So you just brought home your bag of top quality (meaning NH Worm Works) worm castings. Now What?
Healthy plants need healthy soils. Make sense. Here are the top 3 ways we use worm castings to build great soil and a bounty in the garden!
- In your Seed Starting Mix
- Add it to your Potting Soil
- Use it as a Top Dressing
1. Seed Starting Mix: get your plants off to their best start from day one
We use a soil blocker for many of our starts, so our seed starting mix needs to hold together well. We don't find store bought mix particularly helpful, so we make our own. Here our recipe:
- 3 parts peat moss
- 1 part perlite
- 1 part coarse sand
- 1 part garden soil
- 1 part worm castings
- 1/2 tsp garden lime per 7 quarts of mix (calculated as if each part above was 1 quart)
If you don't use a soil blocker, you are most likely going to use a lighter mix, like this one. In that case I would use approximately 3 quarts of worm castings to 16 quarts of seed starting mix, or between 15-20% by volume
2. Potting Soil: blend your castings into your potting mix
Same idea as above. Add your NH Worm Works castings in your potting mix in a ratio of 1:5. Most of the product you buy online or in a big box store does not have all that much life to it. You also want to purchase a mix without chemical fertilizers, which might be a temporary fix to get your plants to grow, but are not good for long term soil health. This is one of the main reasons we starting using vermicompost in our gardens.
3. Top Dressing: fertilize your existing plants with worm castings
Top or side dressing is simply scattering a handful of casting around the base of your already growing plant - no mixing required! It is important that if the plants are small that you scratch the castings into the surface of the ground, as they can be destroyed by UV light. As the plant gets watered the nutrients filter down into the soil and roots to feed the plant.
You really can't grow wrong using worm castings.
Unlike synthetic fertilizers, you don't have to worry about burning sensitive seedlings and negative effects on your soil. Depending on where you source it, compost is of widely varying quality and may have stuff in there you just don't want. With high-quality castings, you don't have to worry about any of that!
If you have any questions on how to use your castings, contact us here. We'd love to talk to you about worms and optimum soil health.