Dear Kristine (again),
Yes, petunias and marigolds both love worm juice! In fact, the
first year that we did the worm composting project at the Hermantown
Federal Prison Camp, the federal government cut the funding to the
prison so drastically that the institution could no longer afford to
buy fertilizer, this despite the fact that they have a very large
vegetable garden there that they rely on to supply most of their
vegetables in the summer. Luckily, we had been running the 100-foot-
long vermicomposting bin for at least six months by the time
planting season rolled around, so they had worm compost and worm
juice.
All the leftover chemical fertilizer (the blue kind) was allotted to
the greenhouse where the annuals for the flowerbeds were grown (the
prison has very extensive flowerbeds, because they want to make the
inmates' families feel welcome when they visit). One fine spring day
the inmate who was in charge of the greenhouses put in a request to
have me visit the greenhouse. The officer who was in charge of the
recycling-and-composting area escorted me over to the greenhouse,
and the very excited greenhouse manager explained why he wanted me
to visit. He'd used the chemical fertilizer on half the petunias
and worm juice on the other half (this was the same variety of
petunia) and the difference was so extreme that you could tell which
petunias had gotten worm juice when you were standing at the far end
of the long greenhouse, about thirty feet away from the plants! The
wormjuice petunias had much, much brighter green leaves, and much,
much brighter and larger flowers, and way more of them.
So that's my petunia story.
Environmentally yours,
Ellen
