Just adding to Tim's "stealthy" input Two of my colleagues pursued this line of thought and we found something interesting. Just as Tim put it nutrients cannot be gained because of worms, in fact you could lose some N through volatilization. The biggest gift we found was that worms add their intestinal microflora to the output. It increases the number of a certain bacteria (not yet identified) that become antagonistic to typical soil pathogens - in our case we tried Rhizoctinia, Fusarium, Rolstonia and Xanthomonas. The live extract - indicating bacteria and other micro-organisms present seem to reduce the growth of these two pathogens Rhizoctinia and Fusarium. We are collecting more information soon.
b.t.w has anyone quantified how much total N (as g/kg of compost) is lost when biogas compost is converted to vermicompost? Any indication to this will be welcome. Chanakya -- Dr. Hoysall Chanakya Centre for Sustainable Technologies (Assoc. Faculty at Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transport and Urban Planning (CiSTUP) and Centre for Contemporary Studies) Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012 ph 91-80-2293 3046; fax-91 80 2360 0683 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. _______________________________________________ Digestion mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/digestion_lists.bioenergylists.org for more information about digestion, see Beginner's Guide to Biogas http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/ and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
