Vermicompost, while being a high nutrient fertilizer, I have found only one major nusiance when using it. Stray seeds that do not get consumed by the worms can germinate with your intended crop and cause weeds or renegade plant sprouts that will adulterate your intended crop. My first attempt to solve this problem was to put my finished castings in my solar oven and heat it to a sufficient temperature to pasteurize the compost. Unfortunately this also destroyed benificial microbes that I had to re-establish by infecting pasteurized compost with live soil additions that also added weed seeds to the mix.

After looking at the situation from all perspectives that I could reconize, I now use two additional procedures. I powder my dehydrated worm winter ration and use the solar oven to cook the fresh scraps and organic matter that I use for worm feed to eliminate any unwanted seed germination in the finished compost. By feeding only pulverized, solar pasteurized and cooked kitchen scraps, I achieve seed sterile/microbe active fertile compost with maximum nutrition value for the vermiculture. The additional time spent prepping the feed is far less time and energy consuming than weeding the garden.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 20, 2001

Answers

I once met an advanced composter that said when composting be sure to not let the temperature go above 150. 150 kills weed seeds and unwanted microbials, but it takes 160 to kill a bunch of microbials that you want to keep.

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), September 21, 2001.

Paul,

Thats why I only solar cook the fresh veggies used for feed and not the finished compost. It pre kills any tomato, pepper or whatever seeds so that the worms will consume them as decayed matter. I always keep my worm beds at a temperature range of 75 to 90 degrees F., maintaining the temp range with ventilation piping inside the bins that utilize forced air circulation to control temperature and eliminate Co2 accumulations.

I remember as a youngster, trying to start some bait worms in a non ventilated steel drum. Mixed a wheelbarrow of worms and humus with a load of fresh green cow pies. Hope I never see (or smell) a worm "cookout" like that again. With my current experience in vermiculture, I figure that drum probaly got close to 200 degrees. Needless to say , while improving my current setups I remembered that failure from 30 years ago quite often. :>)

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 21, 2001.