Interesting find for insect frass users

So, I needed to get more insect frass (my dog got shredded my old bag...) anyways, my local garden supply store was out, so I was annoyed a lil, and got side-tracked, as I often do, since the supply store also is an animal feed store I get my other amendments there too, and I was out of oyster shell, not the meal, the stuff they feed birds, and lo and behold, I saw a big plastic container full of whole dead mealworms and crickets, like whole ones. Used for protein for chickens and such. So, i'm thinking CHITIN, and lots of it, and probably more readily available to the plant than the crab meal, so I buy it, take it home, and systematically crush it all up into a mealy like substance, and now i'm gonna use it for my soil, just thought i'd share, the end product is full of little ground up shiny shell specks.
We'll see how it works.
What are your guys thoughts?
@DonTesla , @Pattahabi
the dons in particular since you guys are using the stuff a lot
I believe me an pattahabi were talking about insect frass and chitin a while ago

There is definitely chitin in insect shells. Insect frass however, is insect poop (at least that's my understanding). It's been a while, but I was thinking poop from black soldier flies? I don't use frass, but I would have no qualms about throwing some of those insect shells in there. Remember the actual pesticide is chitinase. Chitin helps build a plant's SAR.

Chitin, Chitosan, Chitinase – an organic pest control arsenal

A Copy/paste from http://idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51481

To most effectively use chitin you need to understand the three related compounds – Chitin, Chitosan, Chitinase

Chitin is a compound that makes up the shells of crustaceans/arthropods. Not only that, but chitin helps form the cell walls of fungi (I will share the importance of this later). And even more good news, it is a main component of the exoskeleton of insects. One thing you also need to be aware of is that it is found in the “skin” of worms.

Chitosan is a compound that is created from the breakdown of chitin. Chitosan is the product that you may find most commercially available as both a plant growth regulator and a “no risk” systematic pesticide. Note: per my current understanding most chitosan is produced using a synthetic process on an organic product, thus is not truly organic. Not only that, but if you are using it to reverse an outbreak, it may not be the best option. I will share a better option in a minute.

Chitinase is the naturally occurring enzyme that breaks chitin down into chitosan. I will repeat that point, it is the central point you need to know in order to organically reverse a disease (and possibly even insect) outbreak using chitin! Chitinase is the enzyme that breaks chitin down into chitosan. Some living organisms produce this chitinase enzyme. Most of these organisms are bacteria (and some fungi). Some plants even produce this enzyme in order to fight off disease (this is the “system” that we will use to model our pest control treatment). Anyways, many of the chitinase producing microorganisms are known crustacean pathogens. These organisms produce this enzyme so they can break down crustacean shells (in order to eat it, or get through it to invade the shellfish itself). While this may seem bad, it can be used to our organic advantage.

More info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitosan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitinase

Ok, now that you are a little familiar with each of these substances let’s start talking pest control. There are really two stages of pest control: preventative and reactive.

PREVENTATIVE PEST CONTROL using chitin and chitosan

Like I mentioned, chitin is found on the outer parts of fungi and bugs. Some plants use this to their advantage. They have receptors that sense chitin. When the plant detects chitin (especially in high concentrations) it assumes that it is being attacked by either an insect or a fungal disease. The plant will ramp up its defenses. It will thicken and strengthen its cell walls. If it can, it will start making chitinase.

Why would a plant make chitinase if it thinks it is being attacked? Well as you know, chitinase breaks chitin down. Hence, when the fungi or insect comes in contact with the plant, the plant will excrete these enzymes. When the enzyme touches the chitin on the pest, it will break it down. As the chitin breaks down the pest either becomes vulnerable and weak or even flat out die. In this way some plants produce their own ‘insecticide’ and ‘fungicide’, albeit in very limited quantities.

So why apply chitosan?

Well, plants can react to chitosan in the same way as chitin. When they detect it they will beef up their defenses. Hence companies sell chitosan as a systematic pesticide. Could the same effect be achieved by using chitin itself? Yes. I understand it though that most companies sell chitosan because it is more soluble and can be better mixed and sprayed as a solution.

I also understand that as the plant works to strengthen its cell walls etc, it must create new growth. Hence chitin and chitosan are used as plant growth regulators that increase plant growth. When you apply the product the plant will put energy into growth as it tries to defend itself against the apparent attack.

In summary, when you apply chitin or even chitosan you will stimulate the plant to beef up its defenses. In this way your plant will be less susceptible to diseases and insects. This is most effective before the pant is being attacked. If an outbreak is already in progress, there is a better option.

Now that we know how to use chitin products to help prevent outbreaks, how do we use them to correct outbreaks that are in progress?

REACTIVE PEST CONTROL using chitin, chitosan, AND chitinase.

