Let's talk about worms and No-till ROLS!

Before we get down to dirt, let me preface this;
I've been growing organics for a while now and I've always been interested in starting my own no till bed, but I live in a city and you need BIG pots for a no till bed. All i've got is a 3x3 tent.
That's what I used to think!
So I completed a screen of green organic run in 7gal smartpots about a month ago, and germed some new seeds.

Fast forward.. I had an impulse decision and bought two 20gal smartpots instead of 7s this time! I'm starting up a no til bed right now.

So anyway, let's talk about worms. I'm thinking about adding worms to the pots to help me cure transplant shock from the big move!
They've been shocked for 5 days, something I'm not used to dealing with at all! At most a day, but I let them get a little root bound because I was dealing with school, so I'm going to use worms to help provide aeration to my root mass, as well as use them to help decompose any dead or rotting root material that might be present from an unsuccessful transplant.

The type of worms I'm going for are called red wigglers, they're you're standard little earthworms. From reading a few threads, some people have said nightcrawlers are better for aeration but tend to.. "crawl" away at "night"...
So red wigglers or compost worms are really cool, and i'm sure they will provide aeration. Apparently, they can eat their weight in a day, and leave behind a ready supply of poops for my plants!
In addition, I've planted some white clover seeds along the top to help keep the top of the soil a little cooler so the worms can do their things. We'll see how it goes!

I have a number of amendments I use as a super soil base for the plants usually, which I did this time;
I also used some local awesome veggie mix as a major top dressing in the mounds (I'll get pics up later of the pots, I haven't added the worms yet).
But I'll have to start adding mulch dressings like barley or powdered malt barley, comfrey, alfalfa meal or alfalfa, and of course the cuttings from the plants.

If anyone has ANY suggestions or any experiences with indoor no till + worms I'd love to hear it! Let's discuss!

If anyone plans on arguing with me, i'm totally game for hearing your opinion, but let's just save a little time-
here are my talking points on a couple common arguments people have expressed:

a) they'll eat your roots
they don't eat my roots, they are decomposers, the bottom of the food chain, they will eat my dead roots if anything at all. Just look it up first and provide me with credible evidence or cited research, because I have looked it up and I can't find anything that says red wigglers will eat living plant matter.

b) worms will die and rot then pythium or something
I am fully aware of the risks involved but I am fully convinced I should try this out and just see what happens. I'm amending my soil now, and i've got a mortar and pestle that i used to grind up egg shells or anything else and the white dutch clover that I've planted as a cover crop should help keep the top layers of soil cooler for the worms.

I don't think they'll be eating your roots if there's enough plant matter on the surface for them to munch on, red wrigglers are top feeders after all...
And they eat dead worms ( )
Seems like a decent enough goal....

murderdude said:

a) they'll eat your roots
they don't eat my roots, they are decomposers, the bottom of the food chain, they will eat my dead roots if anything at all. Just look it up first and provide me with credible evidence or cited research, because I have looked it up and I can't find anything that says red wigglers will eat living plant matter.

b) worms will die and rot then pythium or something
I am fully aware of the risks involved but I am fully convinced I should try this out and just see what happens. I'm amending my soil now, and i've got a mortar and pestle that i used to grind up egg shells or anything else and the white dutch clover that I've planted as a cover crop should help keep the top layers of soil cooler for the worms.

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NAH man, maybe in the hydro section they'd say that, but we all know the importance of worms in a grow, damn near all of us have worms in our soil. I don't think any of us would say that.
also you WANT native nigthcrawlers, they wont escape as long as the temps are good, mine have been in every grow I've had for yrs

greasemonkeymann said:

NAH man, maybe in the hydro section they'd say that, but we all know the importance of worms in a grow, damn near all of us have worms in our soil. I don't think any of us would say that.
also you WANT native nigthcrawlers, they wont escape as long as the temps are good, mine have been in every grow I've had for yrs

