Plants
Since I started vermicomposting a few years ago, it has been the only thing I nourish my indoor plants with. I thought it might be fun to share some stories of my plants with you to see how they are doing from just fertilizing, systemically and topically, with my vermicast and vermicast tea.
The Ongoing Story of Janice: How My Plant Guided Me to Vermicomposting
I can't talk about how I discovered vermicomposting without mentioning my beloved ponytail palm, Janice. Janice is now 9-ish years old. I adopted her from IKEA in Feb. 2015. I had just moved, and she was the first plant I bought for my new apartment.
After about 7 years and moving her just once to a new planter in 2016, I gave her a new bed of soil in 2021. This turned out to be pretty bad for Janice, until it was really great for Janice (and me!).
Leaf Hearts by Pothos
This pothos climber "Clementine" is about 3 years old, and seems to be quite comfortable in her small round pot on the wall. She has a few variegated leaves but most are lime green. New growth comes in at a reddish pink.
I just love her vibe!
Mothers Day, 2014
This Ardisia elliptica aka "Esmeralda" became a part of our home as a table-sized plant. She was gifted to me by my daughter for Mothers Day 2014. She is a hearty grower that loves indirect bright light, and grows pink flowers in early Spring (shown top right) that turn into berries (shown bottom right). Apparently the berries are edible, although I have never tried them.
She's now over 10 years old and growing in a giant self-watering planter that holds two gallons of water. She is enormous and keeps trying to grow into the ceiling.
The Licuala Palm Experiment
So this is my latest mess up. Based on a suggestion from a fellow vermicaster, I added black strap molasses to my vermicast tea. The reason for doing this is that aerobic bacteria (the good guys in the vermicast world) feed on the sugary substance and really proliferate. Though I would love to not add anything to my vermicast tea beside distilled water and vermicast, being indoors doesn't allow me to leverage nature at all, and so this is a welcomed boost, and all of my plants have benefited. The lesson I learned here, is that the molasses recipe has the potential to burn when applied topically; but systemically my plants have gotten a bit greener, and so far I am using this recipe during the growing season, once a month.
I had to remove a few fronds from "Fanny" (adopted 2021) because they were browning, and I'm guessing were burned from the molasses-added vermicast tea. There are still a few suffering fronds, but I don't want to shock her, so I will wait until she grows a few new ones, before I prune off the dying fronds.
While not everything is rosy when you are experimenting, I am hoping to update this section with a more robust Fanny as she recovers from my experiment. Her new fronds are perfect and I hope she continues with healthy growth. She is also a notorious slow grower indoors, and so I probably won't have an update for another year or so.
