Wormery Lower Level: Worms & Compost
Image by London Permaculture via Flickr

Worm compost is the perfect fertilizer if you choose to have a bountiful and lush vegetable garden. The worm castings (worm poop) that the worms produce is very rich in nutrients and is great for the garden and the plants love them. The earthworms, specifically redworms. It works like this, the red wigglers are given organic matter for them to eat which may be fruit and vegetable waste, manure and other organic waist such as dead plant matter around your home. When the redworms eat it, their natural body processes poop the waste called castings. These earthworm castings can be used to enrich top soil and potting and in fact with any of your plants. Worm castings do not smell bad at all, in fact they smell like freshly tilled garden top soil.

Vermicomposting (Earthworm composting) is known to be the way of nature recycling its resources. The worm turn compost not only improves your top soil, but also enables it to retain moisture and in the end all your house plants will be stronger and better able to resist disease. earthworm castings also assists in repelling pests too so it actually serves multiple purposes.

Here is the way red wigglers help is by assisting with the breaking down of organic material such as vegetable scrap, banana peels, coffee grounds and even crushed eggshells and turning it into valuable earthworm castings that is mixed in with your soil. Some folks even use grass clippings, leaves and manure in the composting process that also help in improving the texture of your top soil. After your garden as grown, or even plants in pots, the minerals and nutritional value of the potting soil is used up, and it needs to be enriched again or the location ceases to be beneficial for growing anything. The only thing that should not be used in the worm composting process is meat, dairy products,cooking oil,acid foods such as orange peels.

By using earthworm castings it prevents you from having to purchase fertilizer at the store, saving your hard earned money, but it doesn’t stop there. It is also a natural insect repellent which will eliminate your need of buying any chemicals to put on the plants. It is already known that the pesticides in use today are actually harmful to people, and all chances that we have of eliminating their use should be taken. Would you use any chemicals and pesticides on your lawn were your kids play?

As we work toward becoming a “green” world, worm composting is a great idea. It’s a great way to help in keeping so much garbage from making it into the landfills and those involved will actually be learning more about our environment. The use of earthworm castings goes back hundreds of years maybe even thousands. Fishermen love worm composting as well because it grows some nice size fishing worms.

Jack Pollard is a worm farmer enthusiast, and enjoys helping others get started in this amazing hobby. You can learn more about vermicomposting and using worm castings at his website Pollardworms.com

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Filed under: Compost • composter • gardening • home gardening

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