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Dirt Works

Hold off on the fertilizer and give your soil some treats instead, like earthworm droppings or cow bones.

By YVONNE SWANSON
Published October 29, 2005

It's almost Halloween, and that means stocking up on goodies for trick-or-treaters. It's also an ideal time to treat your garden's soil and plants to some unusual treats sure to boost their health and vigor.

Forget the chocolate bars and lollipops. How do black worm droppings, bat guano, pulverized cow bones and dry fish scraps sound? Add some treated human waste, beetle scraps and tidbits from a slaughterhouse, and you've got a cornucopia of organic delights your garden will lovingly devour.

Fertilizing plants and enriching the sandy soil in Florida gardens is an absolute necessity. Because our soil often lacks many of the nutrients plants need to thrive - especially nitrogen, magnesium, potassium and iron - regularly treating your garden with organic matter will help improve its ability to store water and nutrients plus create an environment teeming with beneficial bacteria and fungi.

If it seems like your plants have become fertilizer junkies - they require constant feeding with synthetic fertilizers to look their best - it might be time to turn your focus to the soil, urges John Meshna, owner of Dirt Works in New Haven, Vt.

Experts agree that growing the soil - not the plants - is the best way to ensure the health and vigor of your garden. "It's about the earth and soil. If that's healthy, everything else will take care of itself. The plants are really a secondary issue," says Meshna, whose company sells organic fertilizers and soil amendments to commercial growers and home gardeners. By adding organic matter to the soil, gardeners can break the cycle of fertilizer dependence, he says.

"The effect lasts for years. You are increasing the microbial life of the soil. It is a living organism. It is self-sustaining," Meshna says.

Most gardeners think of good ol' cow manure when it comes to amending the soil, but there are plenty of other uncommon choices. Meshna recommends treating sandy soils with pure earthworm castings, which are odorless, jet-black excrements from night crawlers.

Mixed into the soil, these worm droppings, which look and feel like topsoil, boost root growth and helps soil retain moisture while improving drainage.

You can make a worm casting tea for your garden by mixing a shovel full of worm castings into a 5-gallon bucket of water. Let it sit overnight, then strain the mixture using cheesecloth. Pour some of the liquid into a sprayer and spray the plant foliage, then use the rest to water directly at the roots. The remaining worm castings can be used for composting or mixed with leaves and applied as a top dressing.

Another treat for the garden is nutrient-rich bat guano, which is loaded with beneficial fungus and bacteria that destroy such common soil pests as microscopic nematodes, which attack all types of plants and turf grass in the Florida garden. Hand shoveled from cave floors in Jamaica, Indonesia, Mexico and other locales, the pinkish-purple and brown bat droppings can be applied directly into the soil or diluted with water according to instructions.

If bat excrement seems creepy, there is also light-brown sea bird guano. It is higher in nitrogen content because the birds consume a diet primarily of fish. You could also go straight to the source: pulverized fish scraps sold as fish emulsion at most garden centers. The thick, brown liquid is diluted with water and can be sprayed on foliage, applied to roots and mixed with compost to give an added nutritional boost.

If animal, bird, fish and insect-derived products don't do the trick, look no further than the human race. Thanks to the city of Milwaukee, which in the 1920s began processing its human waste into nitrogen-rich fertilizer for farms and golf courses, there's also odor-free Milorganite 6-2-0 organic fertilizer granules, which are available at garden centers. This sewer sludge is also sold to other fertilizer manufacturers, who mix it into their commercial and residential products. Check the label on the products you've been using, and you just might find that you've been treating your garden to human sludge all along.

Trick or treat!

-- Yvonne Swanson is a freelance writer in St. Petersburg and a master gardener for Pinellas County.

[Last modified October 28, 2005, 11:07:05]