This weekend, inspired by David Murphy's book Organic growing with worms, I decided to try my hand at making 'vermicast solution'. This involves putting worm castings in water, and adding carbon, nitrogen and oxygen to produce a bacterial soup, which apparently boosts plant growth and protects against pests and diseases.
As suggested in David's book, I sieved a bucketful of worm cast solution through a pair of tights (as shown in the photo below), added carbon and nitrogen in the form of molasses and urea, then bubbled the mixture for a few hours using the aerator from our fish tank (much to Bruce's disgust).
Once the sun had gone down, I sprinkled the vermicast liquid over the tomato, zucchini, corn and pepper plants in the second mandala. Since these plants are of many different varieties, I couldn't do a controlled experiment (ie spraying one plant and not another to compare the effects); I'll have to try that next time.
We've had so much rain lately, interspersed with hot days, that the garden is going crazy. The photo below shows the first mandala, which the dome has just moved back on to. The two enormous plants in the foreground are fennel and rhubarb growing in the edge guild; they're already taller than me, so it's probably just as well that I used up all the growth-promoting vermicast solution on the other mandala.
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