The Incredible Benefits of Adding Composting Worms to Your Garden

what is going on everyone welcome to episode two of good bugs here on the Mi Gardener Channel in today's episode we're gonna be talking about the very good bug the red worm bad bugs bad bugs what you gonna do what you gonna do when they come for you bad bugs bad bug so when it comes to worms in the garden any type of worm is good now we are adding red wigglers into our garden and that's because red wigglers are very fast reproducers and they're very fast eaters red wigglers are known to be one of the fastest growing and fastest eating types of worms at our disposal and that's why a lot of Verma composters people that actually raise worms to create worm compost or worm castings we'll use red wigglers as their worm of choice now we're going to be releasing them into the garden here today because what we want to do is we want to actually encourage our worm population to uh to actually stick in our garden and continue to break down organic material because worms do a few things for us worms are really good bugs because of the fact that they help to break down organic material they help to loosen the soil they help to create worm castings which is nutrients for our plants but they also can help to consume bad bugs believe it or not as a worm is inching its way through the soil it actually has a one-way digestive tract and basically dirt goes in organic material goes in and organic material goes out in the form of castings it digests the castings but in the process the gut of the worm has billions of beneficial bacteria and fungi that live in the worm's gut and when it passes that out in the form of castings that beneficial bacteria and fungi can actually help to combat bad bacteria and fungi in the soil and so not only can they help to turn tons of organic material into beautiful soil and beautiful food for your plants but they're also helping the ecosystem of the garden to actually increase the amount of good bugs in your garden so the first thing we want to talk about is the habitat that we're putting them in so when you put them in your garden you want to make sure that your soil is very loose it's very rich in organic material because that's the food source of choice for worms but you also want to make sure that it's damp very dry soil is counterproductive to worm growth because of the fact that worms they do not have a hard skin they're not like you and I do they excrete a slime and that slime coat is actually what helps them breathe and so because they breathe through their skin dry soil can actually end up killing them and so having having a damp soil is very important now what we also want to make sure of is that we have a soil that like I said is rich in organic material if it's very Sandy or very heavy clay you'll find that the worms will be okay but they won't Thrive and that's because worms like to move throughout the soil the average red wiggler can move roughly five square feet in an hour believe it or not and so this bed is 50 square feet and so if it can move five square feet in an hour hour it can basically clear the entire length of this bed in about 10 hours that's incredible how fast a red wiggler can move through the soil especially if it's incentivized to find food and so by having a good soil that it can move through very very fast can help it to not only feed faster but also reproduce faster because well they don't go on top of the soil that often because there's lots of predators like birds and other things flying around so they find their mates basically through the soil and red wigglers are known as communal composters they're communal worms they like to be in clusters and bunches and so earthworms are very territorial they kind of have their own space in the garden that's why when you find an earthworm you typically won't find an earthworm or another earthworm that's not a mate within about five to ten square feet of that other earthworm and that's because they're very kind of they're very territorial over their space but when it comes to Red wigglers they're it's very common for them to create a nice ball and that's kind of how they live and cohabitate so it's very important to have good loose soil but like I said also having good soil cover we're going to be mulching our soil as well so once we get these plants growing up they're going to be a living mulch that's going to help to hold moisture near the soil but if you don't have a living mulch I'd encourage you to mulch the soil with something like grass clippings mulched up leaves straw Pine shavings wood chips something to cover the soil to hold moisture in the soil and keep the soil cool worms do not like hot soil or dry soil so when it comes to releasing your red wigglers in the garden it could not be simpler basically you want to pick a spot here that's going to be a spot where you want them to live now if you live somewhere further north you are going to find that there's a range of survivability with red wigglers they're going to survive in your garden just fine but generally about zone five is that cut off point where most of them are going to die over the winter they'll still be a very valuable asset in your garden throughout the growing season and some may end up surviving but if you live further south you'll find that more are going to survive and thrive in your garden then we'll die so just kind of knowing their range of survivability will kind of help you out when releasing them in your garden but also knowing that because they're communal they like to be together and so I find that this this little tub of worms here I will do