- Finished, sifted castings
The picture here is of finished, dried and sifted castings which are the bomb when it comes to soil amendment. You know that means good, right?
Anyway, the longer you let your worms work your material the more percentage of castings are going to be in your finished material.
For someone who is a home composter producing product for themselves to use in their own gardens, you would not need to process the product to this point. However, for use in a seed starting mix, this product is perfect as it is so fine.
Now for the reason of this post. I had a comment left on one of my YouTube videos about a statement I made about the worms and their castings. The comment was made in reference to worms eating their own cast. This is something I have read from the experts and not concluded on my own.
Quote from Kelly Slocum – “expert”: “Let’s debunk this myth that worm castings are bad for worms. Worms need the most biologically active environment they can find in order to grow at maximum. The cast of the worm can be as much as six times MORE biologically active than is the OM [organic matter] they ingest. As such, castings are beneficial in the system since they increase the microbial activity. In fact, worms will reingest their own castings over and over again, even in the presence of a rich food source. Some of the most productive worm beds in the world are maintained by removing castings just once per year. Now, having said that, castings can also be very dense. If you get a castings build up low in the bin it can sometimes restict air movement. You’ll want to watch bin conditions and, if you find the worms are reacting to low O2 levels, clean out the castings.
For the longest time, when I was new at worm bin composting, I was under the impression that the cast was toxic to worms. I now know this to not be true.