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Making efficient use of worms !
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Details... details...
It was a cold winter day, when Old Man Johnson walked out
onto a frozen lake, cut a hole in the ice, dropped in his
fishing line and began waiting for a fish to bite...
He was there for almost an hour without even a nibble when
a young boy walked out onto the ice, cut a hole in the ice
not too far from the old man and dropped in his fishing line.
It only took about a minute and the boy pulled in a nice sized
bass.
Old Man Johnson couldn't believe it but figured it was just
luck. But, the boy dropped in his line and again within just
a few minutes pulled in another one.
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This went on and on until finally the old man couldn't take
it any more since he hadn't caught a thing all this time.
He went to the boy and said, "Dang it sonny, I've been here
for over an hour without even a nibble. You have been here
only a few minutes and have caught about half a dozen fish!
How do you do it?"
The boy responded, "Roo raf roo reep ra rums rrarm."
"What was that?" the old man asked.
Again the boy responded, "Roo raf roo reep ra rums rarrm."
"Look," said the old man, "I can't understand a word you are
saying."
So, the boy spat a slimy wriggling mass into his hand and
said, "You have to keep the worms warm!"
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Making efficient use of wormcastings in the garden and the home :
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The same applies to the use of wormcastings in the garden, not so much keeping it warm, but PERSISTENCE succeeds !!
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Wormcastings contain a lot of minerals, in compounds which make it easy for the plants, to pick them up with the rootsystem.
The other feature of wormcastings is the microlife shed out by the worms as they digest the raw materials we feed them.
Both the minerals and the microlife are essential for a good garden, be it a vegetable patch, showplace flowergarden, orchard,
arable land or farmpasture; it will deplete and deteriorate in time if we do not replace what we take out with the harvested produce.
We are lucky in New Zealand, that we have been here so short, only 300-400 years since we started "using" the soil, and taking off the
trees for building timber and paper pulp to read our news of the world.
( and advertise our goods, useful or not in the mailboxes. )
Did you know, that I use advertising paper ( after reading it ), newspaper (the news is not really worth looking at ) and
cancelled cheques ( suitably shredded after YOU have paid the bills with it ) to our worms as part of their diet ??
That part of their diet is contributing to returning the timber and minerals used to manufacture the printing inks via the worm's gut
back into nature.
The plants and the trees do the rest of the recycling by growing and giving us food to eat, timber to build and cloth
to cover our nakedness.
And we (MANKIND) are silly enough, to call the used products RUBBISH, and pay transport costs to get rid of what we have left over, and we feel embarressed with that problem.
Did you know, that I collect the kitchen scraps from TWO ( so far ) households, and am feeding about 9 Kg worms with that
every week ??
We all like a nice lawn around our homes, and in New Zealand we are lucky enough, to have a good percentage of the population
living in a home with garden space around the house.
That lawn :
We dig up the soil, we level it, then we sow the grass seed, and protect it from the birds who love to pick it up again.
When the grass comes up, we throw some manure over it, and watch it grow !
Oh dear, if we do not watch out, it will grow too much, especially in the spring and summer months.
OK. so we spend about $500.00 and buy a motormower.
On the Sunday morning, we manage to wake up the whole neighborhood trying to get some extra sleep in,
by starting up that motormower, ( after spending an hour to get the darn thing going )
And WE CUT OFF THAT LONG GROWING GRASS.
Where are YOU going with the grass clippings ??
If the mower is not the "mulching" variety, then you are stuck with those grassclippings.
Are YOU taking it to the dump ( landfill ) ??
And incidently pay good hardearned money to be allowed to leave it there.
Did you know, that I partly feed my worms with the clipings from three lawns ?
So you see I do my little bit in the recycling of these things, ARE YOU ?
It takes my time and effort, with the help of having purchased those composting worms, building boxes for them and a shelter shed
to protect hem from the weather.
Collecting extra food 50 Km away ( carrots from Ohakune )
Don't you think, you could do YOUR LITTLE BIT by supporting my effort by purchasing the wormcastings I have spent so much time and effort and money to bring it to you in a little bag, for you to use on that lawn, in the vegetable garden and around those pretty flowers and fruit trees ??
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Our growth trial :
We bought some lettuce plants,
about the same size as you can see in the photo on the left.
Date : 27-09-2002
The same pots in a row along the fence in the photo right.
Date : 24-10-2002
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The following soils were put in the pots with the lettuces :
pot 1 = Pure compost, mainly gras and weeds.
pot 2 = The same garden soil, (3) but we added two teaspoons of wormcastings per week.
pot 3 = Soil from our garden, pumice based with compost used over the years to build up the fertility.
pot 4 = A mixture of sand and volcanic Taupo ash, with a daily dose of wormpiss ratio 1:10.
pot 5 = The same mixture as pot 4, but no wormpiss.
Note : the pots 2 and 3 are in the back row in the lefthand top picture .
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The same pots with lettuce plants.
Left photo taken on the 14-11-2002,
and the right one on the 22-11-2002.
You can see, that the wormcastings are winning the race ! With the pure compost not far behind.
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The broad beans :
We planted the broad beans in May 2002, the row which got wormcasings added, grew a lot faster han the row on theleft which had NO wormcastings.
With wormcast got in flower about three weeks before the other row, and there were more sideshoots too.
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Warning :
It should be noted, that the wormcastings work best when as fresh as possible.
The tests have proved that.
We tested the same batch again after three months, and it came up paler than the first test.
You can test the quality of wormcasings by putting two teaspoons of castings in a test tube, and then add water to 100 cc.
Shake for a few minutes, and let it stand for 24 hours.
A bad quality, with less soluble parts, will be much paler than a good quality wormcast.
Look at the feel and texture of the product as you take it out of the bag.
There is a vast difference in wormcastings from farm A and farm B. we have bought batches for testing this, and have found :
One batch, wel advertised too, nicely packed, cheap in price, but it had a handful of stones in the bag, and plenty of just sand !!
Another nicely packed bag contained sticks and other undigested foodstuff and two worms ( mature ones too ).
Usage of wormcastings :
In general, you do not need as heavy a dressing as with most "fertilisers", a little bit applied more often works best.
A handful under the seedbed, then a handful around the plants as they start to grow is all that is needed.
For indoor flowers, use it by the teaspoon every week, and water well for best results.
What is NOT rcommended, is to use the wormcastings as a nursery mix on it's own, DO mix it with sand and peat
or even just your usual nursery mix reinforced with wormcastings in place of "fertilisers"
If you find small yellow to darkbrown "wormseed" looking like grapeseeds, try not to touch them with your hands
as you will kill the young worm(s) inside it if you do.
If they are there in the bag, they may even have hatched into young worms already, but leave them in the garden, they will help to populate the soil with new worms.
And maybe let the parent birds feed the young ones who will get stuck into your strawberries later on ! ( Cover those )
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