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The Best Worm Castings of 2024
Last updated: Mar 14, 2024Just like humans, plants thrive when they're well-nourished. Elevate your gardening game by incorporating worm castings into your soil. These fertilizers are a powerhouse of nutrients, containing essential elements like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which foster robust plant growth and high yields. By enriching your soil with worm castings, you're giving your plants the natural nutrition they crave for healthy roots and vibrant blooms. Embrace sustainable gardening practices and bid farewell to chemical fertilizers, as worm castings offer an eco-friendly alternative that promotes soil health and biodiversity. Explore our picks for reliable worm castings before you embark on your gardening journey. With Wiggle Worm leading the way, you can trust that you're getting the best worm castings for your garden, ensuring lush and thriving plants season after season.
- Best Overall: Wiggle Worm Worm Castings Shop Now ➔
- Great for Large Lawns: BRUT WORM FARMS Worm Castings Shop Now ➔
- Most Fresh Castings: plantonix Worm Bliss Worm Castings Shop Now ➔
- Best for Fruits and Veggies: VermisTerra Worm Castings Shop Now ➔
- Most Eco-Friendly: Simple Grow Worm Castings Shop Now ➔
View all ContentsThe Best Worm Castings
Best Overall
We’re sure you’d like to see your plants bloom and thrive. To ensure they do, you should get UNCO worm castings. This fertilizer is stacked with tons of nutrients that provide your plants with what they need slowly, unlike other products that do so only in the short run. In other words, applying a small amount of this fertilizer to your flowers or vegetables will result in beautiful growth and yield throughout their lifecycle. Available in a 4.5-pound bag, you’ll have enough all-natural, organic fertilizer for your large garden. These worm-casings are also odor-free, so you don’t have to worry about a bad smell just so your plants will grow. We’re giving this bag of worm castings are best overall slot for its great nutritional value, affordable price, and long-term focus.
Pros
- Feeds your plants over a long time
- Only a small amount required for results
- Perfect for both indoor and outdoor plants
Cons
- Using too much can attract root aphids
Great for Large Lawns
Gardeners who tend to large gardens will love the Brut worm casting. Why? Well, it comes in a big bag, and the worm castings are less than a week old, giving quality and quantity all in one place. The fertilizer also contains beneficial microbes, minerals, and nutrients. It provides long-term natural nourishment to both small and large soils. In addition, this non-toxic, odor-free product is suitable for both indoor and outdoor use.
This dark, rich and pure worm casting will make your plants thrive and bloom to their full potential. You can find this bag in 5, 12, or 30-pound bags, and you can bundle your purchase to get you 300 pounds of pure fertilizer goodness.
Pros
- Product is perfect for large gardens
- Worm castings are fresh
- High-quality fertilizer at a great price
Cons
- Fertilizer might contain more water than necessary
Most Fresh Castings
The best way to ensure that your plants will grow to their full potential is by using Dr. Verm’s worm casting. This fertilizer contains castings from worms that were fed an organic GMO-free diet and will condition your soil for optimal germination and root development.
If you are worried about your plant’s health, this product will help allay your fears. The microbes in this casting will nourish your plants, allow them to thrive even in harsh conditions, and help protect them from pests and diseases. Safe to say that this worm casting is a complete plant care product. Select from 5 different size options and enjoy!
Pros
- Will make your plants’ growth skyrocket
- Great for gardens, yards, and more
- Product is safe for all types of plants
Cons
- Easy to overfertilize with
Best for Fruits and Veggies
If your soil is unsuitable for planting and you’re looking for a viable solution, the VermisTerra worm casting is a good option. This product helps to improve your soil’s aeration and water retention. Plants grow faster, yield more, and taste better when grown in soil with this fertilizer. And because the product is non-toxic, it is safe for children, pets, and even pollinators. It also contains no fillers – only pure worm castings. Pick up this resealable bag for simple storage, convenient application, and plant health.
Pros
- Helps improve your soil structure
- Safe 100% organic fertilizer
- Filled with tons of nutrients and minerals
Cons
- Need to measure out when distributing
Most Eco-Friendly
We know chemical fertilizers can easily mess up plants, which is why we’re recommending the Simple Grow worm casting. This product doesn’t contain chemicals, fillers, additives, dirt, or stones. As a result, it is safe for all plants, farms, and garden soil. In addition, this nutrient-rich organic soil supplement contains beneficial microbes, powerful multivitamins, and trace minerals, all of which provide your plants with 100% natural nutrition. Pick up this 5-pound bag of pure worm castings that will be great for almost, if not all, of your garden variety plants.
Pros
- Will meet your plants’ soil requirements
- Very healthy and eco-friendly option
- Can use it for all types of plants
Cons
- The earthy smell may be unpleasant
Finding the Best Worm Castings: A Buyer's Guide
If you want to treat your soil and plants with nutritious fertilizer, you should get a bag of worm castings. Worm castings have numerous advantages over other fertilizers. To learn about those and worm castings generally, take a look at this helpful buying guide.
Worm castings are essentially worm manure. When earthworms eat compost, they excrete waste high in minerals and beneficial microbes. Also known as vermicast, this manure is collected in a controlled environment via a process known as vermicomposting and is used as a natural fertilizer for gardens, potted plants, flowers, and vegetables. Farmers and gardeners can improve soil aeration, water retention, plant yield, and plant growth with this organic product. Worm castings are great for growing healthy plants and are often much better than chemical fertilizers.
