Fertilize Your Plants With the Best Worm Castings

If you are ready to treat your soil and plants to a nutritious fertilizer, you should get a bag of worm castings. Worm castings have numerous advantages, and we have already discussed some of the best products on the market. However, if you require any additional information before making your purchase, please consult this guide.

What Are Worm Castings?

Put on your big boy/girl pants because the answer to this question may slightly gross you out. Worm castings are essentially worm poop. When earthworms eat compost, they excrete waste high in minerals and beneficial microbes. Also known as vermicast, these fertilizers are collected in a controlled environment via a process known as vermicomposting and 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 these organic products. As gross as it sounds, worm poop is great for growing healthy plants, and they are much better than chemical fertilizers.

How Do I 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 (additives for fillers)

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. However, 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 majorly 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 right 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. For example, if you have a large garden, a 30-pound bag will cover your soil area adequately. However, if you have a small home garden, you should choose smaller sizes.

What Are the Benefits of Worm Castings?

Increased organic nutrients for the soil

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 a little worm casting 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 gives you better soil structure and improved water retention. Worm casting acts as a glue that connects sand, silt, and clay sticks together. When this happens, your soil can retain up to 25,000 more gallons of water, which will help you decrease topsoil erosion and runoff.  

Long term nutritional provision

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.

To learn more about how to get started, Epic gardening is here to help:

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. 

Summary

The best fertilizers are gotten from organic sources, and worm castings are no different. We have already outlined some of the best worm castings in 2022 for you earlier in the guide; you can opt for any of them and start seeing results before the month runs out. So start giving your plants everything they need to survive and bloom today.