Wednesday 15 May 2013

Using Worm Castings

Recently I added another tray, tray number 3, to my worm farm.  This meant I had an empty tray on top, a full tray of castings and partially eaten food scraps, and a tray absolutly full to the brim of pure worm castings.
Because I had waited until I had 2 full trays there were no worms living in the lower tray at all.  That made it really easy to harvest the castings.  I plant to add most of them to my garden beds but I also like to use them for planting out seedlings.
Lovely worm castings, you can see on the right that the castings were packed all the
way to the base of the next tray.  I dug out half a bucket full and they were packed so
tight you could hardly tell I had even taken any.
The way I use my worm castings with seedlings helps give them a nutrient boost, helps protect to roots and makes them easier to plant out as there is more mass to hold onto and push the soil against.
First of all I take a handful of worm castings and I flatten it out to be a flat disk and lie your seedling on top and wrap it with the castings disk.
Once you have your seedling wrapped in the castings it makes it much easier to plant.
I find that the seedlings I plant this way do really well.

Do you use worm castings? How do you use them?

2 comments:

  1. Im still on my first tray - it does seem to be taking a good while. Do I need more that 1200 worms? This is a very good idea and im sure it will give the seedlings that extra boost.

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    Replies
    1. Lynda I have found it pretty slow going too. I hear lots of stories about worm farms that churn through heaps of food scraps but that does not seem to be the case in mine. It has taken nearly 2 years to fill the 2 trays.

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