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Worm Castings - Bueno?
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Posted by
ingrid_vc Z10 SoCal (
My Page) on
Fri, Nov 29, 13 at 15:48
| They didn't have Black Hen or Black Cow at Home Depot or the local garden supply store, but they did have Worm Castings which I hope is a good additive since it's a tad pricey. Any comments about this product? Thank you. Ingrid |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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- Posted by hoovb z9 Southern CA (My Page) on
Fri, Nov 29, 13 at 17:56
| Better to cultivate your own. Good stuff, but $$$$$$$$! |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| The flat area on which my house and garden are located was cut out of the hillside, with who knows how much topsoil removed at that time. Had I thought more and been less impatient to begin a garden I would (and should) have brought in topsoil, rototilled the grass into the ground rather than removing it and amended the soil with leaf litter and other organics before attempting any kind of planting. I suspect my garden now would be much different had I done that. Now I can only try to rectify the situation by top-dressing, and it's a real thrill when I see worms anywhere, and in some places I've never seen a single one. I've used alfalfa meal so far, and lately the droppings of wild bunnies who congregate in an area where I feed them, and also fallen leaves from a few trees, but I was hoping that the worm castings would be a special treat for the roses, especially the younger ones, and would hopefully help them to put on some growth through the winter and early spring. Ingrid |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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- Posted by titian1 Sydney, Australiae (My Page) on
Fri, Nov 29, 13 at 21:33
Ingrid, I've never used worm castings, but I know the thrill of seeing worms. The ground here was very compacted, and it wasn't till a few weeks after I'd prepared holes for the roses (with cow manure) that I saw any. Where did they come from?! I still find that, in areas where I haven't planted, there are very few or none, but I'm amazed at how quickly they've multiplied in the cultivated areas.
I visited someone's wonderful rose garden recently, and he top dresses every year with a mixture of spent mushroom compost and cow manure (about 1 part cow manure to 3 of mushroom). He spreads it about 4" thick. Spent mushroom compost is cheap here, and people will deliver it in quarter of a ton loads. I don't know if this might be a solution for you?
Trish |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| Titian, I don't know of any source for spent mushroom compost here but I'll check it out. I could get chicken manure locally but I understand it smells to high heaven. Since I already bought the worm castings compost I'll try it and will report back on the results, if any. Ingrid |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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- Posted by seil z6b MI (My Page) on
Sat, Nov 30, 13 at 11:00
| Muy bueno! Worms are a good way to tell if your soil is healthy and they are great for building good soil. The more I find when I dig the happier I am. I've never seen the castings for sale around here but would buy them if I did. |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| Trish, I looked up mushroom compost and it is indeed very inexpensive, but the shipping is $25.00! At that rate I can buy worm castings much more cheaply locally. seil, I'm glad you approve. If I apply enough of the worm castings, maybe that will encourage the local worms to go forth and multiply. Ingrid |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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- Posted by AquaEyes 7 New Brunswick, NJ (My Page) on
Sat, Nov 30, 13 at 12:29
| I always think of worm castings as something better left for houseplants than the general garden. As others have said, it's far more economical to simply encourage earthworms to "do their thing" in the garden than to pay a pretty penny for "their thing" in bags. If you're putting down lots of organics, perhaps even layering pre-compost things under mulch, you should be finding earthworms soon enough. If there simply aren't any in your garden to start with, it's still cheaper to buy a "starter-colony" once and set them out in your garden. If you keep them fed, they'll keep your garden fed. :-) ~Christopher |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| Christopher, thanks for drawing my attention to the possibility of buying actual worms. They aren't that expensive and what a great idea. They seem to be intended for compost bins or eating up organic scraps of kitchen waste, but I suppose there's no reason not to release a few under individual mulched roses or into my front and back rose beds. I appreciate your suggestion! Ingrid |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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- Posted by hoovb z9 Southern CA (My Page) on
Sat, Nov 30, 13 at 16:55
