People nowadays prefer to eat fresh food from their garden and farm, using organic fertilizers as compost. The organic fertilizer produced due to secretion from earthworms’ bodies is termed as worm castings. It is earthworm waste, and it is rich soil that earthworm digests and leaves behind as feces. Manure is the waste of livestock, including cows, horses, and poultry.
It is a natural fertilizer and can contain dead plant parts. You can use manure either in new or decomposed form. Sometimes potting soil lacks beneficial microbes, nitrogen-fixing bacteria, minerals like carbon and nitrogen. That's why it is necessary to mix compost with soil after at least six months to enrich the overall structure of soil and use pesticides to save your garden from pests.
Worm casting is the best compost if we compare it to manure (livestock or human) for better soil and soil improvement. It is cost-effective and eco-friendly and can be used for long-term agricultural processes. Simple manure is yet a good fertilizer, but it lacks some nutrients. Moreover, you can directly apply the worm castings to the soil, and when you are using manure, you will need a carrier to mix it with mud. The soil is an inert material functioning as a delivery mechanism.
Worm castings are known as earthworms’ poop or poo. It is the waste of the earthworm's body and is also known as worm manure, vermicast, and sometimes vermicompost. It is an organic fertilizer and can be used as a soil enricher to enhance soil fertility.
You need worm boxes or worm bins to produce worm castings. Thankfully, you can construct or purchase these boxes so acquiring them isn't much of a challenge. The size of worm bin varies with the shape. If you want to make a box by yourself, keep in mind that the container must be 20 to 31 cm in depth or 8 to 12 inches. If the worm bin is too deep, there will be odor problems. There must be drainage holes in the bottom of the box.
Put the layer of sand or moist newspaper strips in the bottom, and above that, add manure or leaf litter and then damp newspaper and soil. Also, add some worms and their food like kitchen waste. A smaller compost bin is also feasible for making worms bin at home. Worm casting tea is a liquid form of fertilizer. It is a natural liquid fertilizer, and nutrients are extracted in water from the worm compost pile to make worm casting tea.
Worm castings are a rich source of organic substances and different elements such as Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium, calcium, and other salts for plants. It is a natural fertilizer that converts the insoluble nutrients present in the soil to their soluble form, which can easily be uptaken by roots of plants and thus utilized by plants in several metabolic processes.
Worm casting is essentially worm poop that's rich in nutrients and improves plant health. Worm castings help to grow chemical-free plants. You can also use them in containers and pots to grow plants as it is an organic fertilizer. Worm castings application to potted plants is relatively easy. It is a rich organic material, and its application to potted plants is similar to regular compost. You have to use 1/4 cup (0.6 ml) of this organic waste for every six inches (15cm) container diameter. It makes plant roots healthy and for healthy soil, mix it thoroughly. Chemical fertilizers are usually not beneficial for soil and plants or can burn plants if they are given in excess.
Manure consists of animal wastes such as feces, urine, and dung. The decomposed organic matter contains organic wastes and hummus, which is a natural fertilizer for soil improvement that improves fertility and nutrient availability. It is also cost-effective and easy to process. Manure lets the soil retain water. There are two types of manure, i.e., human and livestock manure. The livestock manure is rich in Nitrogen, Potassium, and Phosphorus and is helpful for prolonged use in agriculture.
There are three types of manure: green manure, farmyard manure, and compost manure, depending on the source of manure production. All of these types are useful for different problems of soil, such as soil water, nutrient availability, and organic matter composition.
There are several components of manure, including urine, cow dung, slurry from biogas plants, human wastes, and domestic sewerage, horse manure, bones, meat, and fish waste from slaughterhouses, agricultural byproducts, cow manure, crop wastes, vegetable scraps, chicken manure, and fresh manure from animals.
Organic material that is either the byproduct of plants and animals or the end product is organic fertilizer. Gardeners prefer to use fresh manure, grass clippings, chicken manure, horse manure, and other organic materials instead of synthetic fertilizers for their plants in the garden. They usually avoid chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
The combination of worm castings and manure creates organic fertilizers suitable for use in agriculture due to their digested decayed material. Both practices will also he in waste management like kitchen dumps, sewerage wastes, stationary wastes, etc. Advantages provided by the manure and worm compost are the same such as nutrient availability, water holding capacity, soil enrichment, eradication of soil erosion, and leaching. The byproduct is methane, which is biogas used for cooking and other heating purposes.
If you are looking to use worm castings or manure for your plants, you should know the common organic materials of both composts. Vermicomposting and waste are the same as both are the excreta of the digestive system. One is earthworm poop, while the waste is livestock feces. Both are high in organic nutrients and can improve soil fertility. They are rich in nutrients such as Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and you can add them to the soil where there is nutrient deficiency. Worms castings and manure both work as natural fertilizers and cause no harm to the environment.
Worm castings and manure are similar in some aspects but are different in the basic principle, and you should know exactly what compost is appropriate. Worm castings utilize worms, and it is easy to compost worm feces, but the manure comes from animals like cows, horses, and humans. Composting manure can take time, but worm composting can take three months to prepare. Also, the worm castings are more nutrient-rich and have higher organic matter levels. It is more cost-effective to use worm compost as a fertilizer than manure. Worm composting provides more crop yield when applied to the plants as it has more soluble nutrients.
The worm castings are easy to monitor as the worms utilize what you are giving them to eat, but the manure contains different products, and you have to keep an eye on the desired organic substance. You will have to test the manure. Vermicomposting recovers the organic carbon and Nitrogen and helps reduce the pathogenic bacteria from animal manures. Vermicompost is more beneficial for soil structure and has more water holding capacity.
There is a difference in the storage mechanism of both products, i.e., vermicompost and manure. The vermicompost can be kept outside and is easy to carry due to its small volume. On the other hand, manure is challenging to store because it has a foul odor. You will convert the manure into soluble forms before applying them to the soil because nutrients are dense and concentrated.
This blog gives a complete comparison of worm castings and manure. Worm castings, as the name indicates, utilize worms and soil. Decomposed animals, plants, or human waste, called manure, can make for great fertilizer. Worm castings and manure are almost identical because both are excreta, but worm castings are more beneficial than manure. Nowadays, people are looking to make worm farms, own vermicompost and worm bins as they prefer to use worm castings to their plants. We've detailed the advantages of worm compost over manure in this blog.
Do you wish your plants would grow bigger? Was your garden less than it should've been last year?
If you're tired of growing puny vegetables and fruits, it's time for an upgrade...Simple Grow Worm Castings!
What are worm castings? Another term for worm manure. Why would you want to use it in your garden, raised beds, and house plants? Because it makes them grow bigger, faster and healthier...with no chemicals!
How do worm castings do this? It's like giving your plants a powerful multivitamin with everything they need to grow. Trace minerals, nutrients, and most importantly...worm castings are chock full of beneficial microbes. Why does that make a difference?
In recent years, we've learned the importance of gut bacteria for humans and know that it impacts so many different parts of our health. The same thing applies with worms. Gut bacteria from the worm's digestive tract gets into the soil from the worm castings and promotes plant health. Plants have a symbiotic relationship with the microbes from the worm's digestive tract. Plants respond to it and grow really big...really fast!
If you've never tried worm castings before, you owe it to yourself to give them a try. Instead of using traditional chemical fertilizers from the big box store, why not try fresh, certified organic worm castings this year? You'll be able to grow bigger, healthier plants that you actually can feel good about eating.
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