Easy Steps to Prepare Vermicompost at Home

The way our body needs food that is rich in nutrients and minerals for maintaining a healthy body and mind, the soil needs to be fed with food in form of fertilizers. Vermicompost is one such kind of natural additive that can help in improving soil quality and boost plant growth. Chemical fertilizers are also used but they harm the soil, crop and environment at large. Also, the food that is grown using these chemical fertilizers is not safe for consumption. This chemically-grown food has led to deteriorating health conditions and weakened immune systems. Using 100% natural vermicompost is the solution to all these problems.

Vermicompost is worm manure. The worms in the soil provide the nutrients to the mixture. It is believed that vermicompost can contain up to 10 times more minerals, nitrogen and phosphorus as compared to any other fertilizer.

Benefits of using Vermicompost

Here’s a list of endless benefits that using a 100% organic vermicompost can reap for your crops.

• As vermicompost has nutritional content as compared to any other chemical-based fertiliser, it can enhance soil quality.
• This fertilizer can be prepared even at your home using just a few simple ingredients making it easily available.
• As this fertilizer is made using natural ingredients, it is also cost-effective as compared to readily available chemical fertilizers.
• Being 100% organic, it helps in reducing soil, water and air pollution to quite a large extent.
• This mixture can be prepared even in a vacant balcony corner saving a lot of space of yours.
• This natural soil food is in high demand nowadays and creating enormous employment opportunities too.
• You can also add the remains of plants and vegetables while preparing this. So it helps in optimally utilising even your kitchen waste.
• It has been statistically proven that using 100% natural vermicompost has improved the quality of crops and fruits and vegetables.
• This vermicompost has also been extremely effective in improving soil porosity, its water holding capacity, nutrient content and overall quality.

DIY Vermicompost Preparation Methods

If you do not wish to purchase fertilizers or vermicompost from the market, here are a few easy ways to prepare it at your home from a few simple ingredients.

1. Vermicompost from Cow Dung

• To prepare Vermicompost from cow dung, pick a spot in a vacant balcony or garden corner or your terrace space. This might smell a bit so it’s better to pick a faraway space for this process.
• Now you can choose a pit or plastic container of the required size to begin with. Make sure it has a few tiny holes in it for drainage purposes.
• Add cow dung to the pit and cover it. If you have some kitchen biowaste with you, you can add that too.
• Let it settle for about 30 days. Check at specific intervals and sprinkle some water if the upper layer seems dry.
• In about 45 days, you will be able to see that there are worms in it and the vermicompost is ready to use. You can mix it with your regular planting soil and it will enhance your soil quality and plant growth.

2. Vermicompost from Kitchen Waste

• You can also prepare vermicompost for your balcony garden from the kitchen waste. This is quite an efficient way to prepare your own fertilizer and also reduce the amount of waste.
• To prepare this vermicompost, place an empty container in the vacant corner of your kitchen balcony.
• Now add the kitchen waste like vegetable and fruit peels and remains to the container.
• You can also add dried leaves, twigs and cocopeat to this mixture.
• For microbes, you can add some existing vermicompost. Apart from that, you can also add some buttermilk or cow dung.
• To prepare good quality vermicompost, it is important that there’s a proper oxygen flow. For the same, you can keep tossing the vermicompost mixture after every few days or have some drainage holes in the container for oxygen circulation.
• After a month, you can layer it with some brown leaves.
• This way you can prepare vermicompost at home just from kitchen waste.

Ideal Amount of Vermicompost for your Plants

1. Adding Vermicompost to New Potted Plants

• While potting a new plant, ideally, you can use 1 part of cocopeat, 1 part of the soil, and 1 part of vermicompost. This combination is also known as a universal potting mixture.

2. Adding Vermicompost to Already Potted Plants

• In your already potted plants, you just need to add a small proportion of vermicompost. This is for nutrition purposes only. Hence you can simply add a tiny layer of vermicompost over the soil of the plants.

At Girveda, we practice 100% natural farming using cow-based products. This helps our farmer friends in getting better crop yields at low costs. Adding to that, the fruits, vegetables or products obtained this way are also devoid of chemicals and are extremely healthy. In this farming method, our farmers use vermicompost and bio enzymes made from cow dung or urine. They ensure absolutely zero chemical additives are used so that the quality of soil and crops remains the same. In this fast-paced lifestyle where our body lacks of proper nutrition, it is important that we switch to organic food. And if you wish to grow such natural crops, you can also prepare this vermicompost based on the above steps or get it from any 100% natural brand.