If you keep a worm bin, also known as vermicomposting, at some point you’ll harvest the worm’s castings and set your worms up with new bedding to begin the process once again.
But what to do with the worm castings?
Make tea, of course!
To make worm casting tea, which is a nutritious yet gentle fertilizer for all plants from young vegetable seedlings to established perennials, you just need to follow a few easy steps.
- In a five gallon bucket, add one big handful of worm castings to about three gallons of water. This water can be straight from the hose or rain barrel, but don’t use softened water due to the salt content that will damage your plants.
- Stir the castings into a dark brew and allow it to sit uncovered for 24-48 hours.
- After letting it sit, pour the tea through a fine mesh strainer into another bucket, being sure to keep debris from draining into the new bucket.
- Pour the strained tea (which shouldn’t have any debris in it) into a pump sprayer to apply as a foliar spray (to the plants’ leaves) or water it into soil using a watering can.
If you’re growing vegetable seedlings, fertilizing young plants with worm casting tea once they’ve been in their growing medium for about three weeks is an excellent way to replenish the nutrients that the potting soil loses due to leaching.
Applying worm casting tea via the fine spray of a pump sprayer to the leaves of your plants (vegetables, perennials, etc) helps the plants fight disease and reduce stress from pests and adding tea to the soil increases the soil’s fertility - all good things.
Apply worm casting tea every other week or so during your plants’ growing season and reap the benefits of this natural fertilizer.
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