Who would have ever thought that worms can help produce the best scentless amendment and fertilizer to your home gardens or farm fields? Adding castings, or worm poop, to your home gardens, pots, and flower beds does way more than just improve the health of your plants. That is the visual reward of castings. Below the surface of soil infused with castings, soil biology is happening. Microbes, nutrients, minerals, aeration, and water retention are all working together to provide you with healthy soil, leading to healthy roots, leading to healthy plants. It’s no wonder worm castings are also called Black Gold.
Worms thrive and survive on composted material. This is why you will see worms in a leaf pile, compost bin and rotting manure. They love it! They chomp away at these decomposing products and then poop out an even richer substance filled with the ideal ingredients our soils need! This biology is pure, organic matter that is the perfect fertilizer for plants and gardens. Other benefits to adding worm castings to your soil is that castings can help plants grow in soil with extreme pH levels by making acidic soils more neutral and alkaline soils more acidic, which allows the plants to have the right soil texture and acidity to grow deeper roots. In addition, the humus in worm castings can extract damaging bacteria, fungi, and toxins from the soil, and the castings can also make plants resistant to arthropod insects. This is all happening all the while the castings are infusing your soil and anchoring your roots with needed potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, and concentrated nitrates, as well as trace elements and humic acid.
Worm castings will also create air pockets in the soil that will aerate and enhance circulation and all the soil to retain and drain moisture. Because of this, there will be less erosion. Lastly, because the castings are coated, they naturally release nutrients over time. This allows for a more economical and natural fertilizer. By using black gold, your plants and gardens will be rejuvenated, revitalized, and ‘reap’lenished!