Worm Castings

We wanted to share why worm castings are so important for your garden!

Worm castings, also known as vermicompost, is a soil amender that does a great job of returning used up, old garden soil back to its former glory! Worm castings are teeming with beneficial bacteria and microbes that the plants are going to love!

Depending on what the worms are eating, your castings will have a similar chemical composition to their food. For example, if you add a lot of crushed eggshells to your worms' diet, their castings will be higher in calcium than a farm that didn't get those eggshells. It gives the saying, "you are what you eat" a whole new meaning.  

 

Using Castings

One of the best parts about worm castings is there's a bunch of different ways you can use it! You can sprinkle them right on top of your garden bed or house plant and water it right in. Another method is to mix it into your container or bed in a soil mixture. You could also brew the castings and create liquid nutrients known as worm tea, which we will cover in a different post. 

Worm castings are known to help with root development, increasing fruit size and yield, pest control, and drought conditions. Castings are great to use in a seed starting mixture because the microbes and bacteria are extremely beneficial in helping new plants get started.  

Castings are also great for getting your raised or in-ground bed ready for this season, and every gardening season to come! Adding in worm castings revitalizes soil by adding in living microbes, beneficial bacteria, and all natural nutrients giving your old, depleted soil new life! 

To get the most benefits from your castings, it's best to have no more than 10-20% of your soil contain worm castings.

Common Misconceptions

One thing I hear people say a lot is that worm castings are a great fertilizer. However, worm castings are not considered a fertilizer but rather a soil amendment! Soil amenders are added to existing soil and are used to improve the overall fertility, condition, and structure of the soil. 

Another common misconception is that worm castings are shelf stable for a long period of time. Since worm castings contain living organisms, it's technically alive. It is very important to use the castings as quickly as possible to get the most out of them. As soon as the worms are taken out of the castings, the microbes and bacteria will slowly start to die off until there is none left. This is known as degradation.  

So, if you're buying castings at your local store, keep in mind that those castings were harvested and bagged up who knows when before being shipped and delivered. You also don't know how long they've been sitting on the shelf. If you are buying castings in a store environment, there is a good chance that those castings will not be very fresh and filled with that microscopic life you want from your worm castings. For the freshest castings, your best bet is to start a worm farm or find a local worm farmer near you to buy some castings!

If you are interested in purchasing castings, please reach out via email, text, or give us a call and we can line up a time to get you some wonderful castings. During times of high demand, a wait list may be implemented to ensure we can get castings for everyone! 

Freshly Secoond sifted worm castings.