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Soil, Compost & Mulch

Worm castings mixed in MiracleGro soil?

16 years ago

Hi. I've made an arrangement with a lady in town to help her work up her garden and plant some veggies. She has a decent enough basic soil, but has been using (even this spring) a sprayer with a MiracleGro-in-water mixture. Sprays it out of her sprayer on the end of a garden hose onto the ground. So the soil has a goodly amount of full-spectrum NPK plus "minors" plus micronutrients from this chemical source.

I've got the personal habit of using compost, rotted manure, and worm castings. My idea, originally, was to work-in a compost/worm-casting mixture into some rows - such as one where she wants asparagus and another where she wants lettuces. But I'm wondering about whether the substantial presence of the nutrient chemicals in the soil will tend to kill the micro-organisms that are the source of so much of the goodness in the worm castings (and even in decent ordinary fresh compost). ???

Would my plan to use worm castings just be a waste of good organic amendments, in this case? Anybody know?

Joel

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Comments (3)

Kimmsr
16 years ago
Whether that synthetic fertilizer will contribute to the death of the soil microorganisms or not will depend on the amount of organic matter in the soil. A goodly level of OM in the soil will help mitigate damage done while a soil with low levels of OM will see more damage done. If you add enough worm castings and other organic matter to that soil you can almost totally offest what harm that synthetic fertilizer might do.
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jbann23
16 years ago
If you send those worthless worm castings to me then I'll gladly dispose of them for you. I've placed them in my containers and spread them around various areas in my raised beds. Fortunately the plants grew mightily on their own and ignored the castings. In spite of those nasty castings I harvested two pound tomatoes and massive amounts of edible greens thus proving the castings were of no benefit. You'll do yourself a big favor by sending them this way immediatly. Us gardeners gotta stick together.
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why not try using it in small concentrations with the worm castings? Have you used a synthetic fertilizer in the past on your garden? Did you still have worms in your garden? Keep the concentration down and there really shouldn't be a problem.
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Sierra, I am a little too quick on the draw and replied to the first posting without reading this one, interesting point "the castings require the least" oxygen. Now that is a whole new point of understanding for me, perhaps you can elaborate, is this due to the humic acid being the most beneficial by product as compared to the microbes in the castings, or are the microbials from the castings less 02 dependent, are they different from the compost microbes? Ahhh So Thanks, Gardeniera PS I am more comfortable with my currect methods but will probably convert to top feeding as well so as to keep an easy eye on things. I am brand new to this and when I picked up my used bin, the person selling it used said she "failed" at it and was "setting it up" for me and I noticed she was putting soil or compost in it. For now I may leave it but might try to start a second level with the bedding mix suggested at various sites and see if they migrate away. Thnx again
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Ok, here's what I did. I had an area of the garden that was nothing but a bunch of pachysandra groundcover. I ripped it all out, and what I found underneath was stones. What was underneath the stones was some sort of "tarp" I guess to prevent the weeds. Well, there was no way I was going to be able to shovel up tons of stones and rip of an entire large piece of "tarp" which was on top of the soil. So I shoveled up the stones I could, and left a lot of the tarp where it was. I emptied two bags of Compost down on top of the tarp, followed by two bags of MG Garden Soil. In between I put down a little Bone meal, leveled out the soil and began planting my Iris rhizomes. The next day when I went out to look at the area, it had all dried, since it was pretty damp when emptied out of the bags, and it actually looked like "dirt". So far so good. But to be on the safe side, I contacted one of the Iris Nurseries I do business with where I buy my Iris rhizomes and told them what I did. They said there definitely will not be a problem, as the Iris rhizomes appreciate a lot of organic matter and they will perform quite well. They only advised Not to add any additional fertilizer.
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If that's the case if you want to put some high quality stuff in in the first place. Biochar, mushroom compost or horse manure compost are some of the things I add for new soil mix, aside from making my own leaves compost and worm casting. I would avoid MiracleGro unless you like fungus gnats taking over your garden. And avoid the Home Depot inhouse brand "Vigoro", it is junk, I wasted a lot money on that stuff when I started. It now take up space in the lowest depth of my raised beds. Even though I didn't intend to till, I ended up having to because there are trees growing around and their roots invade the beds and stealing the nutrients, so you may want to keep that in mind.
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joel_bc
Original Author
16 years ago
kimmsr wrote: "A goodly level of OM in the soil will help mitigate damage done while a soil with low levels of OM will see more damage done. If you add enough worm castings and other organic matter to that soil you can almost totally offest what harm that synthetic fertilizer might do."
So what you're saying, if I've got it right, is that with a high enough level of organic matter, the proportion of die-off of worm-casting micro-organisms either would be lower, or the recovery and proliferation of the micro-organisms would be greater. The influence of the synthetic fertilizer - in terms of harm to the micro-organism population - would be would be significantly reduced.

J.
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