Bottling Leachate at the bottom of a Compost Bin? by: Pauly
Hi Robin,
Usually people ask me about bottling worm tea but not leachate so I want to make sure that you know the difference between leachate and worm tea.
Leachate is the liquid run-off at the bottom of a composting bin. Worm tea is the brewing of castings suspended in bubbling water to grow microorganisms.
I'm sure you already know this but just want to be clear. Here is a couple of links that distinguishes between the two:
I hope this helps you in deciding whether you really want to use/bottle the mystery liquid at the bottom of the worm bin.
Thanks for your question Robin :) ~Pauly
Aug 29, 2014 Rating
worm tea vs worm tea by: Dale Robinson
Just because you try something once and it did not work out doesn't make the process wrong. It was just wrong the way you did it.
We flood our worm bins frequently and the result is some of the best worm tea around. If you only flood the bin once a month you are of course going to get some bad stuff. By flooding frequently, the bad stuff does not have a chance to accumulate. It also gives you a chance to clean out the worm bin for a more healthy environment for the worms.
Okay, so now you wonder how this affects the health of the worms right? We have been getting some pretty good results there too. We had been getting a worm mass doubling time of about 12 days but recently we changed the feeding methods and the mass doubling is now about 8 days.
Needless to say, I'm having to kill off a lot of worms during this phase of product development. It is my goal to find a process that will bridge the gap between farm wastes and farm feeds with as much efficiency as possible. I think investing in some chickens might help...