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Well the plants certainly have perked up after 2 days. I wouldn't say it's all the worms but I certainly can say they didn't slow it down at all; I had to find top dressings, so I used some big comfrey leaves, some malted barley, egg shells, kelp meal as well as planted some white dutch clover. I'm gonna layer a bit more biomass in the morning and then give another inch or two of my soil mix, and top it off some sort of straw I think.
Temps between 69-80 are good for the nightcrawlers?

murderdude said:

Well the plants certainly have perked up after 2 days. I wouldn't say it's all the worms but I certainly can say they didn't slow it down at all; I had to find top dressings, so I used some big comfrey leaves, some malted barley, egg shells, kelp meal as well as planted some white dutch clover. I'm gonna layer a bit more biomass in the morning and then give another inch or two of my soil mix, and top it off some sort of straw I think.
Temps between 69-80 are good for the nightcrawlers?

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if they are natives they'll be fine with the "normal" temps
reds like a lil cooler temps, but they are resilent, my bin has gotten up to 106f and down as far as 31f
so as long as it's deep enough, and covered/kept moist, they tend to be ok for most circumstances, but they are sorta like plants, if its hot? they need good moisture, if it's cold? they need cover.

Hmmm... a bag of EWC resulted in worms within my bins.

Technically I could do this as well.

Or make a worm bin.

My question is, why no till? Also will it hurt the worms to break up rootballs for recycling?

Flaming Pie said:

Hmmm... a bag of EWC resulted in worms within my bins.

Technically I could do this as well.

Or make a worm bin.

My question is, why no till? Also will it hurt the worms to break up rootballs for recycling?

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As i understand it...'no till' helpz to preserve the fragile fungal network that developz in pots, the idea is to layer nutrientz on top. It also doesnt disturb the worm network...but it will not hurt the wormz if you break up the rootball...

However...

Do you really want to..? I dunno about you but im sick of reading about another worm attack cos a gardener decided to piss off the colony and angry wormz rose up and took over a part of the neighborhood..but hey..im not telling ya what to do...

Flaming Pie said:

Hmmm...
..My question is, why no till? ..?

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No tills also rock for flexibility..

For ex.
You could run 35 small clones one round, then 4 indicas the next, then 1 giant Sativa all in the same "bed", without plucking a stem out, with easier "sandbox style" watering, and less re-inoculating too, not to mention extra root room and soil used helps cut veg time Down a good 7-10 days
Sme IG guys say 14, that's a stretch perhaps but definite speed increase!
Not that the fast-and-lush-style is necessarily the best format for flavour unlocking, as I think stress-testing pushing your minerals is best for that, but if yield and speed is a goal, no till is retarded .. Crazy flavour still possible, of course, just saying that speed and yield and ease are their strong points..

Plus yeah, if you have a solid herd of fungi pre-established every time in the no till (single cell-wide, long strands, like giant roots already in the soil that can tap into the harder/hardest substances) then you'll be breaking down all your bones/shells/rocks instantly and with ease, and really tappin into your slow release nutes, the ones specifically needed for a good, steady flowering

A no till on wheels is bad ass

Flaming Pie said:

Hmmm... a bag of EWC resulted in worms within my bins.

Technically I could do this as well.

Or make a worm bin.

My question is, why no till? Also will it hurt the worms to break up rootballs for recycling?

Click to expand...

What's a worm bin

SG420 said:

What's a worm bin

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A bin you keep worms in and then you feed them raw greens, eggshells and banana peels for them to eat digest and poop out as fertilizer.

I love my worm factory 360 but you can easily get away with a bigass smartpot or plastic bin full of worms. If you are growing in a small space you don't have to do no til. I have only a couple tote bins for recycling my harvested root balls and then I simply add fresh EWC plus various amendments and just let it sit for 30 days. It's not no till because I start with using small pots & transplant up to 10g for flowering again. It's so easy & pretty much water only. I add a couple of jobes organic spikes just before bloom phase & that feeds them through to harvest. I give them one or 2 AACTs during the entire grow to keep things poppin but that's about all you need once your soil has been recycled a few times. It gets better with age