Finally Fertilizing, The Uses of Worm Castings.

A couple of days off from the blueberry harvest, and I'm back home after a few long days.  We'll be back into it next week, so now I get to play catch up on a bunch of things, including the garden.
Last week several inconvenient thunderstorms rode through - which was great as far as watering goes, but it had set me back on my fertilizing.  With many of the Summer plants coming on, you need to keep up on this to maximize the amount of flowers you put out.  Nearly all plants that bear an external seed (which I will usually refer to as 'fruit' even though I'm it's not always correct) have it grow off a flower - tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, strawberries, the list goes on. Every flower is a potential 'fruit' so you obviously want to maximize what you can get, and it all starts with growing them.
Now it's not a strict case of more fertilizer = more flowers.  A fellow blueberry farmer uses far too much fertilizer on his acreage, and as a result has hard to harvest overgreen bushes.  My Father-In-Law / Boss put it so simply the other day "In this business you have to choose. You can grow berries or you can grow bushes".  So what we are looking for is to get the plants not as massive or bushy as we can, but as overall healthy as we can.  Neither hungry for nutrients, nor an abundance.
Root crops like carrots actually need to dig down to find them. If you over fertilize the foliage or the upper soil you find yourself with stumpy carrots.

As I've discussed before I don't use any chemical fertilizers or pesticides.  Although this is incredibly green and 'organic', my decision is based on the costs of commercial fertilizers (including 'gardening' products like Miracle Gro and it's brethren) as it's my firm belief that these 'easy to grow' products are promoted to replace knowledge and monetize on it. When you factor the costs in it makes the produce from the garden more expensive than buying it.
I have absolutely nothing against it's use, or people that use it. Fresh food is a fantastic thing to have regardless of how you go about it, and I have nothing but respect for any who try their hand at it - for my goals though the cost is a factor.
Secondly with a true organic fertilizer like I use, it is impossible to overdose plants. I've done that before with a farm grade fertilizer and watched plants turn black from tips to roots.  I like the forgiving nature of that, in that my own ignorance doesn't cost me everything I worked for overnight.

If you've read most of my blog you know where my primary source of fertilizer comes from - Vermicompost aka Worm Poo or for the less vulgar out there 'castings'. I know a couple of readers have made the move to buy some worms and start this process - including my own Mother. So I'm going to go over some of the ways you can use them, and how it might relate to fertilizing methods you're already familiar with.

Soil Additive/Amendment

When I make new soil, or dig over soil that's been used and harvested, I put a couple of generous handfuls of castings in and mix it through.  You have to replace what you took out with the plants (this is where the Miracle Gro type potting soils make their money - once their additives are spent, the hobby gardener is left scratching their head till they go and buy new potting mix).  This turns that slightly spent soil into what would be the equivalent of a fresh bag of Miracle Gro potting mix.  I add other composts too, such as composted cow manure, mushroom compost, or my own garden compost if I have it on hand  - but the worm castings are the true powerhouse that put back most of what you took out, ensuring the next seeds are given all they could want or need.

Casting Mulch -  Slow Release.

I've already covered this one, and it's great if you have fresh castings on hand. You simply add the castings in a thin layer and spread them around the base of the plant, and cover the entire square/container.  This not only gives you the benefits of mulching (which cuts down evaporation and locks more moisture into the soil, prevents soil erosion and washout, makes it harder for weeds to break through) but all those goodies in the castings will release slowly into the soil in the same way a slow release pellet plant food will.  Also as it gets older and breaks down - it forms into tiny pellets and aids in the overall composition of the soil.
When possible I put it down when a seedling is just over an inch or two high - it's second leaves have come in and are good and healthy.  You've seen the difference in previous posts with the beans and peas from the first planting for spring - but I can give another example:

These two eggplants are using the same soil, amended the same way. They were planted on the same day, and sprouted the same day. they receive the same amount of sun, and are located approx 10 feet away from each other. They are watered and fertilized the same days, with the same amounts.  One is in a square foot in the garden, and one is in a 9 inch square pot. Both were transplanted at the same time.  I'll let you guess which one was mulched in worm castings.

Was it this one?

Or was it this one?

