Re: Can o worms
- Subject: Re: Can o worms
- From: R* F* D*
- Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 23:42:22 -0400 (EDT)
At 07:12 PM 8/6/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>It is a bit of a struggle to keep white flies out. I used it for about six
>months on two different occasions. Each time it developed white fly
>infestation. I called the Alameda hotline and they advised me to start over
>again. They white flies seem to be introduced via the fruit scraps. The
>casings are tremendous! We've never had such high quality snap peas and
>peppers.
>
>At 06:08 PM 8/6/01 -0700, Nan Sterman wrote:
>>Anyone tried the can o worms for vermicompost? Any recommendations?
>>--
Nan & Laurie:
I can tell you that the best worm food for compost is coffee grounds. My
parents operated a family restaurant/ice cream stand in Granby, MA, and my
dad always put the grounds in a special bucket, because they were hot, wet,
and too heavy for regular refuse. I would take each 5 gallon can and mix it
with 3 - 4 parts horse manure and 10 - 12 parts leaves (mostly red maple,
loaded with nutrients) and would wind up with pure worm castings in just
less than two months. I got the healthiest, most robust plants I've ever
grown. By themselves, the ground up red maple leaves would ferment after a
week. I could get dizzy turning the pile at that time. Evidently, the
maples were in a sugar-generating mode in preparation for the spring flow,
and I caught them before a rain had leached out the residual sugar in the
leaves.
The piles of coffee grounds I let rot out in Greensboro when turned had so
many red earthworms (red wigglers) that I could have pur my foot on them and
would have been levitated off the ground about two inches. See if you can
find a restaurant that will allow you to collect grounds on a regular basis.
I also had excellent luck in Baltimore with spent mushroom soil, made from
ground corncobs, horse manyre, and topsoil. After several crops of
mushrooms in the old mines of eastern Pennsylvania, the soil would have to
be replaced. I grew the most vegetables per square foot ever there. Two
short rows of wax beans (about 6 - 8 plants per row) produced enough beans
in a week to half-fill a pillowcase.
I wish I had access to these resources now. The rich humus in these soils
would grow me gigantic, bug-resistant Salvias. As a potting soil amendment,
my plants would explode in the pot - I would have to repot every 2 weeks.
Compose a good compost with a sugary source of carbon like corncobs or maple
leaves, add a source of nitrogen like a somewhat aged manure, and coffee
grounds, then stand back.
Richard F. Dufresne
313 Spur Road
Greensboro, North Carolina 27406 USA
336-674-3105
World of Salvias: http://www.eclectasy.com/gallery_of_salvias/index.htm
Salvia email list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Salvia