Suppose that your plant (be it tomato, squash, etc. or even a fruit tree) is already being attacked by a pest. What can you do? Applying chitin or chitosan can’t hurt, but my experience suggests that there is a more effective alternative.

Plants can kill fungi/bugs using the chitinase enzyme, so why can’t you? The idea is to use the plants natural model to provide your own pest control. You simply need to make a concentrated amount of chitinase and apply it. You will effectively be applying a concentrated dose of a natural pesticide!

So how do you make chitinase? You let bacteria do it for you! It’s pretty simple really. Get your hands on some chitin and ferment it. As it ferments, chitinase will be the main compound helping the bacteria eat it. If you apply the mixture AS it is fermenting you will be applying a large dose of the chitinase enzyme, and as such, will be able to help the plant kill off the disease/insect outbreak.

HOW TO PRODUCE CHITINASE using fermentation

Remember, chitin is the main component of crustacean shells. Save the shells when you eat crabs, shrimp etc. and dry them out. If you live near the coast you are in luck. Many people/companies see these shells as waste. If you can find someone who is getting rid of some, tell them you will gladly take them off their hands. If not, buy a crustacean shell fertilizer; something like “crab shell fertilizer”.

Now that you have your shells you need to turn them into powder in order to maximize surface area and increase break down. Simply put them in a blender and puree until powder. smile.gif

Ok, now that you have your powder chitin you need to let the bacteria do their thing. This is best achieved if you inoculate it with chitin eating bacteria. The simplest way to do this is to find a company that sells non-sterilized chitosan that was produced by using fermentation. The chitosan will have the appropriate bacteria. If you can’t get some non-sterilized naturally produced chitosan that is ok, you will just have to wait for nature to blow in some of the desired bacteria on its own (leave open outside for best natural inoculation).

Once you have your ingredients take a bucket full of of non-chlorinated water and add your chitin. Next add your inoculant and wait until fermentation begins.

To speed up the process, it is beneficial to aerate the bucket of water with a fish-tank air pump (as if you were making actively aerated compost tea). Also, warming the water can promote bacteria production. The temperature depends on which type of bacteria you want to encourage. Usually you want it over 80 degree F and below 135 degrees F.

Just like with other organic pest control practices timing is important! You want to spray the solution while there is the maximum concentration of chitinase. This is done while fermentation is happening rapidly. The easiest way to tell is to smell the product. Once the smell changes it is ready. The longer you wait, the less chitin there will be, and hence less chitinase. So smell often and spray quickly.

Spray the substance on your plant. Over and under leaves, on the bark, and even on the soil around the root zone. That’s it, your home produced natural and organic pesticide!

Note: think ahead for the next outbreak. Leave a quart or so of the solution in the bucket and let ferment for a few more days (until fermenting is over). Place in an airtight jar and save. You will use this to inoculate your next batch.

Warning about concentrated doses of chitinase

I have a friend who grows worms. She threw some extra chitin “brew” in one of her worm piles to feed them. The thing she didn’t think about was that worms also have chitin in their skin. The brew killed the entire worm population just like it can kill fungi and bugs.

In other words, be careful and only use active chitin brews during an outbreak. It is likely that using chitinase brews can kill beneficial organisms as well as pests. To correct this, once the brew has had time to do its thing and break down (a few days to a week) it is best to re-introduce beneficial organisms to the plant and soil. Spray your plant and soil with a compost/manure tea or simply sprinkle some compost over the dirt and water those good guys into the soil.

Note two: The above process can also be used to produce chitosan on your own so you do not have to purchase it for your preventative applications. Simply let fermentation finish before applying.

Peace!

P-

Nice thinking dude, interesting!

shit, I'm sure its gonna be awesome but i do wonder how it would compare..
...-insect frass has 100 Billion fungi spores per gram
...-and 6 trillion cfu/gm of microorganisms (including bacteria, protozoa and nematodes)

a note on insect chitin:
it stimulates the plants auto-immune system so it produces more:
terpenes, flavinoids, alkaloids, amino acids, and chitinase enzyme, not to mention root rot, mildew and nematode defence

so its a good look

I should have clarified that, meaning the insect "mash" I was using in replacement to the frass, I figure I don't need insect turd that much, but chitin?
Can't have too much of that, well, unless it's in the wormbin, evidently.
As soon as I figure out what went wrong with my last windows update, ever since then I cant post pictures here, keeps saying "error undefined"
Anyways, I thought it'd be useful to those that want a good start on their IPM, crab shell, oyster meal, neem meal, and insect "mash"

Using bacteria to produce chitinase, serious!

Pattahabi said:

There is definitely chitin in insect shells. Insect frass however, is insect poop (at least that's my understanding). It's been a while, but I was thinking poop from black soldier flies? I don't use frass, but I would have no qualms about throwing some of those insect shells in there. Remember the actual pesticide is chitinase. Chitin helps build a plant's SAR.