| Ingrid, if you are going to spend $$$$$$ I would get Mills Magic Mix instead of worm castings. Stupendous stuff. |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| Ingrid, one word. Newspaper. I layer newspaper in my beds and then cover it with horse manicure (before I lost my source). The first year I did this, I checked about a month later to make sure the paper was damp, and there were thousands of baby earthworms about 1/4 inch long in the newspaper. I was astonished at the number of them. |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| No newspaper under my heavy layer of horse manure, but it is topped with some woodchips. But, when ever I find the need to dig down under that and check drippers etc, I find GIANT fat (like a pencil) earth worms busy doing their thing. The downside is the skunks have discovered we have earth worms |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| I've seen Mills Magic Mix locally but somehow assumed (why?) that it was not organic. Thanks for the tip, hoovb. I'll certainly try it. floridarose, newspaper in my dry climate acts completely differently. It doesn't stay moist, no matter what, and will not disintegrate. I haven't tried it with horse manure on top but suspect even that would require continuous watering. When I tried horse manure it dried very quickly and was difficult to dissolve with water. Ingrid |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| Ingrid, think of your garden as a place to raise "free-range earthworms" and they'll provide you with all the castings you could need, depositing it right where you need it without you having to dig it into the soil for your plants. Do you have a set time of year when you apply mulch? If so, consider gathering as much organic material as possible which isn't composted yet, spread it out, then cover it with mulch. If you buy a garbage can for it, you can collect a lot of coffee grounds from your local Starbucks and use that. If you don't already have some worms in your garden, buy some (like I mentioned before). As long as you keep them fed, you shouldn't have to buy them ever again -- the colony will keep growing. As I said before, I'd consider buying worm castings only for houseplants, and only because it isn't practical to keep earthworms alive in pots. It's just so much cheaper and easier to encourage a population of earthworms in the garden and let them deposit their castings on their own -- as well as keeping the soil aerated with their tunneling. :-) ~Christopher |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| You've made a believer of me, Christopher. I like the idea of the coffee grounds since that sounds like the easiest way to do it. I'm on it! Ingrid |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| Hi Ingrid, Pls. be aware that in order to survive and do their job earthworms will need a constant minimum of humidity in the soil. If you cannot provide this in your dry climate, at best they will go into survival mode during your dry period and sort of hibernate doing nothing or they will die.
Cheers,
Nik |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| Hi Nik, and welcome to the forum. I do water every day in the summer and always have mulch under and around the roses in order to keep the roots cool. I have lots of little frogs in the summer, at least in the shadier parts of the garden, so hopefully the worms can also find a safe haven underground below the mulch. Ingrid |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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- Posted by Evenie 9b-New Orleans (My Page) on
Tue, Dec 3, 13 at 11:21
| The best thing that I've found to attract worms is barley left over from beer brewing. It melts my compost heaps almost instantly, although it has to be buried or it will smell like lactobacillus and whatever else that grows in it. I assume the particular cooties that grow on wet barley improve the natural flora of the soil, as it will very much ferment on its own. When I dug into 10 pounds of grain that I buried in the compost pile 3 months ago, it was chock full of earthworms. The compost pile is already gone, completely melted away. If you have a brewery nearby or a friend that home brews, you might ask for their spent grain. The stuff is so good that my very Methodist mother looks the other way at my brewing so long as I send her the old barely from time to time. |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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- Posted by titian1 Sydney, Australiae (My Page) on
Tue, Dec 3, 13 at 13:23
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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- Posted by rross NSW Aust (My Page) on
Fri, Dec 6, 13 at 3:46
| I put worm wee and castings around my roses. I think both contain eggs that hatch in the ground, and so improve the soil with new worms. Unless your worm castings have been treated to sterilise them, I think they're a great investment for the future of your soil. |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| Yeah, I have bought bags of them when we had to completely rebuild a garden on a former car park. The topsoil we had delivered was inert stuff with not a worm to be seen so we bought 2 sorts - 1000 brandling ones (smaller red ones) and 500 much larger ones - we actually had quite a bit of fun plunging our hands in the bags and chasing each other round the garden with 'medusa hands'. |
RE: Worm Castings - Bueno?
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| The ones I saw on offer seem to be the smaller ones; don't know whether that makes a difference. I'm definitely getting some; it can't hurt. Ingrid |
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