Heirloom seeds plants, be it heirloom tomato seeds, potato seeds or any plant for that matter, does really well with organic fertilizer and worm compost is the best organic fertilizer you can use.
Compared to chemical compounds that can destroy your plant roots if used excessively, worm castings pose no side effects to the plants. They provide excellent nutrition to heirloom seeds plants, making their growth quicker.
Preparing A Worm Bed Container
The first thing in preparing worm compost is building/buying a new container. For those who don’t have time to build one on their own, getting a new one from a store is the best idea and for most homes, medium container is good enough as medium containers can produce up to 5 pounds of worm castings each time. If your garden need more worm castings, consider getting a large container or build one on your own.
You can build a worm container at home and it’s a good idea to build a closed one so that worms will stay inside the container. If you’re planning to keep your container outside of your home, it’s a great idea to build a larger one so that you need not increase the size in future.
Setting Up The Worm Bed
To create enough fertilizer for your heirloom seed plants, the worm bed should be set up correctly. One of the easiest methods to build a worm bed is using newspaper strips tore down into small pieces. Keep the ‘Length X Width’ less than two inches and place them in the container, up to ¾th of the total space inside the container.
If you live in an area where plenty of worms are available in the nature, you can collect them or buy worms from a local store. Red worms are the most suited for worm castings. Empty them on the newspaper strips but do this under sunlight so that worms will crawl under the strips (worms don’t like sunlight but if you put them in the container from a dark room, they will stay on top).
Feeding The Worms
You don’t have to do anything for a week as worms still will be feeding on newspaper and after that, start slowly adding vegetable and fruit waste. It’s important to inspect your worm casting box occasionally to note its smell. If it smells sour, it’s a sign that the container is excessively wet and immediate attention is required. You cannot move newspaper clippings or sand to the bed.
You’ll usually get worm castings in every three months which is good enough to germinate heirloom seeds and fertilize heirloom plants that you bought from an heirloom seed company. The best thing about worm castings is that it’s a onetime investment and creating fertilizer for your heirloom seeds plants from time to time is incredibly cheap. Make sure to get a worm casting box right away or build one and start working on your own worm compost project for your heirloom seeds.