Peace!

P-

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as always you have some good info on that, i'm actually fairly excited to try it out (probably more excited than I really should be considering...)

DonTesla said:

Nice thinking dude, interesting!

shit, I'm sure its gonna be awesome but i do wonder how it would compare..
...-insect frass has 100 Billion fungi spores per gram
...-and 6 trillion cfu/gm of microorganisms (including bacteria, protozoa and nematodes)

a note on insect chitin:
it stimulates the plants auto-immune system so it produces more:
terpenes, flavinoids, alkaloids, amino acids, and chitinase enzyme, not to mention root rot, mildew and nematode defence

so its a good look

Click to expand...

That's a good point, but I REALLY hope my vermicompost and compost pile can cover the difference, my thing is y neverending fight with mites, right now they aren't too bad, but i'm always looking for another thing to help the fight

One of them might be the source! What kind of mites

DonTesla said:

One of them might be the source! What kind of mites

Click to expand...

well, I've had the usual two spot, some weird black looking one, and the reddish/brown smaller ones (those suck).
All of these i'm fairly certain are in the forest I live in, my grow rooms aren't totally sealed (impossible to do, mites are too damn small)
It's a redwood forest, and there are bugs everywhere, so I treat it like fungal spores, meaning they are everywhere, and preventative measures are the best, can't eradicate them.
the mite problem I have goes waaaay back..
that's why I initially turned to making my own soil to begin with, because nobody had the ingrediants I wanted, neem meal, crab meal, etc, in the soil mixes, from there I got hooked on the ROLS, and here we are yrs later.
It's gotten a LOT better, I use to have to spray some sort of pyrethrin at least four five times a harvest, now I just spray preventative spray, and they don't give me too much of a problem. That being said I kinda feel like a cancer-survivor (forgive the analogy) meaning i'm SO scared of getting it again, that i'm constantly doing what I can to keep it AWAY, as opposed to getting rid of it/them.

greasemonkeymann said:

as always you have some good info on that, i'm actually fairly excited to try it out (probably more excited than I really should be considering...)

Click to expand...

Pat is half right in that Frass is insect excrement. they are herbivore insects that eat vegetables, wheat bran and cactus.

But the interesting thing is that frass also has the insect exoskeletons in it, that's why it looks both gold and black. Very beneficial.

Insect chitin is the form used by plants in nature, whereas crustacean chitin is trapped in the calcified shell, needing to be boiled in potassium hydroxide to be freed!

DonTesla said:

Pat is half right in that Frass is insect excrement. they are herbivore insects that eat vegetables, wheat bran and cactus.

But the interesting thing is that frass also has the insect exoskeletons in it, that's why it looks both gold and black. Very beneficial.

Insect chitin is the form used by plants in nature, whereas crustacean chitin is trapped in the calcified shell, needing to be boiled in potassium hydroxide to be freed!

Click to expand...

precisely my point! Hence the initial allure of it when I saw it, CHITIN jackpot! My theory is insect chitin is easier to be used by the plant, seems logical (doesn't mean i'm not full of shit) but I figure the insect shells are relatively soft (at least much thinner), compared to crab shell, and especially since I pulverized it with my granite slabs...

This reminds me...i gotta order more frass!

DonPetro said:

This reminds me...i gotta order more frass!

Click to expand...

order up the chicken feed, it's just mealworms and crickets all dried up. Cheap too...
I can only imagine it has a good amount of NPK in it too, but I am just using it for the chitin

DonTesla said:

Pat is half right in that Frass is insect excrement. they are herbivore insects that eat vegetables, wheat bran and cactus.

But the interesting thing is that frass also has the insect exoskeletons in it, that's why it looks both gold and black. Very beneficial.

Insect chitin is the form used by plants in nature, whereas crustacean chitin is trapped in the calcified shell, needing to be boiled in potassium hydroxide to be freed!

Click to expand...

On crustacean meal, chitin itself elicits a SAR response in plants, which can in turn cause a plant to exude chitinase. Chitin can also be broken down by microbial exudate (trichoderma & chitin info - kind of cool).

Chitinivorous organisms include many bacteria[3] (Aeromonads, Bacillus, Vibrio,[4] among others), which may be pathogenic or detritivorous. They attack living arthropods, zooplankton or fungi or they may degrade the remains of these organisms.

Fungi, such as Coccidioides immitis, also possess degradative chitinases related to their role as detritivores and also to their potential as arthropod pathogens.

Chitinases are also present in plants (barley seed chitinase: PDB 1CNS, EC 3.2.1.14); some of these are pathogenesis related (PR) proteins that are induced as part of systemic acquired resistance. Expression is mediated by the NPR1 gene and the salicylic acid pathway, both involved in resistance to fungal and insect attack. Other plant chitinases may be required for creating fungal symbioses.[5]

I have some frass a friend gave me in a bag. Nothing against it, I just haven't had a need to use it, nor time to experiment. Seems like it could have some benefit.