Now the only differences are the pot and the mulch.  Even if we say the pot played some sort of factor, the Brocolli you can see off the side in the next pot has a sister plant in a square foot a couple down from from the eggplant.  It receives less sun, and is double the size (the difference is sun, pot, and casting mulch).
So even given this small point, you have to credit the casting mulch as making the big difference.

 

 Liquid Fertilizer - Run Off / Worm Tea

Every week (usually on Sunday) I give my plants a liquid fertilizer from what I call 'run off' - the excess liquid that is drained from the bottom of the worm bins.  Some people call it 'worm tea' and it's a hot topic on some forums, sparking heated 'I am righter than you!' internet type discussions. Proper worm tea is a compost tea made from castings and 'brewed'. Personally I don't care what people call these things, I use the term 'run off' so people know exactly where I am getting this from.

My run off comes from the spigot in the bottom of my worm bin. Excess water and moisture  seeps down through all the castings that have been made into the collection basin at the bottom - in this regard I don't think there is much difference between it and 'brewed tea' - this probably has other things in it from scraps that are breaking down - and this is easy to collect. It's a by-product that you have to get rid of, but it also happens to be incredibly good for plants.
I collect on average 10 - 12 mason jars of this per week. I water down my bins on Wednesday and Sunday - and get the majority of my fertilizer then. This is best used fresh - so use it, or you lose it.

In use it's pretty simple. Add one jar to one watering can of water, then water over your plants just like you normally would.  As I use mainly rainwater on my garden - I water using the can most the time (I haven't put in an irrigation system, and won't until I come up with a better rainwater collection system) so it's easy to just replace the Sunday watering with fertilizing.  On my garden I use between 6 and 7 jars, so I can very easily keep up with the demand without having to put more water through my worm bins (which isn't that great an idea - you want your worms happy to give you casting - this is a by product of that process.. why compromise one for the other? )
For any extra, there is another use.

Foliage Fertilizer / Pesticide

Any leftover or excess I have I put into a spray bottle and fill out with water (if needed).  This nice heavy duty sprayer is from the garden section of WalMart and cost me a couple of bucks. I did use repurposed bottles from other products (thoroughly cleaned out of course) but I found they kept getting blocked up after a while.
Set it to a fine mist and go over the foliage of your plants. It will fertilize them as well as keep many pests off your leaves. You'll always have some, but there are natural ways around those as well. I also found that squirrels aren't too fond of my garden beds after I've mulched or sprayed.
I use this on all my plants - but try and be more sparing on root crops. Too much on those will lessen root development. All fresh seedlings are given a generous amount to help them boost up to a transplantable stage.  I've found on beans it will speed up the development of new buds and flowers, likewise on peppers.  This single spray bottle will give everything in the garden a pretty good cover and only takes 1 1/2 jars to fill.

Worm Tea

A slightly different animal than run off.  It's a purer fertilizer and a great way to use your castings effectively.  There are many many recipes out on the internet - but I'll go over the method I've used.

I start with a 5 gallon bucket of rainwater - or if I don't have that, 5 gallons of town water and let it sit in the sun 24 hours to evaporate any chlorine out of it.
Get 2 cups of worm castings and wrap them in some cheesecloth, an old t-shirt, old pillow case, anything the water can go through. Form it in a little baggie and tie it off with a rubber band or a zip tie, then pop it in the bucket.
Add 2 tablespoons of molasses or brown sugar.  this will feed the microorganisms released into the bucket and they'll have a population spike (think of yeast when baking bread).
Finally I put an aquarium airstone in to add oxygen to the mix, then let it sit to 'percolate' for 24 hours.  After that you can use it as you will.
Remember there is a shelf life on this stuff so use it or lose it.  Personally I don't like it sitting more than 3 - 4 days.
When your done just pop those castings on your fave plant as a bit of mulch.

Personally I find the brewing of worm tea a bit of a pain, and if I have to hunt around for this and that, a pump, an extension cord - it becomes too much trouble to do regularly.
To this end, over the next few weeks I'll be scrounging my workshop for bits and pieces to make a 'worm tea brewer' - it's going to be low tech, but will take some of the racing around out of the process. A dedicated bit of equipment that I can quickly put the right amounts of things into and switch on.  I'll be documenting it when I get the final bits of the puzzle together.

Cheers!