Worm “castings” are what our red wiggler worms excrete after they consume food waste. So yes, “castings” is just a nice word for poop. Worm poop, in this case.
But worm poop = plant food. Big time. Just check out this lemon tree featured on our Facebook page.
What’s great about our worm castings is that because they’re made from food waste, this lemon tree is literally cycling food waste back into the production of food. Nature is amazing, isn’t it? We think so too.
There are three main ways you can use worm castings:
1. Mix them into your potting soil or garden bed.
Putting some soil in pots for your tomatoes this spring? Great! Mix our fresh worm castings with your favorite potting soil (we recommend going organic if you’re growing consumables) to the tune of about 15% by volume.
2. Apply them as a top-dressing.
Already potted your plants? No problem. Just spread our castings over the soil surface so it forms a layer about ¼ inch thick. All that natural plant food goodness will trickle right down to your plants’ roots.
3. Use them to brew an Actively Aerated Compost Tea (AACT).
“Teas”, as they’re commonly referred to, are not something you want to drink. Your plants do, but you don’t. A step-by-step guide to brewing one of these is actually our next blog post, but it basically involves aerating our castings and a few other ingredients in de-chlorinated water for 24-48 hours before immediately applying to your plants. More about this and the science behind it later.
For now, however, there’s just one last VERY important thing. When growing anything with worm castings, you must absolutely USE DE-CHLORINATED WATER to achieve the best results.
You see, chlorine is added to our drinking water to kill microbes that might make you sick. But in the same way that yogurt contains microbes that are good for you, worm castings contain microbes that are good for your plants, and you don’t want to kill them with the chlorine that may be in your tap water. We’ll explain some methods for removing chlorine from tap water in another blog post, but in the meantime you can find chlorine filters online for $20-30 each just by doing a quick search.
Happy planting!