have an immune system just like we do! Good home grown EWC is perfect for young plants.

Worm castings work very well with peat moss and a little aeration for starts (seedlings) and young plants.

Once you up-pot the first time after plants are hardened off you will need a more extensive complete soil mixture.
 
Hi bobrown14! Thank you for the great advice. I'm going to repot soon, so I'm going to increase my castings to your recommended 20% by vol and will mix it with a combo of Organic ProMix, since I have several bags already.

I'm reading through your journals for soil ideas and other expertise. Great content! Thanks for sharing! :peace:
 
I posted the soil recipe I use a few weeks ago just to re-visit that topic. I'm an organic farmer so you can get an idea where I'm coming from. Probably one of a few that just run soil without bottled chemical amendments. For some reason organic farming is in the minority here .... ah well. I just keep chugging along and growing big beautiful flowers and try and stay out of trouble for the most part.

We have 2 large compost bins that are filled with red wigglers and lots of other bugs and stuff... I'm getting ready to harvest about 170gal of EWC out of the one bin so I know what you're going thru making those castings. Thats black gold right there.

Once you mix up your soil I would see if you can go to your local county extension office and ask for a soil test kit and get the soil tested so you know where you stand with regard to your EWC (only as good as what you feed the worms with) as it relates to the rest of your mix. Then you can fine tune your soil mix and get off to a running start!

Great job doing your own EWC! Awesome job!
 
Hey bobrown14, I'm going to look at your soil recipe and work it into my soil building practices (I'm also using your compost tea recipe once I can get my hands on all or most of those ingredients!).

I love that you are an organic gardener and are really committed to creating and nurturing living soil! I'm inspired by the fact that you do not use insecticides--at least from what I can tell by reading through your journal. You're right: healthy soil leads to healthy plants which have resistance to all sorts of disease and pest pressures.

I've used neem, pyrethrin, Bt, and insecticidal soap on my outdoor garden, but I'm really careful about those because they can kill bees and other beneficials. I would like to eliminate use of these entirely.

Your large compost bins are very cool! I saw the pics in your journal. The amount of EWC you are harvesting is amazing! I have a large flow through bin that is about the size of a large outdoor trash can tote. Like yours, it's teeming with red wigglers and other interesting critters.

Funny you should mention getting my castings tested :blushsmile: I just collected my soil and EWC for testing, but I need to send the EWC to Penn State since UMass Amherst (ext service in MA) stopped testing compost.

I'm excited to find some incredibly experienced organic growers here. Thank you for being so helpful and such a great resource. :thanks: I am going to get lost in your journal and look for others along the way........feeling inspired:peace:
 
Awesome .. if you need help with Penn State, I live in PA and thats where I send my soil samples. If they wont do yours since out of state ... don't know if thats true or not but if you have a problem let me know.. send me soil I will forward it on and get results for you if need be. i can eve send you a soil test packet.. all you do is put a cup of soil in there and give them your e-mail addy and there ya go.

I'm waiting for my sample results for my last soil mix to come back .. should be any day and will post it up in my journal when I get it.

Soil testing is important with growing organically since we are feeding the soil, it's good to know what we "might" need more or less of!

If you want a general insect spray that's safe for bees, try Monterrey Garden Spray. It's what I use and its good for a lot of pests. It breaks down very fast in light. It won't hurt bees but if you worry about that like I do, watch when the bees are in your garden.. they have a sorta rhythm to their work. There will be times like a hot sunny day they will be less active ... I'm an organic outdoor gardener first and foremost so I would never recommend anything that would interfere with bees or birds that eat the bees! I rarely spray any of my outdoor plants and we grow a lot of berries. Healthy plants out run the pests .. indoors in a container, the plants are sitting ducks more or less.

You can do some research on the Monterrey Garden Spray and bees. I suggest you do so. It's a great learning experience ... you may find more that one opinion but look to the university studies. Specifically Cal & Washington State. Penn State is a little behind the times in this area IMHO ... they are more geared toward large professional farms. Which shouldn't be any different than us gardeners, but hey...