Peace!

P-

There is also chitin in the cell walls of fungi, it's a major component of the cell wall of many fungi. I don't exactly see how it would be harmful to earthworms, I'm really not positive that they have that much chitin in them and can find no other information on the topic. There is research that indicates earthworm castings increase chitinase activity, which would be really unfortunate if it killed them.

Crab shell is also a liming agent. Insect frass has a much higher and generally more balanced nutrient content than shell meals. Pretty sure the chitin is going to break down either way it just depends on particle size (calcium carbonate itself dissolves in soil). Chitin\chitosan are polymers, like cellulose is a polymer of glucose. They are repeating units that can be relatively short or quite long and of conversely lower or higher molecular weights.

greasemonkeymann said:

So, I needed to get more insect frass (my dog got shredded my old bag...) anyways, my local garden supply store was out, so I was annoyed a lil, and got side-tracked, as I often do, since the supply store also is an animal feed store I get my other amendments there too, and I was out of oyster shell, not the meal, the stuff they feed birds, and lo and behold, I saw a big plastic container full of whole dead mealworms and crickets, like whole ones. Used for protein for chickens and such. So, i'm thinking CHITIN, and lots of it, and probably more readily available to the plant than the crab meal, so I buy it, take it home, and systematically crush it all up into a mealy like substance, and now i'm gonna use it for my soil, just thought i'd share, the end product is full of little ground up shiny shell specks.
We'll see how it works.
What are your guys thoughts?
@DonTesla , @Pattahabi
the dons in particular since you guys are using the stuff a lot
I believe me an pattahabi were talking about insect frass and chitin a while ago

Click to expand...

damnit i was just at the supply today! i know they have to have that chicken insect feed, definitely picking some up! thanks!

cannakis said:

damnit i was just at the supply today! i know they have to have that chicken insect feed, definitely picking some up! thanks!

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no problem at all, I kinda just stumbled upon it, just keep in mind it does have probably a good amount of nutrients in it, and you already have a bunch of food in your soil, so if you add it, i'd do so sparingly, or simply add more bulk soil to mix with it, either way.

greasemonkeymann said:

no problem at all, I kinda just stumbled upon it, just keep in mind it does have probably a good amount of nutrients in it, and you already have a bunch of food in your soil, so if you add it, i'd do so sparingly, or simply add more bulk soil to mix with it, either way.

Click to expand...

cool thanks for the advice. yeah... just made the New soil yesterday with sand clay ash charcoal fotrst mpuld hc sd manure and man i fucking love it! looksgreat and smells amazing.

haha honestly i am afraid to mix the other Hot soils i haveade with it... do you think i should mix them togetger? i dont want to waste the pile of shit because theres alot of money in those two shit pile soils. maybe just use it outside...

oh and just pulled a girl because rust spots, too high ph, and damnit boy that bottom soil in the pot Reeked! thank GOD i cut it with forest mould, otherwise everything would be fucked. thanks gor the help Brother.

cannakis said:

cool thanks for the advice. yeah... just made the New soil yesterday with sand clay ash charcoal fotrst mpuld hc sd manure and man i fucking love it! looksgreat and smells amazing.

haha honestly i am afraid to mix the other Hot soils i haveade with it... do you think i should mix them togetger? i dont want to waste the pile of shit because theres alot of money in those two shit pile soils. maybe just use it outside...

oh and just pulled a girl because rust spots, too high ph, and damnit boy that bottom soil in the pot Reeked! thank GOD i cut it with forest mould, otherwise everything would be fucked. thanks gor the help Brother.

Click to expand...

Like I said before, what I would do with your old soil is buy a big bale of promix HP, and cut the entire batch with that, and cover it, and let it sit until 2015. I'm being serious.
Try to remember it's REALLY hard to mix up an organic soil mix and use it immediately, unless you are using super light amendments, and even still. Let them sit for two months, turning the soil every 10-15 days depending on your ambient temps, with all that manure it'll probably get pretty steamy in there.

cannakis said:

cool thanks for the advice. yeah... just made the New soil yesterday with sand clay ash charcoal fotrst mpuld hc sd manure and man i fucking love it! looksgreat and smells amazing.

haha honestly i am afraid to mix the other Hot soils i haveade with it... do you think i should mix them togetger? i dont want to waste the pile of shit because theres alot of money in those two shit pile soils. maybe just use it outside...

oh and just pulled a girl because rust spots, too high ph, and damnit boy that bottom soil in the pot Reeked! thank GOD i cut it with forest mould, otherwise everything would be fucked. thanks gor the help Brother.

Click to expand...

And damn son, seems like you are constantly mixing soil, you just like to play in the dirt or what?