LoStDots25
Active Member
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10530-006-9020-x
My indoor bed grow is absolutely crawling with composting worms and micro fauna. They seem to be amassing in the top 2" - 3". I do very light waterings every day to keep top soil alive and alive this bitch is.
After every watering some type of dark fast moving mites, some type of fast earwig creature slightly larger than the mites, and some extremely small white moving fast arachnid or insect swarm the surface of the soil. I'm talking 10-15 per square inch and many times more if you disturb the top soil. Worms can be seen actively moving at any given time and during waterings they go nuts.
I was very pleased with myself. The worms were added on purpose and the micro fauna all seemed to be predatory in nature due to their fast movement and the fact that I have never seen one touch the main stem let alone a bud. Any top dressing I applied was gone within a few days and I took this as a great thing.
Recently the worms, and smaller creatures to a lesser extent, have started to worry me. The roots in the top soil look pretty beat up. Long, stringy and not the bright fuzzy white you would hope to see but instead almost tan. They look like they are actively trying to colonize the top 2-3 inches but can't. Beneath that point the soil is tightly knit together with roots so I assume the worms are largely staying towards the topsoil of the container which is normal red wriggler behavior as I understand it anyways.
Are the worms beating up my roots and eating the myco hyphae? If so, is the benefit that the worms provide worth the expense of my myco-sphere in the top soil? Do the mycos colonize the deeper soil that the worms seem to avoid leaving me with dual zone benefits of mycos in the lower 10" and macro fauna in the top soil? I'm very interested dig into this bed and see the stratification of layers.
The link I posted states, "the presence of earthworms tends to increase the metabolic quotient indicating a shift to a smaller, more active microbial community." Do we want this? Is a soil lacking in fungi but abundant in other type of soil life preferable to a soil devoid of any type of fauna that could potentially feed on the myco hyphae?
I've been actively removing the worms these past few days. I still think the smaller creatures roaming around could be a good thing. I haven't seen more than a handful of fungus gnats which have plagued me on previous grows and that's in an organic grow, watering every day, organic teas and top dresses, running at 84f / 60-65% RH (VPD). Like I said earlier I believe the mites and such to be predatory in nature and would like to keep them. If they ineract with the roots and hyphae in any way it would at least be at a much smaller scale than what the worms are capable of.
Sorry for the long winded post but I would really like y'alls opions. I'm new to all this and am on my first organic bed grow. I've run into some nutrient lockouts but I just figured the first cycle through this bed would be finicky considering all the shit I keep throwing at it. I'm hoping it tames out next grow after it cycles out. I'm happy with where I'm at now but really just want to know if the worms are maybe just making my bed too active. Maybe I should switch over to the slower myco driven biosphere instead of the faster worm driven biosphere?
Thanks for reading!
My indoor bed grow is absolutely crawling with composting worms and micro fauna. They seem to be amassing in the top 2" - 3". I do very light waterings every day to keep top soil alive and alive this bitch is.
After every watering some type of dark fast moving mites, some type of fast earwig creature slightly larger than the mites, and some extremely small white moving fast arachnid or insect swarm the surface of the soil. I'm talking 10-15 per square inch and many times more if you disturb the top soil. Worms can be seen actively moving at any given time and during waterings they go nuts.
I was very pleased with myself. The worms were added on purpose and the micro fauna all seemed to be predatory in nature due to their fast movement and the fact that I have never seen one touch the main stem let alone a bud. Any top dressing I applied was gone within a few days and I took this as a great thing.
Recently the worms, and smaller creatures to a lesser extent, have started to worry me. The roots in the top soil look pretty beat up. Long, stringy and not the bright fuzzy white you would hope to see but instead almost tan. They look like they are actively trying to colonize the top 2-3 inches but can't. Beneath that point the soil is tightly knit together with roots so I assume the worms are largely staying towards the topsoil of the container which is normal red wriggler behavior as I understand it anyways.
Are the worms beating up my roots and eating the myco hyphae? If so, is the benefit that the worms provide worth the expense of my myco-sphere in the top soil? Do the mycos colonize the deeper soil that the worms seem to avoid leaving me with dual zone benefits of mycos in the lower 10" and macro fauna in the top soil? I'm very interested dig into this bed and see the stratification of layers.
The link I posted states, "the presence of earthworms tends to increase the metabolic quotient indicating a shift to a smaller, more active microbial community." Do we want this? Is a soil lacking in fungi but abundant in other type of soil life preferable to a soil devoid of any type of fauna that could potentially feed on the myco hyphae?
I've been actively removing the worms these past few days. I still think the smaller creatures roaming around could be a good thing. I haven't seen more than a handful of fungus gnats which have plagued me on previous grows and that's in an organic grow, watering every day, organic teas and top dresses, running at 84f / 60-65% RH (VPD). Like I said earlier I believe the mites and such to be predatory in nature and would like to keep them. If they ineract with the roots and hyphae in any way it would at least be at a much smaller scale than what the worms are capable of.
Sorry for the long winded post but I would really like y'alls opions. I'm new to all this and am on my first organic bed grow. I've run into some nutrient lockouts but I just figured the first cycle through this bed would be finicky considering all the shit I keep throwing at it. I'm hoping it tames out next grow after it cycles out. I'm happy with where I'm at now but really just want to know if the worms are maybe just making my bed too active. Maybe I should switch over to the slower myco driven biosphere instead of the faster worm driven biosphere?
Thanks for reading!
