BBrown,
A couple of questions on the Coots mix.
1. CaCO3, calcium carbonate. Mix calls for Oyster shell flour.
I see that egg shells are also mostly CaCO3, but I have also read that there is a small amount of sodium as well. We seem to go through eggs like crazy so I'm wondering if this would be an OK substitute, or if the sodium would build up in the soil over time and cause problems.
It doesn't seem like this amendment is added again when recycling the soil so we wouldn't be adding it constantly, so maybe ok? What are your thoughts?
2. Worm castings. I've seen several interviews with Coots where he emphasizes "You don't have my castings!," and others where he stresses the importance of really good castings, and others where he says you can't produce great castings using kitchen scraps (or maybe it's 'just' using kitchen scraps).
In any event I've never heard him describe how to make primo castings. What are your thoughts here?
Azi
On the worm castings. Coots is a little anal about stuff most is spot on. You can grow some great plants with kitchen scrap vermi-compost. We eat all organic so everything going into our bins is proper food.
Ok so that said yes he has a point. I amend our vermi-bins like I amend the soil. Same amendments go into the vermi-bin as I would add to the coots soil mix.
Making compost is key. We have a pile of leaf mold brought from the local forest and keep a pile next to the bin and add some in when we want to.
Very important to add rock dusts for the worms as it helps them digest food.
Once the vermi-bins are running proper you will see a lot of insects all sorts of them. They bring a huge amount of goodies to the compost table.
We run 2 large bins one is active until say around mid-winter then we switch to the other bin and run that for the year. The old one we let sit until say May when we are out in the gardens starting up our new gardens for the year and use it up. I make a large Coots mix for the garden and top dress the entire garden with that. So the vermi-compost gets used up there.
On your CaCo3 question - egg shells need to be broken down chemically with I think Vinegar over a 2 week or so time frame. I never did it that way. The egg shells without being broken down take a very long time to decomp. I stopped adding them to my vermi-bins for that reason. They are good for aeration but take longer to break down than say rice hulls. So a few years. You cannabis plants gonna need that Ca well before that.
I have several sources of Ca - this is where you can add these to the vermi bins and your compost will be gold.
Oyster shell flour
fish bone meal
crab/crustacean meal
Gypsum
These are the Ca sources I use and Coots does the same. Can add any or all of these to your vermi-bin and your soil mix. Also I will add a few handfuls of Kelp Meal to the vermi-bins from time to time as well.
You get your vermi-bins dialed in and its water for the win. I stopped making compost teas since that exercise is not required since everything already there in the soil/compost. Basically compost tea is just watered down compost so just use the compost as a top dress and water in. There's your compost tea.