How to Pick the Right Worm Castings
Nutritional value
Before you purchase any worm casting, make sure it has the right nutritional value for both your soil and plants. Ideally, your worm casting should contain a healthy combination of trace minerals, enzymes, fungi, and microbes.
Organic composition
The best worm castings are pure and unfiltered. Some products use fillers like sand, dirt, and other manure to bulk up their packages, while others use chemical additives to make the fertilizer more potent. You want to get only pure, organic worm castings for your plants. Using pure worm castings instead of relying on harsh chemical fertilizers will ensure the best results for your soil and plants in the long term.
Moisture content
Another important factor you need to consider before getting worm casting is the moisture content. This is mainly affected by the production timeline of the product. For example, if your choice of worm casting has been sitting on a shelf for a long time, chances are the water level has reduced and become insufficient. Avoid such products. The ideal moisture content should be about 55%-70%.
Size
The size of your choice of worm castings package should be entirely determined by the size of your garden or farm. If you have a large garden, a 30-pound bag will cover your soil adequately. However, you should choose smaller sizes if you have a small home garden.
Benefits of Worm Castings
Increased organic nutrients
The best soil will contain 5% organic material. However, most fields have less than 1%, resulting in lifeless soil and, ultimately, limited plant growth. Worm castings add organic matter to your soil and potting mix, which serves as a food source for soil microbes.
Faster and improved plant growth
Worm castings are known to help with plant growth. In other words, adding some worm castings to a growing plant improves seed germination, allowing it to thrive and grow to its full potential.
Improved aeration, water retention, and soil structure
Another major benefit of worm casting is that it improves water retention and soil structure. Worm castings act as glue that connects sand, silt, and clay sticks together.
Long-term nutrition
Worm castings don’t just provide nutrients to your soil; they do it long-term. In other words, when you add vermicompost to your potting mix, it will remain active throughout the plant’s life cycle.
Stronger roots and plant health
Plants fed with worm castings have much stronger roots and general plant health than others. Their roots grow thicker and generally spread all over the surrounding soil to absorb nutrients.
Plant protection
Vermicompost has been known to protect plants and soil from several pathogens. For example, worm castings can protect plant seedlings from plant diseases caused by attacks of zoospores of common pathogens like Pythium.
Harvesting Your Own Worm Castings
While it’s certainly much easier to buy your worm castings online, you can create your own worm farm and harvest worm castings on your own. To do so, you’ll need to start with a worm bin or two. Luckily, worms don’t need a fancy set-up, so a plastic container will work as a worm bin just fine. After a while of feeding your worms, you’ll be able to harvest worm castings from your worms.
How to Use Worm Castings on Your Plants
Use only a pinch for seedlings
Seedlings already have everything they need to grow within them. So, if you use too much worm casting on them, you might suffocate the seed. The ideal move will be to add a pinch of worm casting to each seedling; you can also treat the soil with a small amount. Also, when transplanting them to your garden, add one or two teaspoons of vermicompost for optimal results.
Add a cup or two for full-grown plants
Full-grown plants need a lot more fertilizer and organic matter to blossom to their full potential. The best way to do that is by adding one to two cups of worm casting to the soil around the plants. Remember, sunlight kills the microbes in worm castings. So it is preferable to get the fertilizer into the soil instead of leaving it on the surface.
Make it into worm tea
If you intend to use worm castings for a large garden, you may end up spending more than you anticipated. One way to manage this is by making worm tea. This aerated tea can be applied as a spray over the lawn. You get to give your plants the required nutrients while saving money with it.
If you wish to learn about adding worm casting to your soil, check out this Youtube video by The Urban Harvest:
Summary
The best fertilizers are from organic sources, and worm castings are just that. We have already outlined some of the best worm castings in 2024 for you in this guide; you can opt for any of them and start seeing results before the month runs out. Start giving your plants everything they need to survive and bloom today.
People Also Asked
Can you use too many worm castings?
Yes, worm castings are organic fertilizers, and they will not affect your plants negatively unless you use them way too much. Ryan Farley, CEO of LawnStarter, says, "It's important to note, though, that it's difficult to overdo this type of fertilizer (worm casting), so you don't have to necessarily worry about harming your lawn by applying worm castings too frequently." Farley approves of worm casting and says, "I would generally recommend adding worm castings to plants and your lawn every three or so months."
Are worm castings better than compost?
Yes, worm castings make better fertilizers than compost. However, they are also more expensive and cannot be produced easily.
How much do worm castings cost?
If you buy worm casting in bulk, it can cost as little as 40 cents per pound. However, if you get them in small bags, you can pay as much as $5 per pound. The price varies depending on the manufacturer, worm casting quality, moisture content, and other relevant factors.
Should I add worm castings in the winter?
Worm castings don't make your plants grow; they only help plants grow. Therefore, you don't want to apply it at times when your plants won't naturally grow.
Can I mimic worm castings with standard fertilizer?
You can somewhat mimic worm castings with standard fertilizer, but it likely will not be organic and all-natural and may not work as well as worm castings. Plants like worm castings because they improve the environment of the soil naturally; other fertilizers may not do so in the same way.
Article Contributors
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