CAN VERMICOMPOST OBTAINED FROM EISENIA FOETIDA FED BY NUTSHELL AND COW MANURE MIX BE AN ORGANIC FERTILIZER?

In this study vermicompost was produced by Eisenia foetida using mix of certain ratios of nut shell (NS) and cow manure in lab conditions. The experiments were conducted according to randomized complete block design with three replicates in a lab in Sakarya, Turkey for 4 months. Five different treatments (NS90M10; NS75M25; NS50M50; NS25M75; NS10M90) were tried in special containers with lids together with 250 Eisenia foetida for each trial. Distilled water was used for humidification. pH, EC, organic matter, total humic+fulvic acid, total nitrogen, total organic carbon, total P, K, Mg and Ca were analysed for each 5 trials at the end of the experiment. The highest average N, P, K, Ca and Mg percentages were obtained as 1.75, 0.38, 1.12, 1.7 and 0.38%, respectively in the trial with the highest ratio of cow manure (NS10M90), and the lowest of these measurements were obtained in the trial with the highest ratio shell (NS90M10). The average pH, EC, and humidity were found to be 7.64; 964.51 μS/cm and 67.73%, respectively. The highest organic matter content (41.11%) was obtained from NS90M10, and the highest humic+fulvic acid content (25.89%) was obtained from the trial NS10M90. The C:N ratio which is desired to be low for vermicompost was obtained as highest from NS90M10 trial, and lowest from NS10M90 as 101.67 and 19.43, respectively. As the cow manure added to the mixture increased, all of the analysis results increased except total organic C, C: N ratio and organic matter. The differences between each parameter were found to be statistically significant (p