The color of castings

[tt]

also another way they get pure black casting is to use peat moss as a bedding . Some cheat and just put the worms thru on a short time frame and get a really nice black casting.

[Jay Blair]

Peat moss will make the castings black, but not real nutritious to the worms from what I hear.

Something els that I have done is saved the blood from slaghtering my chicken , rabbits and ocasional wild game to mix into the feed sludge.

The blood fed bins produce nice black castings and if its deer and rabbit blood in it will help deter those garden raiders if the castings are used outside I think.

My grandfather always froze bacgs of field dressing blood to scatter around his garden to "put the smell of death around it" as a means of naturally deterring the garden raiders.

[jimmy2s83]

Hey,
Just took a look at the castings the worms are producing in my new bin and they are all light brown? I have been putting coffee grounds in there mixed with bread, apple, and some skin from potatos. I really don't have any way to get rabbit or deer blood to put in there. Should I increase the amount of coffee grounds or try something else.
Jimmy
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[Jay Blair]

Try adding oak leaves if you can find any into the bins. The oak tanins will also darken the castings as the worms consume them.

[jimmy2s83]

OK,
I will add some Oak leaves. I also talked with my Mom and they have about 70lbs of Venison left in the freezer so the next time she makes some up she will save some of the blood for me to put in to help darken them.
Thanks once again.
Jimmy
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[mikej]

I sort of ended the experiment about a month ago but I am just now getting around to posting about it. It took longer than usual to process the bin, I guess because of cooler temperatures in the winter.

Anyway, it came out the way I expected. The castings from the bin with the cardboard bedding was brown and the castings from the newspaper bin was darker. I kept a third bin going at the same time. If this was a real scientific experiment the third bin would be called the control bin but in this case I think of it as the uncontrol bin because I used whatever I had in that bin. All three bins got roughly equal portions of kitchen scraps but the uncontrol bin also got coffee grounds and some bagged steer manure. The bedding in the uncontrol bin consisted of both cardboard and newspaper as well as shredded junk mail. The castings in the uncontrol bin were darker than the newspaper bin but not by much.

Another observation is that the cardboard bin was harder to maintain. The cardboard seemed to hold more water than the other beddings. When it got too wet it took longer to dry out and if I let it get too dry it was harder to get wet again. The water I added tended to run off the cardboard and down to the bottom of the bin. I had to really stir up the bin to get the cardboard wet and that was probably not good for the worms.

Also, the cardboard settled down more densely than the newspaper and it seemed like it was harder for the worms to move through it. Almost from the beginning there were fewer worms in the cardboard bin than in either of the other two.

The uncontrol bin had the most worms and seemed to do the best, as well as produce the best looking castings of the three. This seems to support what I keep hearing that a blend of bedding and feedstock provides the best environment for the worms.

[Jay Blair]

You reached similar results as I have about beddings and bin environments. Isn't experimentation fun and educational? ;D