By: ERWIN G. BELEO
SAN FERNANDO CITY, La Union – The wriggly earthworms used for fishing baits are now fast becoming organic crop fertilizers and are even being processed into pesticide spray.
“The excrement of these worms is a good fertilizer as it also enriches the soil quality,” Wilfredo Abengona, in-charge of vermiculture of the San Fernando City Agriculture Office, one of those who is sternly pushing for vermicomposting, a process in which one produces organic fertilizer and pesticide spray using biodegradable materials and even mixed with the excrement of earthworms (vermicast), particularly the African night crawler (ANC).
Members of City Councilor Paolo Ortega’s Governance Trailblazing Project team chose vermi-composting as their focal point to promote its importance and to push for farmers and backyard gardeners to turn organic.
Abengona explained that organic vermicomposting materials are made out of 50 percent animal manure, particularly from cows, goats and horses (except chicken), mixed with 50 percent banana peelings or leaves, grasses, rice hays, kitchen droppings and other biodegradable materials.
It was learned that the vermicompost or the vermicast, when used as fertilizer in farms, gardens plant nurseries, and even landscaping, improves the physical structure of the soil which becomes enriched with micro-organisms like enzymes that attracts deep-burrowing earthworms already in the soil. It also improves the soil’s water-holding capacity.
The vermicompost is ready to “harvest” in 30 to 40 days, or even extended to another 14 days to allow the worms’ eggs to hatch so that they would proliferate. Abengona said the more worms in plants, the more nutrients they would absorb on the soil.
In the case of vegetables, “all we have to do is to put the mixtures or the worm in the bored hole,” he said.
Out of the vermi compost, a fertilizer/pesticide spray called the vermitea is formulated. One would only mix a part of vermicompost, molasses, and water; ferment it for 48 hours to get a foliar fertilizer and pesticide spray.
In its testing stage, Abengona said barangays Bangbangolan and Bato have been planted with eggplants and tomatoes using vermicompost. The produce, he said are “heavier” than usual, which means, they fruits have more flesh even if they are smaller in size.
He clarified that eggplants which are longer in size are lighter in weight. “This is a manifestation of the vermicompost or organic fertilizer in effect on standing crops.”
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