Worm juice to feed toms and cucumbers

Hi.

I also have a wormery and last year I decided to try feeding my toms only on the worm juice, diluted 1:10 with water. It was not a success.

All seemed to be going OK, then some of the flowers started falling off. At this point, I took a long look at the plants and realised that they didn't look as vigorous as they should. I wasn't too sure, because I only grow these once a year and I've only done it two times before. Anyway, I decided to go back to the usual tomato feed and after about two weeks the difference was amazing. The plants had started to green up and were putting on loads of growth. The flowers stopped falling and the toms went on to produce a pretty reasonable crop (Sungold and Gardeners Delight), although my experiment had held them back.

I wouldn't say don't give it a go but perhaps you should not feed all of your toms exclusively with worm juice - try it on some (a quarter, a half?) but be prepared to switch to 'normal' feed when you see a real difference in the progress of the plants.

I've yet to discover what the composition of worm juice actually is (but then it must vary a lot because we each put different amounts of stuff in the wormery) and I've never found out exactly what plants benefit from the worm juice feed.

Let us know what you decide and how you get on.

Have you got a poundland store near you.............

No i don't put onions or citrus in my worm farm either, apparently it gives them indigestion!

I am not sure what i should be feeding them to make the liquid better for the plants - i would have thought that a high amount of nitrogen would have worked well but according to the above posts i is not as simple as that.

If you want to make your own liquid feed, pack some Bocking-type (or other) comfrey leaves into a bucket with some nettles, add water, keep stirring and let the brew settle for a week or two. Smells terrible but I believe it is good. For a commercial feed, I am now on Maxicrop.

If your worm juice is anything like my next door neighbours you probably won`t want to be in a warm greenhouse with it.

Honks sumfin orrible it does.

Curious. My worms juice hardly smells at all. :happy:

One thing I remembered - the manufacturers recommend giving the worms an occasional feed of pellets (that they sell, of course) that has both food and lime. This might suggest that the compost and juice is on the acidic side. I don't have a tester, so I can't tell. Might be worth considering when choosing what plants to feed with it.

I can attest to how stinky liquid worm poo is. I bought some commercially made stuff and it was bottled in recycled plastic soda bottles. One bottle fell off a high shelf and smashed onto the garage floor. After 3 good scrubbings with lots of detergent, the garage still reeks of worm poo. Hopefully lots of summer airings should eventually get rid of residual smells.

My commercial worm wee is a 2:1:1 strength, so homemade can vary widely. Worm wee also hovers around 7.0 pH, which is neutral to slightly 'sweet'. I've never seen anyone recommend only worm wee, but I have seen it recommend in combination with manure and compost feeding of soil, then worm wee  to help keep levels topped up.

That stinky? Well, there you go. I'm just in from the back garden having poured some juice into a plastic water bottle - absolutely no smell that I could detect, honest.

I leave an open container under the worm farms drain tap because it leaks. I've decided I like it that way - I was forever forgetting to empty the juice out and I once I discovered lots of drowned worms in the base. Since then I just let it drip and I empty the drip container when it gets near full.

What do you mean by "My commercial worm wee is a 2:1:1 strength"? I've always read about a dilution of 1:10 with water - where does 2:1:1 come in, or are you talking nutrients?

Thanks for the info.

The neighbour stores his in 2ltr plastic milk bottles and it is left fermenting for weeks so there might be some anaerobic bacteria to blame for the smell.
He uses it outdoors on days with a favourable wind direction.