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worm castings...

Worm castings should be very concentrated and highly available, so they can definitely be over applied.  Did you buy the wet castings or were they dried/powdered?
 
:think:  My worm castings dont burn plants.... only make them thrive!!! :party:   However, if you pasteurize them first... that is even better!!! ;)
 
The only way you can over-use worm castings is if you have too high a ratio as a soil component.  This is not to do with the nutrient content... its a problem with the consistency (it retains water in unpredictable ways... ...causes boggy soil under the surface and dries out too quickly on top.) 
 
However, I have a ButchT clone growing in its own personal raised bed filled with pure worm castings. It is doing very very well.
 
Dried?... I hope not... it would be devoid of life D-:  Do you mean to say that they just were not liquid?  They should be blackish/very dark brown, moist, and look like little granules... like pelletized fertilizer.. only soil-like/mushy... soft and slightly clay-like.
 
How hot the worm castings are depends on what the worms are fed, if they have lot's of bedding the castings will have a lot more carbon and a lower nutrient value.  If they're fed a lot, their castings can be very nutrient dense as worms concentrate nutrients by a 7 fold or greater.  So it really depends on the source, it sounds like you're using the wet castings Noah which are usually more forgiving.  I've seen many customers pics of scorched plants after planting seedlings in pure castings though.  When I use to buy "Camel Joe's" worm casting blends it was recommended to use 1 tbsp as a top dressing weekly, which is the general guide I start with and adjust from there.
 
The other issue is that castings are very water soluble and will leach nutrients readily, which is part of what makes them so good as fertilizer.  So it's an expensive medium to use a lot at a time as it can lead bleeding their nutes deeper into the soil table where the roots don't grow or down the drain for indoor growers.  That's why a lot of people use them to make tea, then apply that as you have the added bonus of multiplying the microbes.  Another benefit of tea is that most pathogens will be out competed without the risk of over-heating during pasteurization and killing beneficial's.  Like all organic methods, there's a million variations with neither always being right or wrong as it depends on all the variables introduced by working with live organisms.  Not nearly as simple a chem-ag, but much more rewarding.
 
Castings do regularly come dried, there isn't as much microbial action but unless they were baked they won't be devoid of life.  To save of shipping costs they are sometimes air dried, with the microbes going dormant.
 
My castings are fed a very diverse diet:
 
lawn clippings, leaves, spent coffee grounds with filter, newspapers, cardboard, kitchen scraps (vegetable), manure, mulch, fruits (other than those containing citrus), flowers, gypsum, lime, cottonseed meal, kelp meal, used potting soil, compost, weeds from the garden, beer, compost tea, left-over coffee, and water....   among other exotic things like soils from various locations, azomite, and fresh fish emulsion soaked leaves.
 
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Sounds balanced enough and similar to my bin (except they get a lot of whey and fermented veggies as well, no lawn clippings though) but depending on the ration of nutrients (scraps, green leaves, etc) to carbon (newspaper, cardboard, filters, dry leaves, etc) it'll effect not only it's physical characteristic's but also how hot it is.
 
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