- Good day.
I'm Mark from Self Sufficient Me.
And this is all that's left of what once was a pile
of rich cow dung.
But this is not just any cow manure.
In this video, I'm gonna show you what happens
and why I added garden worm eggs
to a pile of steaming cow dung.
Let's get into it.
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
Seven months ago,
I've got a trail load of cow manure from a local dairy
so I could use it to top dress our garden beds.
Because cow manure isn't just good fertilizer,
it also improves soil structure and water holding capacity.
It's hard to think of anything better
or for overall garden health
and growing a ton of vegetables,
than adding this stuff to your raised garden beds,
except there is.
And that's cow dung with garden worms.
Garden worms are nature's silent, underground laborers.
They help to aerate the soil by borrowing around,
allowing plant roots access to oxygen.
And worms also consume organic matter,
turning it into fertilizer and even riches soil
for plants to thrive in.
So it makes sense to have a healthy
worm population in your garden.
But sometimes when you're refurbishing a garden bed
or when you're building a new one,
it's handy to give the natural worm population a boost
by adding some more.
I'll talk about the reasons why I don't have
a dedicated worm farm later in this video.
But why not just add worms or worm eggs
directly into the garden bed?
Well, firstly, fresh cow manure
is not ready for immediate distribution into a garden bed
if you wanna use that bed for growing plants straightaway.
You could, but you have to be pretty careful
because fresh manure is very heavy and often too potent
and will smother and or burn plant roots.
Secondly, cow manure is good worm food.
I remember, as a young boy fishing with my grandfather,
we used to use worms as bait
and you'd get some from the home garden,
but the best place was you'd get to the river,
find back from the river, a paddock or two,
and we'd go hunting for cow pets.
And on the every plop of cow manure,
you would find a whole heap of worms
to be dug out of the soil.
Or sometimes they'd just be immediately
under the cow patty.
Worms ate and work the manure to quickly,
within a matter of months, improve it
so it can be used in the garden.
At the same time, those worms growing and living
in the manure, get transferred to the new location
when you refurbish or create a new garden bed.
You can add worms or worm eggs directly into the garden bed.
But if that bed isn't already thriving with organic matter
and have plenty of worm food in it,
your worms aren't gonna do as good as they could.
Doing it this way works and matures the manure
and grows the worms at the same time,
before going into the garden.
To inoculate a pile of cow dung,
all I did was purchase some worm eggs
from the local garden center,
dig a shallow trench in the cow manure pile
and cover them over.
After a few months,
the worm population in the manure pile had exploded
and the structure of the dung started changing rapidly
from a wet, stinky, poop-like matter
to more normal garden soil, only with a heap of worms in it.
I then used this valuable resource sparingly
as a top dresser for refurbishing old garden beds,
or especially when creating and filling new garden beds
to not only add nutrients
and good growing soil structure,
but also worms, so that they can begin breeding
in their new home and doing their wormy magic.
A pile or trail load of cow dung with worms
can go a long way in the garden.
And I reckon, it's heaps better than only buying
and applying commercial fertilizers or soil improvers.
Speaking of buying, purchasing worm eggs,
as opposed to live worms, is cheaper.
For example, 1000 live worms is about 50 bucks,
whereas a pack of over 1000 worm eggs,
because they claim to pack more than the thousand stated,
is around $30.
Although live worms are commonly sold online and in store
as opposed to worm eggs, so live worms are easier to get.
You might still think that $30 or more for some worms
is a high price to pay.
However, I think if you make this investment annually,
or even every few years, it could save money
because your garden will perform better
with less fertilizer and other nutrients needed
to be purchased and added to the soil.
If you have a worm farm,
you could probably transfer some of that population
into the manure pile and do exactly the same thing.
No doubt about it.
Why don't I have a worm farm?
Well, I don't have anything against worm farms.
In fact, I think they're really cool.
And I certainly would not wanna discourage anyone
from getting a worm farm and using it to compost
food scraps, garden waste, and other organic matter.
But right now, in my situation on three acres
with plenty of raised garden beds and lots of things to do,
I find it easier to treat our whole property
as one big giant worm farm.
We have other ways of creating compost
and recycling our organic waste.
As you probably already know,
I even bury our kitchen scraps directly into the garden
for our worm population to use
and turn into rich fertile soil.
Plus, it gets hot here in summer and even in winter.
And also we get a lot of rain,
so it makes it harder to manage a dedicated worm farm.
And I just simply don't have the time
to look after a worm farm separately at the moment.
At least here in our garden,
the worms can look after themselves,
migrate up and down the depth of soil
to find food and find better places to live
depending on climatic conditions,
current temps, rainfall, et cetera.
All the while, the worms are improving our soil
and adding to our overall gardening success,
which is quite evident, if I do say it myself.
A few months ago,
I added some of the worm and manure mix
to this newly raised garden bed that I built.
And as you can see,
the veggies have just thrived in it.
They've loved growing in the mix.
But what about the worms?
So let's dig down and see by chance
if we can find any of that worm population
just growing randomly in the bed here.
Oh, straight, straight underneath.
Oh, look how healthy.
I'll bring you in closer,
but I got to keep it in the one shot.
Otherwise, you'll think that I've cut screens
and I'm BSing you, which I'm not.
Have a look at that.
Let's just scraping away some of the malts,
but look how healthy they are
and dark and healthy.
Or I can get a proper shot out of this,
that'd be nice.
There we go.
Wow.
How cool is that?
So let's bring you in closer.
Yeah, they really do look nice.
Put them in here and I'll bring you in closer.
Okay, here we go.
I've just put them back in.
They've crawled down, of course.
So there's some of the same ones, pretty, pretty lively.
And there's several more under there, but if I dig down
carefully and try not to hurt them,
but ah, yeah, you know, they're everywhere.
I mean, it's pretty healthy population.
I'm sort of covering them over
and digging them up at the same time.
But look at the quality of that soil.
It's almost looks like it's worm castings.
It's so dark and beautiful.
And that's just a small sample of the garden bed,
just in these gaps here.
I'm gonna probably replant into this gap here as well.
But if I was to keep digging around here,
which I shouldn't do because you don't wanna
keep disturbing the environment,
otherwise you can hurt the worms.
But if I was to keep digging around,
I'd find that this bed is well populated
when you can just dig a random sample up like that
and find half a dozen to 20 worms in such a small area.
So what do you think of inoculating a pile of dung
with some worms or worm eggs?
Worth it?
Whatever you think,
write your comments and experience
down in the comment section below
so we can all learn.
Well, I hope you liked this video.
I've just got to put this hessian back
on here and be a little bit careful
because there's a red belly, black snake right there.
Gosh, she's gorgeous.
You don't really see snakes through out winter,
but you will in these types of situations.
We have some nice sun and obviously some decaying manure
that creates a little bit of warmth
plus that hessian covering.
But I like to cover this pile because it keeps the worms
also in a better environment and it stops the weeds
from growing over or through the dung
and the grass growing out through the dung as well.
A little bit of excitement.
If you did enjoy this video,
make sure you give it a big dung wormy thumbs up
and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already
plus share the video around because that helps heaps.
Thanks for watching.
Bye for now.
Whew!