murderdude
Member
Before we get down to dirt, let me preface this;
I've been growing organics for a while now and I've always been interested in starting my own no till bed, but I live in a city and you need BIG pots for a no till bed. All i've got is a 3x3 tent.
That's what I used to think!
So I completed a screen of green organic run in 7gal smartpots about a month ago, and germed some new seeds.
Fast forward.. I had an impulse decision and bought two 20gal smartpots instead of 7s this time! I'm starting up a no til bed right now.
So anyway, let's talk about worms. I'm thinking about adding worms to the pots to help me cure transplant shock from the big move!
They've been shocked for 5 days, something I'm not used to dealing with at all! At most a day, but I let them get a little root bound because I was dealing with school, so I'm going to use worms to help provide aeration to my root mass, as well as use them to help decompose any dead or rotting root material that might be present from an unsuccessful transplant.
The type of worms I'm going for are called red wigglers, they're you're standard little earthworms. From reading a few threads, some people have said nightcrawlers are better for aeration but tend to.. "crawl" away at "night"...
So red wigglers or compost worms are really cool, and i'm sure they will provide aeration. Apparently, they can eat their weight in a day, and leave behind a ready supply of poops for my plants!
In addition, I've planted some white clover seeds along the top to help keep the top of the soil a little cooler so the worms can do their things. We'll see how it goes!
I have a number of amendments I use as a super soil base for the plants usually, which I did this time;
I also used some local awesome veggie mix as a major top dressing in the mounds (I'll get pics up later of the pots, I haven't added the worms yet).
But I'll have to start adding mulch dressings like barley or powdered malt barley, comfrey, alfalfa meal or alfalfa, and of course the cuttings from the plants.
If anyone has ANY suggestions or any experiences with indoor no till + worms I'd love to hear it! Let's discuss!
If anyone plans on arguing with me, i'm totally game for hearing your opinion, but let's just save a little time-
here are my talking points on a couple common arguments people have expressed:
a) they'll eat your roots
they don't eat my roots, they are decomposers, the bottom of the food chain, they will eat my dead roots if anything at all. Just look it up first and provide me with credible evidence or cited research, because I have looked it up and I can't find anything that says red wigglers will eat living plant matter.
b) worms will die and rot then pythium or something
I am fully aware of the risks involved but I am fully convinced I should try this out and just see what happens. I'm amending my soil now, and i've got a mortar and pestle that i used to grind up egg shells or anything else and the white dutch clover that I've planted as a cover crop should help keep the top layers of soil cooler for the worms.
I've been growing organics for a while now and I've always been interested in starting my own no till bed, but I live in a city and you need BIG pots for a no till bed. All i've got is a 3x3 tent.
That's what I used to think!
So I completed a screen of green organic run in 7gal smartpots about a month ago, and germed some new seeds.
Fast forward.. I had an impulse decision and bought two 20gal smartpots instead of 7s this time! I'm starting up a no til bed right now.
So anyway, let's talk about worms. I'm thinking about adding worms to the pots to help me cure transplant shock from the big move!
They've been shocked for 5 days, something I'm not used to dealing with at all! At most a day, but I let them get a little root bound because I was dealing with school, so I'm going to use worms to help provide aeration to my root mass, as well as use them to help decompose any dead or rotting root material that might be present from an unsuccessful transplant.
The type of worms I'm going for are called red wigglers, they're you're standard little earthworms. From reading a few threads, some people have said nightcrawlers are better for aeration but tend to.. "crawl" away at "night"...
So red wigglers or compost worms are really cool, and i'm sure they will provide aeration. Apparently, they can eat their weight in a day, and leave behind a ready supply of poops for my plants!
In addition, I've planted some white clover seeds along the top to help keep the top of the soil a little cooler so the worms can do their things. We'll see how it goes!
I have a number of amendments I use as a super soil base for the plants usually, which I did this time;
I also used some local awesome veggie mix as a major top dressing in the mounds (I'll get pics up later of the pots, I haven't added the worms yet).
But I'll have to start adding mulch dressings like barley or powdered malt barley, comfrey, alfalfa meal or alfalfa, and of course the cuttings from the plants.
If anyone has ANY suggestions or any experiences with indoor no till + worms I'd love to hear it! Let's discuss!
If anyone plans on arguing with me, i'm totally game for hearing your opinion, but let's just save a little time-
here are my talking points on a couple common arguments people have expressed:
a) they'll eat your roots
they don't eat my roots, they are decomposers, the bottom of the food chain, they will eat my dead roots if anything at all. Just look it up first and provide me with credible evidence or cited research, because I have looked it up and I can't find anything that says red wigglers will eat living plant matter.
b) worms will die and rot then pythium or something
I am fully aware of the risks involved but I am fully convinced I should try this out and just see what happens. I'm amending my soil now, and i've got a mortar and pestle that i used to grind up egg shells or anything else and the white dutch clover that I've planted as a cover crop should help keep the top layers of soil cooler for the worms.