It's a windy day. I hope you can hear me. I've got the the fox tail on the microphone. Let's
get to it. Hello everybody and welcome back to Appalachian Bonsai. Today we are doing
part three in the final part of our soil test with Vermisterra's worm castings, worm tees,
and other worm products. I'm really pleased at the the growth that we've had. It's been one year and
a couple of days since this experiment was started on March 2nd 2021. Today is March 7th 2022,
so we've got some details to go over, and I again want to thank Vermisterra
for sponsoring this project. At the end of this video, I'd like to talk to you about a campaign
by my good friends at Buffalo Mountain Adventures. They're some of my best friends, and they've got a
really wonderful business that they are trying to promote at this very moment. I'll let you
know at the end of the video. All right, so if you remember from last year, last March, we repotted
each one of these things. These are maples with a variety of soil medias. Here I have 1A and 1B.
The differences between the A's and the B's is that the A was using my standard
fertilizer regimen of miracle growth, which is full strength according to the label,
and on the other side we used Vermisterra's "Vitality" as well as their jug of worm tea.
"Vitality" was not released to the public at the time of the beginning of this video series,
but now it is so pick it up if you like. The differences that we were looking at were the
heights, and we'll look inside the soil in just a minute. But for starting off, we have the
1A's and B's - my standard soil mix - nothing else added except for the differences in fertilizer.
These are red maples. The rest are trident maples. That's what we had.
This 1A right here started off at 15 centimeters in height. Now it is at 27. We started this thing
somewhere right in here and then it shot up almost twice the height. So 1.8X growth here. For this
1B, we started off at 20 centimeters and now we are at 30 centimeters in height. You can see
where it started off at 20 centimeters here and then shot up. This is about 1.5X growth for this.
Here I have 2a and 2b. The difference with these is my standard soil mix
plus I have tea bags with castings in them. The castings, the worm castings, were not
in the soil directly. They were sitting on top in these bags. These were organic cotton bags
and they have broken down significantly. There was a little bit of mice damage
at the beginning but you can see this thing just fell apart. This one's actually almost completely
incorporated into the soil. That's pretty impressive. Worm castings definitely break down
organic matter very very well and are supposed to provide nutrients to the tree.
So let's look at the differences between these two. These things were really short. This was
about 14 centimeters at the beginning of 2021 and right now we're looking at about 28 centimeters
up to the top. This one grew twice as tall. It's pretty awesome. For this one right here, again,
we had a different fertilizer regimen but the same basic soil mix and components. This one started
off at about 15 centimeters, so a centimeter taller than 2a, and it grew 33 centimeters.
This thing grew more than twice the height, so 2.2X... yeah, I've got my notes over here.
2.2 times the height. This is actually the best of all of them. This has the greatest
rate of growth. I think that has a lot to do with the the soil being really well draining,
because it's just a very coarse bonsai mix plus the added benefit of these worm castings. The
worm castings were not incorporated into the soil so it never impeded any of the drainage.
The best growth out of all of them, of all the different variates, were this mix right here.
3a 3b Now this was my standard mix, but also with an added scoop of worm castings directly
into the mix. This thing was standing at approximately 20 centimeters tall
on this side and it has reached a height of 39 centimeters. That's really really impressive.
That is 1.95 X the height for this one. A big difference. The 1.95 X height difference is the
same for this one. This started off at 19 centimeters and is now at 37 centimeters.
Pretty cool. This mix had the second greatest rate of growth right here.
I have 4a 4b. The differences here were that it was my standard soil mix and then I did a top
dressing of worm castings. Those worm castings sat right on top. That kind of impeded drainage. If
you can pay attention to the first video you'll see that there's still water floating on top
at that initial watering. However, all the worm castings have been incorporated
into the soil over time and slowly broken down. The differences between these two
is actually rather stark. We have 19 centimeters at the start and then it went up to 28,
so we're looking at about a 1.47 X increase in height. On the 4b
we had 20 centimeters to start off with and we've had 20 more centimeters of growth. We're looking
at twice the growth on this 4b right here. Pretty significant. Good to see that on here but it
didn't do as well on this side. I don't know. That drainage issue at the beginning was concerning to
me. It doesn't seem to have really affected it too much but at that time it spooked me a little bit.
So, we have 5a 5b. With this one I used my standard soil mix
plus two more portions of the worm castings directly into the soil & worked into it.
These, very much like the 3a's and the 3b's, had a really strong amount of growth. It's just showing
that worm castings in your soil mix or right on top of your soil mix is going to do a good job.
If it's mixed in and it's not just floating or if it's sitting right on top in a
container, then it's not impeding anything, then we're doing okay. For the 5a it started off at
20 centimeters and went up to 38, so nearly twice the size. For 5b we started off at 19 centimeters
and worked our way up to 42 okay. That's 2.21X the growth for this! Pretty impressive. I like it.
We have 6a and 6b. These are the last two. Instead of using my pine bark
I used only worm castings as the organic media in here. It had very poor drainage from the beginning
and has very poor drainage for the entire time. However, we do have some changes in growth.
6a here started off at 11 centimeters and worked its way up to twice the height as its original.
This one started off at 10 and only went up to 15 centimeters,
so it's only a one and a half times the growth. Whenever you look in here,
you'll see that it's still kind of mushy, still very compact. I would not recommend having only
worm castings as your soil medium. You're going to need some other as your organic media and you're
going to need some other components in there to really help with the drainage.
So this concludes our soil tests part three of three.
I really appreciate Vermisterra giving me an opportunity to try their products, from worm
castings to worm teas to "Vitality" to their coconut coir, which I've used in other things,
to try this in our bonsai soil. Bonsai soil is always an evolving part of our hobby and
it's really good to find this in our practice and try and see what makes things better. So
I hope you support them as they have supported me, and I really do appreciate them.
Lastly, I'd like to tell you about Buffalo Mountain Adventures. This is a
woman-owned company here in Floyd Virginia, which is where I live. These people are some of
my best friends in the entire world. They've been running this business for a few years
and now they're ramping it up. They have a campaign going on right now to raise money.
With that you can get some t-shirts like I've got here, you can get little koozies,
you can get sunglass holders, you know, the things that go around your head. I use these
all the time. This is my second pair of them. If you're on a stand-up paddleboard, which they do,
these things definitely keep my sunglasses from falling off my head whenever I fall into the
water. They do rock climbing and have great rock climbing adventures available on their campaign
site. They do spelunking and all types of outdoor mountain adventures. Buffalo Mountain Adventures!
Please go and support them at the link below. Show them some love
and know that I also love you. It's been a while. I'm going to come back and see
you here in just a minute, because there's always more to come. Thanks for watching!
Feel free to give them - wasp!!
Now they've got this on the shelves ready for you to use haha let's look at these things
slug
Country roads, take me home
thing that I I don't either