What I do is an IPM (Integrated Pest management) routine - and that's more geared toward helping the plants be healthy enough to fend off problems. I do an IPM 1x a week foiler spray as a preventative measure and 2X a week if infestation.

If you decide to do this for a few runs and you will eventually have pests. Specially with an organic outdoor garden. You will bring them in or they will simply hitch hike a ride inside on you! Powdery Mildew in the fall, spider mites in the summer etc... there's a short list of pest but they all are show stoppers inside.

I was just turning my compost as the worms are just getting going ... there's insects EVERYWHERE.. wow.. as the worm population increases the flying insect population decreases...

For me ... compost is THE most important part of organic gardening. Try adding in to you worm bin some granite dust.. it helps the worms digest plant material faster... sorta like stones in the gizzard for chickens...

If your reading my journal.. good luck and thanks.. feel free to fast forward, from time to time I go back to topics like soil building and IPM and amendments.. always new science with soil... we are in a time of change. thankfully.

More and more people are starting to realize that eating a plant that has ZERO minerals and vitamins is not going to help your health and in fact will degrade your health over time. Just like composting.. the health of the soil (and you) are only as good as the inputs. That is the same for animals that you also consume... the weird thing is, we've known this fact for MANY generations. This is nothing new.

I've babbled along for too long.. but I get excited when someone actually "gets it", and I'm passionate about all of this.

Cheers - KIG
 
What a great thread to come across!...I plan on starting an organic/living soil grow soon...I have a couple things in place...ProMix HP...glacial rock dust...and hoping to source some EWC in the next couple of day's...bob...could you link to your soil recipe?...I've bookmarked your journal links...and although I will be visiting shortly...just looking to expedite info before a trip stateside next week...where certain growing components are more readily available...Cheerz...h00k...:hookah:
 
bobrown14 said:
Awesome .. if you need help with Penn State, I live in PA and thats where I send my soil samples. If they wont do yours since out of state ... don't know if thats true or not but if you have a problem let me know.. send me soil I will forward it on and get results for you if need be. i can eve send you a soil test packet.. all you do is put a cup of soil in there and give them your e-mail addy and there ya go.

I'm waiting for my sample results for my last soil mix to come back .. should be any day and will post it up in my journal when I get it.

Soil testing is important with growing organically since we are feeding the soil, it's good to know what we "might" need more or less of!

If you want a general insect spray that's safe for bees, try Monterrey Garden Spray. It's what I use and its good for a lot of pests. It breaks down very fast in light. It won't hurt bees but if you worry about that like I do, watch when the bees are in your garden.. they have a sorta rhythm to their work. There will be times like a hot sunny day they will be less active ... I'm an organic outdoor gardener first and foremost so I would never recommend anything that would interfere with bees or birds that eat the bees! I rarely spray any of my outdoor plants and we grow a lot of berries. Healthy plants out run the pests .. indoors in a container, the plants are sitting ducks more or less.

You can do some research on the Monterrey Garden Spray and bees. I suggest you do so. It's a great learning experience ... you may find more that one opinion but look to the university studies. Specifically Cal & Washington State. Penn State is a little behind the times in this area IMHO ... they are more geared toward large professional farms. Which shouldn't be any different than us gardeners, but hey...

What I do is an IPM (Integrated Pest management) routine - and that's more geared toward helping the plants be healthy enough to fend off problems. I do an IPM 1x a week foiler spray as a preventative measure and 2X a week if infestation.

If you decide to do this for a few runs and you will eventually have pests. Specially with an organic outdoor garden. You will bring them in or they will simply hitch hike a ride inside on you! Powdery Mildew in the fall, spider mites in the summer etc... there's a short list of pest but they all are show stoppers inside.

I was just turning my compost as the worms are just getting going ... there's insects EVERYWHERE.. wow.. as the worm population increases the flying insect population decreases...

For me ... compost is THE most important part of organic gardening. Try adding in to you worm bin some granite dust.. it helps the worms digest plant material faster... sorta like stones in the gizzard for chickens...

If your reading my journal.. good luck and thanks.. feel free to fast forward, from time to time I go back to topics like soil building and IPM and amendments.. always new science with soil... we are in a time of change. thankfully.

