Castings or Compost?

I have a local work farmer in my town. The farm has 4 breeds of worms. African Night crawlers, Red wiggler, Eiesenia, and Red wiggler hybrids. Well im looking to make a tea with the compost. However most recipe's call for Eartworm casting specifically. So i have two Q's

#1) Does it have to be earthwaorms? can it be any of the above?

#2) Which is better for tea's casting or compost?

1. All of those are considered *earthworms*
2. Either one will work just fine with a slight edge to pure castings.

Wet

Wetdog

Thank you for clearing that up for me!

I like nightcrawler for catching fish and red wigglers (Eisenia foetida) for castings. The difference isn't big and it's usually more about their diet then anything else. Nightcrawlers are big fat worms, usually bred for feeding to other animals, so they breeders usually just give them a diet of newspaper and sawdust. Worms used for their castings should be feed a nice blend of food scrapes, leaves, and grass clippings.

Both are good for tea, but if the recipe calls for castings, it means castings. Any type of castings you find should be fine. The castings offer your plants a ready source of N. Compost can have N,P, and K, depending on WHAT was composted. I like to toss a few cups of castings, a handfull of compost, and a couple spoons of molasses in my veg tea and it's working great for me. I let it bubble for 1-2 days before I use it to let the bacteria/fungi reproduce for a while.

Here ya go buddy.

Red Worm Composting / Vermicomposting​

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Red worm composting or vermicomposting is the process of using red worms to decompose organic yard and food waste, turning the waste into a natural fertilizer called wormpoop or wormpoop castings. Two species of red earthworms have consistently been used for commercial composting or worm farming, due to their relatively high tolerance of environmental variations:

• Eisenia foetida, The Red Wiggler
• Lumbricus rebellus, The Red Worm

Worm fertilizer adds beneficial organisms, nutrients and minerals to the soil that sustain healthy plant life and vital plant growth. The advantages of red worm composting are mentioned below:

• Worms can reduce composting time from 240 days to 30 days.
• Healthy soil teems with microbes, and microbial activity in worm castings is 10-20 times higher than in the material they consume.
• The digestive process in worms makes the nutrients in their castings more readily available to plants.
• The mucus coating on castings provides for the "time release" of nutrients.
• Castings are rich in humus, which improves soil aggregation.
• Castings have 5 to 11 times more NPK than the surrounding soil.

Vermicompost (the combination of worm castings and composting organic material) is much richer in microbial activity than regular compost. In addition, the shredding and digestive process of worms creates minute particles that existing micro organisms in the soil can readily eat. As a result, vermicompost actually increases the activity of existing microorganisms in the soil.

Although regular composting may have it's advantages convenience wise, worm composting holds all the advantages for your plants. The worms not only break down the food much faster, but the nutrients in the resulting compost are more readily available to the plant, and also hold more of the original NPK value.

I would recommend going with the red wigglers. They are small, but they do a much more efficient job than the earth worms, which is why the worm-composting businesses push them harder.

I'm not sure exactly what they feed the worms for the bags of ewc you buy in the store, but it's not compost. It's more likely mineral or rock and fiber based or something. It's still very good for your plants, I use 10% in my mix, but I also use a litlle over 5% worm compost as well.

Even compost has probably had earthworms going through it. Castings are dominated with bacteria and the protozoans that eat the bacteria.

The best teas I've made have been with Alaskan Forest Humus, totally chock-full of all the microbes one could desire.

Nullis said:

Even compost has probably had earthworms going through it. Castings are dominated with bacteria and the protozoans that eat the bacteria.

The best teas I've made have been with Alaskan Forest Humus, totally chock-full of all the microbes one could desire.

Click to expand...

I use a scoop of Alaskan Forest Humus in my teas as well. Everyone has had great stuff to say about it, and now so do I.

honestly for teas you can just add the roots of any weeds, the roots have mycorrhyzae and beneficials living on them. get this, or bontaicare sells zho, its mycorrhyzae.
worms are great for compost, even for flowering compost theyre always helpful when breaking down stuff in your compost, id use a handfull of your compost in your teas. make sure its well composted and try to keep it well moisturized, you can feed the beneficials with sugary drinks, like sodas or juices, just add them to the compost. wait a few months to use the compost so it all breaks down well, more worms the better. use unsulphured blackstrap molasses for the teas though.

I do believe the OP was referring to vermicompost when he said compost and that's the way I answered. Figured a worm farmer would have both EWC's and vermicompost.

I could be wrong though.

Wet

Oh, I thought he was implying that he was just buying the worms from the warm to start his own compost. But yea, I would imagine they would have compost on the farm.

whoa snap havent checked this in a few days thanks for the info duudes!!

Yeah that Alaskan stuff with super soil would need to be turned every week for the first four or you'll get the gasses! So far I've do on;ly 50/50 cut compost/ewc for a nice thick rich mix.