per raised bed so if I've got 10 raised beds I'm going to release about 10 tubs of worms there's about I want to say about 300 worms in this if I recall correctly and so I'm gonna release 300 worms per bed and so what we also want to do is put them all together don't spread them through all throughout the bed we're going to put them in one spot and then let them go on their own all right so what we're going to do when we release our worms is dig a little hole I'm going to dig a trench here because we don't want to just release our worms right on the soil surface that is a calling card for things like birds and so because we don't want to just feed the birds I'm going to dig a small little trench here now in that trench to encourage them to stick around have some beautiful little babies we're going to give them some food as well so I've got some hey Nova so Nova is the garden uh Watchdog Nova play Nova so Nova is is Taylor's dog she's our our resident videographer and video editor and um so in a couple episodes you guys saw Nova running around back and you're like that that stray dog was getting pretty close to you I'm like that's not a stray dog it's like one of the nicest dogs ever so that's Nova so everybody say hi to Nova and she keeps the bunnies away so um what we're going to do is we're going to take some celery here we just had some some old celery and we're just gonna throw it down in the trench here and encourage the worms to get some food so I'm Gonna Take It I'm gonna chop it all up here get it all chopped up you could also just throw it in a blender too and blend it food processor whatever works there we go a little trench there and then we're gonna take our worms and we're gonna release them in the garden dang that is crazy it's a huge ball of worms look at that wow if you don't like worms well you definitely won't like that that's super cool so having these worms in the garden is an incredible resource like I said not only are they going to be consuming all that organic material and helping to feed our plants but also digesting the material and excreting things like beneficial bacteria and fungi which can really help the soil help your plants those beneficial bacteria and fungi actually believe it or not like azosperidium and lactobacillus they are wonderful beneficial bacteria that actually will attach to plant roots and help to mine minerals found in the soil that the plants can't uptake very very beneficial but then also what they do is they help to aerate the soil this is a very underappreciated benefit of worms and in fact they've been called Nature's rototiller for years because of the fact that what they do is they burrow holes in the soil and those holes are little tunnels and those tunnels can help to increase the amount of aeration in your soil but also can help to uh to actually increase the amount of drainage in your soil which is really important for increasing root develop element increasing the overall environment the ecosystem of the soil right because beneficial bacteria and fungi they do not like an anaerobic environment anaerobic means without oxygen they like a very aerobic environment and so worms help to actually move the soil digest the soil and when they work the soil they make it very aerobic and that helps to increase the aeration in your soil which can help you know beneficial bacteria and fungi to thrive as well so it's a very beneficial thing in your soil and a lot of people you know they know about the benefits of worms they try to increase worms but rarely do we see worms as something that we could actually add to our garden to increase their numbers and to actually help them to uh to kind of multiply faster than they would naturally now I will say that the final thing that we're going to talk about is if you don't want to actually add them to your garden you can actually create a worm farm we've done this in the past we've done a lot of Verma composting videos and if you're interested in that they're very very simple to to do all we use is just simply a plastic tote we drill some holes in the bottom we add something like like peat moss or compost to the soil for them to use as bedding material and then we Simply Mulch up things like that celery we blend it up with you know it could be carrot peelings other food scraps from the garden and we blend them up and feed our worms and then we use the worm castings to create a very nutrient-rich fertilizer for our garden a free resource for our plants so you can definitely do that as well like I said we have lots of videos on how to do that and it's just another method of not only creating a closed loop system for our garden but increase the amount of beneficial insects in our garden which can help us to grow a better Garden so I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you learned something new if you did make sure to throw throw a thumbs up subscribe if you haven't already and let me know if you're still excited about this series we got lots more coming out in partnership with Nature's good guys so I'll post links to where you can get their products in the description box down hello again not a sponsored video by any means this is just something that I've been wanting to do for a long time because it's super important that we talked about the benefits of beneficial insects so I hope you guys enjoyed and as always this is Luke from the on my Gardener Channel reminding you to grow bigger take care bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 47,283

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: I_zQvgsMMRQ

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2023