More and more people are starting to realize that eating a plant that has ZERO minerals and vitamins is not going to help your health and in fact will degrade your health over time. Just like composting.. the health of the soil (and you) are only as good as the inputs. That is the same for animals that you also consume... the weird thing is, we've known this fact for MANY generations. This is nothing new.

I've babbled along for too long.. but I get excited when someone actually "gets it", and I'm passionate about all of this.

Cheers - KIG
Click to expand...

What an awesome post to wake to this morning. I really appreciate the offer to help with my Penn State samples if needed. I'll let you know! I'm excited to get the results since I have never tested my EWC or my outdoor compost heap. Very different systems.

I couldn't agree with you more about the importance of compost. It is the single most important component of my outdoor garden. Taking on this indoor challenge is really fascinating. I cannot simply apply what I know from my outdoor practices. As you said, an infestation indoors is an entirely different thing than outdoors. Things can devolve pretty quickly indoors, I imagine.

Thank you for recommending the Monterey Insect Spray. I have seen this and have researched its main ingredient--Spinosad. We must be on the same wavelength here, because I just picked up a bottle of it the other day, read the label, and said to myself, "this might be in my future..." ha ha! Used properly, it's virtually harmless to our avian, bee, mammal, and aquatic friends, so I'm down with that.

I've been giving my worms azamite and some sort of crushed white rocks (maybe limestone, not sure). The bin is in my basement, so although the worms have companions in there---occasionally springtails, a spider now and then--it's not quite as lively as an outdoor set-up. It's mostly a community of worms and beneficial microorganisms.

I'm glad you mentioned the issue of bringing diseases and pests indoors from the outdoor garden. I was in my outdoor garden yesterday and took one look at myself just as I was going to head into my grow room and said, Oh hell no! It was then I decided that I better have a method for entering the vicinity of my grow room and rooms preceding it. Maybe nothing as extensive as airlocks and Biosafety Levels :) but definitely procedures to help avert potential problems. The problems will come at some point, but I'd rather not encourage them!

Btw, I lived in Pittsburgh for about 14 years and in Philly for one year. I loved both cities! And the countryside in between, the mountains....all very beautiful.

I'll look for your soil sample results!
 
Hello , great read just wondering if I use the pro mix organic and worm casting , can I still add unsulfured molasses and remain organic ? I hear it helps with the natural good bacteria in soil ?p.s. you can just buy 2 tents on amazon for about $140.00/each and have 2 separate grow rooms easiest and cheapest way , plus easiest to keep clean and to take down if you ever change you mind .
 
any suggestion , I cant find a 10,10 ,10 soil any where here in Ontario .24,12,8 is the closest I can get around here and coco , worm castings and that is about it , seems most people are outside growing or hydro ? I can order from amazon but by the time the delivery charge is added its $70/bag , just not economical .
 
Subbed for after work. How topical for me right now.

Cheers
 
NOOOBIENOT said:
any suggestion , I cant find a 10,10 ,10 soil any where here in Ontario .24,12,8 is the closest I can get around here and coco , worm castings and that is about it , seems most people are outside growing or hydro ? I can order from amazon but by the time the delivery charge is added its $70/bag , just not economical .
Click to expand...
Build your own soil and marvel at the results ;)

It’ll be much better then anything you can purchase here and really isn’t difficult to do on your own :Namaste:

Edit: Or check out Bkackswallow soils, they’re out of brantford and have a good organic mix
 
NOOOBIENOT said:
any suggestion , I cant find a 10,10 ,10 soil any where here in Ontario .24,12,8 is the closest I can get around here and coco , worm castings and that is about it , seems most people are outside growing or hydro ? I can order from amazon but by the time the delivery charge is added its $70/bag , just not economical .
Click to expand...

In Ontario ... a few resources that will get you started:

This first one... they have "Coots soil mix" ready to go... or you can mix your own they have most all the ingredients. There's quite a few organic growers here frm Ontario.. apparently cannabis is a thing in Canada... who knew! :cool:

Living soils, mixes and amendments - Dab Canada Compassion Society

Reindeer’s Natural Plant Foods
 

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